Sunday’s edition of The New York Times was all sorts of queer. The paper contained not one, but two explicitly bent tales.
The first, and lengthier, came in the form of the magazine’s Young Gay Rites, a look at married, white and privileged twenty-somethings in Boston, where gay marriage is legal.
Now, we don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade, but the article made us a bit – uneasy. Obviously we’re entirely supportive of gay marriage, but we’re always hesitant to embrace twenty-somethings settling down. And especially when they’re gay.
Could it be that these men are simply reacting against an older gay stereotype? Journo Benoit Denizet-Lewis had the same worry, writing:
When I first learned that some young gay men were marrying in Massachusetts, I wondered if their marriages might be a repudiation of the gay world fashioned by previous generations of men – men who reacted to oppression and homophobia in the ’70s and ’80s by rejecting heterosexual norms and “values,” particularly around sex and relationships. Many older gay men would have scoffed at the idea of marrying and having kids. To many of them, their “family” was their network of close gay friends.
The author goes on to say that all of his subjects – all of them white and educated – insist they’re not rebelling against anything. They simply love one another and wanted to seal the deal, so to speak. One couple even skipping living together and landed straight in the marriage bed. Another, meanwhile, said they thought it “silly” not to get married in the only state that recognizes gay marriage. That’s the “silliest” reason we’ve ever heard!
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Surely we wish them all luck, but caution all young ones to pay attention to another couple feature: Aaron and Steve, who divorced at the age of 26. Also, we caution everyone from becoming what one friend called a Stepford Gay, a description we think fits many of the subjects, none of whom we found particularly interesting.
The other queer NY Times story examined trans woman Denise Brunner, who previously lived – and married – as Donald. She married Frances Gottaschalk back in 1980, but decided to become a woman in 2005, fifteen years into their marriage. The story not only gives readers a look into the homes of happy trans-loving couples, but uses them as a platform to explore the nation’s “patchwork” of marriage and its many complications, like dealing with the Internal Revenue Service. The Brunners also highlight a rare, but increasingly public, phenomenon: the straight marriage that becomes same-sex. Regardless of legal complications, they insist they’re just as strong as always. Said Denise:
My kids know what marriage is all about, my community knows what marriage is all about. Nothing has changed. The world hasn’t fallen apart because New Jersey has a same-sex marriage.
Wise words, indeed, and from someone who truly understands marriage. The magazine subjects? Well, let’s hope Denizet-Lewis does a follow-up. And with a new photographer. These snaps give new meaning to “gay face,” one that’s closer to black face than anything else.
Thom
I believe younger gay men are getting married because they have been able to come out in their teens. Therefore, many of them dated and had teenage dating and sexual experiences. Older gay men had to repress their homosexuality well into their twenties and therefore had teenage experiences in their twenties. It is because of the fight of the older generation these young gay men can experience gay life in their teens and be ready to settle down in their twenties. Marriage is not for everyone whether hetero or gay. However, we should support those that choose marriage and support those that do not.
Z.
I’m stunt how people get married so easily.
http://www.ilovezeren.com
Doodles
I think its a crock of shit and most of us youngin’s who are going out and getting married in our 20’s is just foolish. Sounds to me more like a case of trying to prove to everyone that your just as normal as them. But I mean hey, does having that extra little note really mean much?! Look at Brad and Angelina, Marriage isn’t the cure for normality!
John
I don’t know why you’re worried? I always say people should worry about themselves first and their lives.
Am I wrong in thinking 2 of the couples had actually been together for 8 YEARS?? So because they are in their twenties? They should wait until they are 30 something?
Okay.
Each to their own I guess.
Personally, I think life is about making mistakes because that’s the only way you’re going to learn. I’m just glad that the one’s who hadn’t lived together still went and did it anyhow. It’s like live and let live-how will it rain on your parade if they break up after 10 days?
Brits allowed to get away with it! Hollywood has been doing it for decades now! And well, we all know about straight people ‘rushing’ into marriage in their twenties! That’s were the protests should start-even though it’s not our business!
One thing I’d like to add is that it’s pretty ironic how most of the gay blogs who reported quoted the most out of place bit of the piece-the guys who said ‘it seems silly, erm had been living together when they were 18 AND he said afterwards it was silly because they knew they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together’
Did I miss something? And they got married at 22 and are now 25-so like, altogether have been together longer then most married straight couples ever….
Weird dissection of the piece.
desha
Isn’t that 25 years into their marriage?
conrad
marriage, especially gay marriage, is a big ol’ pile of bullshit. a short primer:
So, what is wrong with gay marriage?
In order to answer that question we must first understand what this thing called marriage is. Marriage is essentially a financial and legal contract that allocates the movement of property, power and privilege from one person to another. Historically it has been a way of consolidating family power amongst and between men, through women. In more recent times marriage in the United States has functioned to solidify the American middle class. Marriage does this through concentrating wealth and power through family lines and inheritance (both in terms of money and power). Because of marriage’s ability to discipline class structures it is now, and always has been a primary structure of a capitalist economy. In reality most people marry within their own socioeconomic class. Marriage, earlier through miscegenation laws, and currently through racist “values” also contains wealth through racist ideologies of matrimony. Because of these realities there has been a long history of critique of the institution of marriage launched by feminists of color, white feminists, and queer people among others.
What about gay marriage? Isn’t gay marriage going to change all of this?
NO. The current push towards gay marriage is, in fact, not going to subvert the systems of domination we all live through. Ironically, the gay marriage movement is standing on these same legacies of brutality for their slice of the wedding cake. Take for example the “Freedom to Marry” stickers created by the freedom to marry organization. Not only are these stickers falsely equating the intervention of the State into ones life (marriage) with “freedom” (when was the last time the State helped you to become more “free”?) they are trying to work this idea through horrifying star-spangled stickers. Instead of critiquing the ways US imperialism has rendered most transgender people, queer people, people or color etc. as expendable through its countless wars here and abroad, the Freedom To Marry stickers simply disguise these histories and reproduce this red-white-and-blue national theme for every married gay and guilt filled liberal to wear with PRIDE.
If straight people can marry, why should gay people not have the same privilege?
What we are calling for is an abolishment of State sanctioned coupling in either the hetero or homo incarnation. We are against any institution that perpetuates the further exploitation of some people for the benefit of others. Why do the fundamental necessities marriage may provide for some (like healthcare) have to be wedded to the State sanctioned ritual of terror known as marriage?
Won`t gay marriage help couples stay together where one person is not a US citizen?
The way immigration is being used by the gay marriage movement is not only un-thought-out but also relies on racist notions of the “white man saving his brown lover”. Although it is true that because of the US policies on immigration some lesbian and gay couples may be split, gay marriage does not at all question these systems that allow some people into the country( white) while excluding others (people of color). Where are the gay marriage “activists” when the INS is actively raiding and deporting whole families ?(such as it is currently doing just blocks away from the Castro in San Francisco’s Mission District). Also missing from the picture of immigration that gay marriage advocates are painting is the reality that there are queer couples in the US where neither person is a US citizen. How will gay marriage help them stay in the US if that is what they want to do? Gay marriage will not challenge “citizenship” but simply place some bodies within its grasp while holding others out.
I agree with your argument, but isn’t gay marriage a step in the right direction?
This liberal model of “progression” is one of the primary ways many of us are ideologically trapped into a reformist way of thinking. To understand how gay marriage, like voting, will never lead to liberation we can look to the histories of many “social justice movements” that only address oppressions on a level of the symptomatic. Gay marriage and voting are symbolic gestures that reinforce structures while claiming to reconfigure them. This scheme will undoubtedly become apparent with “marriage equality” advocates. As they have positioned gay marriage as the last great civil rights battle, will they continue to fight after the Honeymoon?
Won’t gay marriage help get health care to more people?
It may help some people get healthcare but for the vast majority of Americans with NO healthcare it will do nothing. And within the rhetoric of the gay marriage movement working towards healthcare for all (people and animals) is nowhere to be found. This argument also relies on the false assumption that one person would already have healthcare.
So if you are against gay marriage then you are allying with the Christian Right and the GOP!
NO. This is amongst the most troubling aspect of this current epidemic of gay marriage. The way the marriage movement is framing any critique of their precious institution is either you are one of us (gay married) or you are one of them (homophobe). This helps to silence the much needed debate and public discourse around such issues. It seems as if everyone has been shamed into submission and subsequent silence by the marriage movement. Even in allegedly “progressive” circles any mention of the implicit links between marriage, misogyny, and racism in the U.S. gets shutdown by a “gay married”. Ironically, if you look at the rhetoric of the freedom to marry movement and the Republican Party their similarities are frighteningly apparent. In their ideal world we would all be monogamously coupled, instead of rethinking the practice of “coupling”. They want us working our jobs not working towards collective and self-determination, remembering anniversaries not the murder of trans-people, buying wedding rings not smashing capitalism. The vision of the future the republicans and the gay marriage movement has offered will render most of us already in the margins of the picture (trans-people, sex workers, queers of color, HIV positive people, non-monogamous people etc) as the new enemy of the régime of married normalcy they hope to usher in.
Dawgson
I think what a lot of people objected to about the article was the tone of the piece. Something about the it really put me off. I couldn’t tell if it was the (mostly) breathless praise of the author or the casual privilege and materialistic lifestyles of the couples described.
There might be some small element of jealousy here but I think there’s more to it than that.
Chet
I think Thom is positively correct on this one. To each their own as they say. Marriage is probably not for people like Doodles who seems like he’s trying to prove something himself with that obvious flame-post.
You know some of us aren’t really enticed by this party people date a million guys existence that some of you see as a “rite of passage.” I think that’s a crock of shit. Call me a serial monogamist if you will, but maybe its probably something of a generational gap here that Queerty doesn’t understand.
Charley
Bad reporting.
No mention of the Federal benefits of marriage that heterosexual couples automatically receive denied to gays.
I am surprised at the New York Times. The article was written in a shallow and superficial way. I didn’t read all the article, but what I did was alot like “Queer As Folk”.
hells kitchen guy
Agreed the reporting and writing were shallow and lazy. There was no aggregating the couples into anything larger. And the parts about the Ozzie & Harriett forever-monogamous couples were a joke that the author didn’t seem to be privy to. I did like the “We’re so normal” guys who got married in a big family ceremony and then got divorced two years later. At least THAT was realistic.
If the Times had any cujones (which it doesn’t), it would follow up every one of these couples in five years and see which ones are slamming tina and trolling online, which are going to Circuit parties, and which are settled with kids. Not many in the last category, I’ll wager.
CondeNasty
Hmmmmm, let me just start by saying that I am 35 and have been shacking-up with my college bf for the past 15 years. I never bought into that “rite of passage” backroom/tearoom BS that some people seem to think defines us as our “culture”. All I can say is monogamy works for some people and for others it doesn’t. But it is funny when I meet gay men and mention my relationship they typically look at me like I am a unicorn. It is sad that that some of you have taken the stance that marriage just should not be a part of the gay experience. I think for many people gay and straight it is an issue of semantics. I don’t care if you call it marriage or Brenda, I just want my rights.
John
Hells Kitchen:
“If the Times had any cujones (which it doesn’t), it would follow up every one of these couples in five years and see which ones are slamming tina and trolling online, which are going to Circuit parties, and which are settled with kids. Not many in the last category, I’ll wager.”
You broke my heart. Fuck-I think you’ve just explained my destiny!
Unfortunately, I’m sure a lot of people agree with you and live like you. I’m glad I’m something of an outcast in the gay community if that’s all I can amount to, instead of seeking knowledge, pushing boundaries & trying to be a good person.
AKN
Benoit D-L is typically a better writer than this article suggests. I was especially disappointed in the way it ended (with a tiresome one-liner) when in fact one of the men who had just picked up his marriage license was finally tapping into some serious apprehension — that seemed like it should have been the beginning of the article. I was amazed at how self-assured and entitled these young gay men sounded — even being white/supereducated, even when talking about one’s own divorce — and catching that hint of something frailer and unsure underneath those perfect cardigans was a nice bit of schadenfreude.
CondeNasty
John:
Thank you for chiming in. I am sick of people thinking that if you are gay you have to be a drug huffing circuit queen. This does not have to be our defining culture. I too am an outcast I guess. I am far from a prude, but I was raised with the benefit of having decadent and hedonistic parents (think the ice storm) and was able to learn from their negative example. I have never done tina, never been to a backroom or a circuit party and I don’t feel my like is empty because of that fact. I have a guy that knows me inside and out, has my back and is there for the long haul. I am sorry that some of you have been burned so badly that you think a LTR in the gay world is not possible.
Dawgson
I believe in the possibility of LTRs. I also know a lot of married folk (gay and straight) where both partners cheat while claiming to be monogamous.
It’s never been clear to me if both parties know and are lying to their friends, or if they’re just lying to themselves.
I am fine with gays getting married. I just hate this “holier than thou” attitude that often comes with it, especially when it comes from a deeply hypocritical place.
joe
okay I think that it is fine for them to get marriedat thier age. Queerty make it look like every gay male needs to whee himself out to every guy to find the right one. I’m 20 and I know I’ve found the guy I want to spend my life with I’ve been with him two years already and would not hesitate to tie the knot. I think a monogamous relationship is the wayto go. I hate the typical gay stereotype that we all go clubbing and sleep around with one another. There is more than one type of gay person but of course the bad side will always recieve more publication. I mean look most of you are flaming an article about a happy gay young married couple…. Isn’t this the kind of publicity we need?
Dawgson
Joe: I think a lot of us are older and either “experienced” or “bitter” depending n how you look at it.
More than half of marriages (straight or gay) end in divorce — I think we just want young gays to be careful.
And the tone of the article felt (to me) very stereotypical. Like all gays wear ironic slippers and cook fancy five course meals. In that way it was a little offensive.
Dawgson
Joe (cont): My parents married in their 20s and it was a disaster. Marriage is a big commitment and I know few people (straight or gay) who were ready well into their 20s.
You might be the exception, but as a rule, people in our culture (straight or gay) are still growing up well into their 30s.
Dawgson
oops, I meant: “early 20s” or in my mom’s case “very late teens.”
queerunity
still gotta get me a copy
http://www.queersunited.blogspot.com
John
Dawson, I agree but I learnt from my past mistakes of being too patronizing to younger people who wanted to marry to being a forever free spirit. I actually don’t believe in marriage per se-but that’s just me-straight or gay..
But I trust gay marriage a lot more because it’s a brave thing to do..
Young or old; the worst thing we can do in society and that we keep on doing is trying to make everyone think like us or assuming everyone is ‘like’ us. Because they aren’t-I’ve been in too many situations were people tried to pretend they were into partying/drugz and end up seriously depressed and socially awkward.
I know from personal experience that pretty much 95 percent of my friend are so frigging tired of the whole scene, wanting to be scene, playing a person you are supposed to be like-playing a game…
brandon andrew
I understand that benoit created a puff piece out of a couple of generic couples but i’d like to go on the record as a young gay male in the article working toward building a positive environment for young queer men in boston by hosting queer aimed dance parties at straight clubs. I grew up in a small town called lakeside, ca. once titled the crystal meth slum of america and fortunately moved to l.a. in high school to live a moderate lower middle class lifestyle with my hairdresser mother. Throughout high school i attended 6 aids related funerals of my gay uncles whom helped raise me in the salon my mother was employed at. When I came out my biggest fear was STD’s and watching my mother put me in the ground. Because of this i chose a life of celibacy and monogamy. I have been in three long term relationships (for my young age) that add up to six years in length. I met the other brandon having no intention to date or hook up or marry. I had no gay friends in boston due to the fact that I’ve never felt apart of the gay scene. I skate, listen to punk rock, live on a bicycle, and don’t know what is going on PROJECT RUNWAY, all of which are unorthodox at the large gay clubs and bars in bostons south end. Having met the other brandon i found someone whom i didn’t have to curtail my hobbies or interests with. we see eye to eye and because of it we rarely have to “choose our battles”. after being together for two years (not a day apart) i enjoy my time with him more and more. we don’t take our love for granted and we know we will change and grow. due to our lack of sexual encounters we accept that we may in the future want to experience other sexual partners, should that come to pass we will experience them together, the way we do food, shows, films. ten years down the road we don’t want to feel we missed out on our youth. As of now we are only engaged and do not intend on actually getting the license and celebrating for at least another two years. I guess the reason i’m telling you all this is that hopefully you will realize that there is dimension to the 2D constructions you read about yesterday and that maybe not everyone is naively taking marriage for granted. I’d like to thank all the men out there who made my life possible. and i’m sorry if some young couples are taking it all for granted. we, the brandons, are not.
M Shane
Great report:
Anyone in thier 20’s who decides to get married is naive beyond comprension about what it is to be gay and doesn’y know the difference between sex and whatever would work for a partnersghip if they themselves are suitable to live with anyone else. Statistically , most straight people get divorced after what ever # mariage they have, the more the woerse the statistics get. After 2 marriages, my hetero. brother finally decided on a marriage as long as they each have different houses to live in and lives to pursue. Finally happy.
Undoubtedly most of the social impulse to marry came from right wing dimbos like Sulivan whom, in the attempt to assimilarte us into a heterohegimonious model which would destroy any notions of gay liberation and attempts to establish relationships that were relivant to who we were as gay men.I likes Conrads line .” Ironically, if you look at the rhetoric of the freedom to marry movement and the Republican Party their similarities are frighteningly apparent. In their ideal world we would all be monogamously coupled, instead of rethinking the practice of “couplingâ€. They want us working our jobs not working towards collective and self-determination, remembering anniversaries not the murder of trans-people, buying wedding rings not smashing capitalism.
Marriage , if it is tolerable can offer legal opportunities which can be had otherwise, as Obama remarked.
Marriage is more than anything a reconciliation to feminine dependant personalities and babymaking, none of which are gay aims, generally.
Except for persons with incurably dependant personalities and tiny libidoes, marriage is always a bad choice. Have sex safely with as many people as you can and find, make lots of friends of different kinds. Sread your wings and find yourselves as part of the larger human race.
Hiding in the suburbs is a regretable and foolish trap to get into in your best years. It’s not our job to make straight republicans happy.
Dawgson
Brandon: I’m really glad you posted on here. Do you feel like you were accurately portrayed in the article? Most of the people I know felt as though everyone mentioned was made into a gay caricature that probably wasn’t that true to reality.
I thought your proposal sounded beautiful (I love that cover), but the way Benoit wrote about it (esp. the quotes around ‘their “song”‘) attempted to make it sound cliche.
I wish you guys the best of luck!
brandon andrew
I feel we were the most respected in presentation but under represented. There was a good deal of conversation regarding the state of marriage and monogamy and false ideology that never made into the piece. Maybe it was too boring or controversial. The other Brandon, a student of Economics at MIT works with numbers and statistics and overwhelmingly monogamy/love/sex/marriage are not working. The idea of marrying for love is a modern thought that most of americans assume is the gospel. Just yesterday we were coming back to boston from syracuse when a headline was announced on the radio that 1 in 2 marriages end in divorce in america. we laughed considering it was the same day our article was going into circulation. we are set up for failure but if we intend on operating within the confines of u.s. sociopolitical structure it is important that we go into this with a clear head knowing that we are setting ourselves up for failure. These are things i discussed with benoit that never made it. i think there are many intelligent well respected individuals that have and will take different routes to happiness and however they may be, let them be. that may seem naive but if someone jaded, like myself were to translate that into a less optimistic phrase it would sound more like “when it comes down to it, who fucking cares, let people do what they’re gonna do.”
brandon andrew
by the way… the actual proposal was much more ridiculous. it was full of math riddles and scavenger hunts in the commons which i was way too intoxicated to figure out. the proposal itself could’ve been a four page spread.
John
Brandon: I pretty much summed up were people were coming from in that piece. I didn’t think it was that bad AT ALL but I guess when you are dealing with a culture with such a judgmental and totalistic nature such as the ‘gay culture’-you’re fucked to put it seriously with however you chose to say you are ‘free’ or seeking that allusive happiness…
Good for you! And it warmed the cold black heart!
M Shane
Joe: “the kind of publicity we need?” for who? To convince the hets that we’re just like them?
Sorry, I’m not sacrificing my life to mislead the straight right wing that we’re behaving like them.
Some people who have trouble getting laid, want to trap what they get, but that’s only a set up for regret.
Because I can talk pretty intimately with straight men, I know for a fact that if it was not for the possessiveness and insecurity of women, they would with no exception that I’ve run into, be much more promiscuous. Guys are just promiscuous by nature, to say anything else is a fib generally.
DanGOP
Ahh yes, I love the sweet smell of haterade from the embittered old queens who think that it is perfectly acceptable to go out and be a slut. Sorry, but I was raised to have morals and values (and no, my parent’s are neither Republicans nor religious, they are hippies.) Sex outside the covenant of marriage, or at least a serious long-term relationship, is not something I will do, nor will I support anybody doing so either. Get married if you want sex.
Chet
M Shane:
“Sorry, I’m not sacrificing my life to mislead the straight right wing that we’re behaving like them.”
That kind of us vs. them mentality gets the community nowhere. In fact it is actually damaging. The message should be about being who you are? Who are you to peg the entire community into some triangular hole of your self-concieved stereotypes. I don’t think people get married because “they have trouble getting laid” and I don’t think its always because they need to prove it to the heteros. True, the words “were married” itself should have no bearing on the couples love. But if it confers partners rights (decision-making rights most importantly) that straight people get, why shouldn’t we be afforded the same.
“Guys are just promiscuous by nature, to say anything else is a fib generally.”
I guess you must have low faith in humanity because I know plenty of men who actually love someone besides themselves enough to resist that temptation. Sure everyone gets tempted but it is also human nature to feel jealous when your lover sleeps with someone else so instead your solution would be to just chuck relationships out the window. True, relationships are about sacrifice and sometimes couples are mature enough to work around these problems. You, however, don’t seem to be ready for anything of that sort so don’t go raining on everyone else’s parade.
Militant gays (or militant anything) = just as bad as right wing nutjobs
hells kitchen guy
” I’m 20 and I know I’ve found the guy I want to spend my life with I’ve been with him two years already and would not hesitate to tie the knot.”
Joe, good for you ,but what I object to is that “know” – if you had said “I think I know,” I’d be OK with it, but trust me, babe: at 20, you DON’T “know.” Not yet.
Jennifer L.
Really? are we going to add discrimination to our own kind? people just like us who already face enough controversy and discrimination? we can’t just be happy for people and let them live their merry lives? which is what I wish America would realize! This my friends is none of anyone’s business but the two speaking the vows. If you don’t want someone telling you you can’t get married, then don’t tell others when YOU think it is appropriate to get married.
Dawgson
DanGOP: Not even most straight people agree with your perspective, so please don’t judge gays who have “pre-commitment” sex.
M Shane
Anyone who thinks they “know” anything for at 20 is in for a lot of suprizes unless you plan on dying soon. Some people have hardly hit puberty then.
Chet you just realy don’t know much about being gay or how substantially different authentic options for living are. If you want to call me a “militant” that’s ok. I am invested completely in justice , equality and individual truth. That is an entirely different thing than being a fascist. Either with regards to being gay or in other respects. I don’t know what straight people B.S’d you–probably someone afraid of honesty but males are promiscuous by nature whether they “love ‘ somebody or not. Whatever this”love” is, often a religious myth.
msim
Well some of the comments (and the article presumptions on who gets married) are way off base.
I did marry my partner. We have been together 14 years. We got together when we were both 25.
We are working class brown-skinned Canadian women. No mortgage. Loads of sex (with each other). Will NEVER have or adopt babies. Did not have wedding invites, receptions, gifts or anything remotely connected to the Bridal industry.
We just got married to get all the legal rights since my lovely Mrs. was having medical issues and we wanted to be fully covered by the law.
Nothing wrong with marriage or non-marriage as long as YOU define your own life on your own terms.
seitan-on-a-stick
Who cares about Generation Whine (Y)? They are poor, i-snob losers who will never be Generation X or the Hippies. Their legacy will be selling out faster than their children who will rebel against their mediocrity. Fabulousness always skips a Generation. Sorry, twenty-nothings!
Conde Nasty
Thank you MSIM.
No matter how you wish to define your union it is just a commitment to someone you care deeply for. Some people can’t handle that, and that fine but don’t hate on others for wanting more from life than a few decades of meaningless sex with random tricks and short term lovers. I do estate work for a living and married or not it is about taking care of yourself and those who share your life. I can’t tell you the horror stories i have witnessed when a “lover” dies and the family descends and takes everything and marginalizes the surviving partner. Even if you practically adopt one another there are loopholes that could expose your surviving partner to a world of shit. For me marriage is not about the judeo-christian society sanctioned bs. It is about ease of access to equal protections under the law.
bmf6c
I really have a hard time believing that the author could not find any people of color for this article so that, yet again, gay=white. Very sad.
M Shane
seitan-on-a-stick you may be right. possibly there are bigger reasons like living in a dying democratic culture, and just the uneducated, uninventive response to a right wing sensability. Your statistics for divorce are really about 10-15 years old. Currently the hete divorce rate is 60% first marriage; and 80% second, it just gets more extreme.the more often you’ve been married. Also the romanticization of marriage, is no more than a cultural thing, subject to many interrpretations, the craziest one around owes itself to a neochristian idea that there is some (mistaken) connection between sex and love.
It’s just a christian denial that sex is an act of mutual, or one sided aggression., in which one partner demands an assurance of fidelity which may or not be anything real.
MSIM, I’m glad that you informed us that you were females, since that is, without judgement , a significantly qualifying factor, since females have a greater aptitude for “nesting”, than males and if males do nest in heterosexual arrangements it is often in response to the females need, which is biologically related to child bearing whether you bear children or not., in fact.
I can deal with nesting with my cat, to whom I’m very faithful, but he doesn’t drive me crazy & there are no sexual expectations.