The banality of heterosexual marriage
No time for a more substantial post tonight, but here’s a link to some comments I made over at Lo-Fi Tribe on the topic of marriage. The original question was whether (in the context of the California gay marriage ruling), race and sexual orientation ought to be equated. So we started talking a bit about that, and then Shawn made this comment: “And yes, many heterosexual couples read [legalizing gay marriage] as a reduction of their bond to the banal.” Um, ouch.
I didn’t really reply yet, since I want him to explain further, but I did look up “banal” to be sure I’m not missing something obvious in how gay marriage makes straight marriage banal, trite, and lacking in originality or freshness…
Anyway, if my readers want to jump in at Lo-Fi to clarify my thinking or Shawn’s, go for it.
May 20th, 2008 at 12:39 am
Generally speaking, I’ve noticed that many straight friends do not like to consider their marriage entirely in terms of legal rights. I think that’s what is “banal” here—the legal rights as the essence. Of course, it’s not banal if you don’t have those rights.
May 20th, 2008 at 3:58 am
I’m not going to post at Shawn’s blog because a) he doesn’t want a “flood” of us doing so, and b) I see no point to it. And also, I’m no philosopher.
Shawn wrote: “There was/is a need to make it equal to heterosexual marriage. I’m not so sure that the reduction of something already embraced and cherished by a large segment of the population has anything to do with civil rights, unless, of course, those who express marriage as a bond between one man and one woman have the same right to disagree and argue for their definitions too. And yes, many heterosexual couples read this as a reduction of their bond to the banal. The legal ramification of this issue was not the issue. :)”
To this, all I can really say is, I don’t see marriage as having been ‘reduced’ at all - and Whatever. (See, I told you I was not a philosopher.) “Many heterosexual couples” also get married for less than ideal reasons, and I know of several couples who have separated but not divorced in order to preserve health insurance benefits. And don’t even get me started on the “banality” of conceiving children that is practiced by “many heterosexual couples.”
But you know what? My personal opinion about that is pretty irrelevant to the law. Thank goodness.
My husband is more extremist than I am: he thinks the government should get out of the business of marriage altogether, and anyone should be allowed to designate any other person as their financial/legal partner - even if they are platonic (e.g. an elderly woman and her daughter, for example). Leave the romance and such for churches and private sectors.
I personally wouldn’t have a problem with that, but I know my fellow heteros would not go for that (gee, I can’t imagine why, if it’s good enough for the non heteros, why not for us?) so they need to share the wealth, so to speak.
Sorry, for the long comment. I’m feeling ranty today.
May 20th, 2008 at 4:20 am
Oh, and to respond to Shawn’s initial question “Do you equate sexual orientation with race?”
My answer to this would roughly be “yes.” I see race - or more specifically, ethnicity - much in the same way that I view sexual orientation: a combination of nature and nurture. There may be some genetic predispositions, but many environmental factors will figure in how those predispositions manifest themselves.
And, as with ethnicity and race, I view sexual orientation as being unfixed, and existing on a spectrum. I happen to be pretty heterosexual and don’t give thought to sexual relationships with other women, but if I lived in a society where 90% of the people identified as gay or lesbian, I can’t say I’d be swimming against the tide.
With race, that is pretty similar. I’m a person of largely African descent; there are some evidences of this in my appearance, obviously, but how I choose to enact that identity is largely a product of my personality, my upbringing, the norms imposed by society, etc.
CK, you had mentioned in your comments to Shawn the phenomenon of “passing” among black Americans. That’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about.
I would say it’s impossible to speak about “race” and sexual orientation as fixed states of being, and in that case, yes I equate them.
May 20th, 2008 at 4:30 am
Here’s my reply to one of the replies that Shawn wrote in response to your replies:
Shawn wrote:
-snip-
“Should sexual orientation and race be linked as it was in CA? I understand why you would argue in favor of such a link. You are a lesbian. Can you really look at this issue from an objective standpoint?”
Shawn,
Since everybody has a sexual orientation, is it possible for anyone to explore your question “objectively”?
I suppose we could ask someone who is bisexual and has had experience with same-sex and male-female relationships — perhaps this would be more “objective” than the person with just heterosexual or homosexual experience?
Or perhaps an asexual person would be our ideally “objective” persons?
-snip-
“I am racially mixed, and I’m trying but can’t see any connection whatsoever. It seems to me to be just another reduction of another social identity for the sake of justifying what seems to be behavior.”
The odd thing here is there is no sexual behavior that is uniquely “heterosexual.”
Many of the ways that people express physical affection are common across all sexual orientations. Every sexual act that gay men and lesbians do is also done by married male-female couples.
Even the one penile-vaginal sexual act that is commonly considered “unique” to heterosexuals isn’t confined to just that orientation — bisexual male-female couples can also engage in this behavior.
If it’s acceptable for heterosexual and bisexual male-female couples to express physical affection and even marry, why would be unacceptable for same-sex homosexual and bisexual couples to engage in the same behavior?
It doesn’t make sense to justify one set of sexual behaviors between consenting adults but not the equivalent behaviors performed by same-sex couples.
May 20th, 2008 at 11:39 am
It has always confused me how much protecting Christianity requires. Christmas is threatened when WalMart greeters say “Happy Holidays” and Jewish kids aren’t forced to sing about Jesus in the schools*. Marriage is threatened when gays are allowed to do it.
My mother (a liberal Christian) likes to say that chocolate ice cream and Julia Roberts movies manage to remain popular without being forced on anybody and that her God is at least as powerful as either of those, so she doesn’t get it either.
I don’t rush to conflate race issues and sexuality issues, but to me the “letting gays in will make marriage banal” seems so close to the “but our restaurant WON’T BE THE SAME if we let black people eat here” sentimental arguments that were made against civil rights legislation.
But Sean is afraid of a “flood of Unitarians,” (seems to me the last flood was like half a dozen) so I won’t bother. I hope for his sake he never insults the Discordians**.
CC
*I still get mad when I think about how some Jewish kids I used to babysit when I lived in rural NC were literally told that if they didn’t want to sing a gospel song about Jesus in their public school, then they should probably quit the choir. I’m so glad I don’t live in the south anymore.
** Insulting the Discordians and the way they treat Christianity once got me 60 posts in one day from pissed-off discordians who make trolling a performance art.
May 20th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
I agree with HF’s husband that the government shouldn’t be in the marriage business. Marriage is a religious sacrement, to be performed by churches; partnerships are legal entities, recognized by the state for legal reasons. I know several marriages that wouldn’t qualify as secular partnerships, the spouses having separate financial lives. What’s wrong with letting people decide whether they want a partnership, a marriage, or both?
May 20th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
@ Everyone - I’m personally happy to have gotten a flood of Unitarians here.
It’s funny how different posts bring out different readers - I suppose I’ve been quite philosophy-heavy for a while.
Thanks for all your comments. I was serious about asking for clarification on my own thoughts, particularly regarding race / sexual orientation.
1 - Ms Theologian, I think that the distinction between the religious nature of marriage and the legal nature of partnership rights is one that is generally conflated due to our country’s history and structure. I really wish there were some better way to get at that with people who fear the banalizing (word?) effects of gay marriage.
2 - Hafhidha, I’m with your husband on the conferral of rights (especially health insurance stuff). I had an elderly cousin who was taking care of her mother - the two lived together and were, for all intents and purposes, partners. They weren’t, of course, romantic partners, but why shouldn’t she have been able to say that she wanted her mom to have the rights that were reserved for her (non-existent) husband?
3 - Steve, yes, the equation of sexual orientation with behavior baffles me. It crops up on most Christian blogs I read and frequent (typically with regard to one stereotypically male-male interaction). But there is no one behavior that is “gay” and not “straight.” Not even collecting Barbra Streisand albums.
4 - CC, I remember the Discordian incident. Kind of funny from the outside… The protecting thing is strange, but when I was “inside” as a Christian, it seemed entirely consistent. I think, personally, that it’s due to reading current events into the larger schema of an ongoing war (Babylon v. the Kingdom, etc.) which means there is no time that Christianity is not under attack. However, there are some Christians who are wary of equating the secular government’s sanction with biblical norms. On opposite sides, Rev. Wright and some theonomists agree about this, oddly!
5 - Joel, yes. When it comes down to figuring out what quality all marriages must have: procreation, a certain kind of sexual activity, financial interaction, etc., none work. (I just saw a PBS show on Eleanor Roosevelt’s marriage and, setting aside the question of her as a lesbian, their marriage was non-conventional, yet iconic.)
6 - Thanks everyone, for your comments. I certainly didn’t mean to post this (and no one really has taken it this way) as a “gang up on Shawn” thread. I’ve been busy and so occasionally post interesting discussions I have with people. At some point, blogersations either turn into tiresome point-by-point rebuttals with each side entrenched, or individuals agree to disagree. Hopefully, though, at least a little understanding has occurred on both sides…
May 20th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
(((reading current events into the larger schema of an ongoing war (Babylon v. the Kingdom, etc.) )))
That’s a concept that’s pretty foreign to me, and I think to many UUs. My parents handled the same sort of issues by explaining that Christianity is an important part of the culture, and like any other part of the culture, sometimes society movies toward it and sometimes society criticizes it. They never saw it as a war at all.
I’d love to read a post sometime on the “Babylon v. the Kingdom” mindset you’re describing here. I’d like to better understand it.
CC
May 20th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
CC, well, there are lots of different interpretations of “Babylon” in the book of Revelation, but in general, Babylon functions as a symbol of a kingdom opposing god’s kingdom, throughout the Old and New Testament.
A lot of people think that Babylon refers to the Roman Empire, in power at the time John wrote Revelation. Puritans interpreted Babylon as representing the Roman Catholic Church. Some fundamentalists with a penchant for highly literal symbolic interpretation, have assigned various countries in the modern era to Babylon: Iraq, the European Union, even the United States.
Pretty much, though, it’s the idea that Satan has his own kingdom, which is continually warring against Christ’s kingdom and is kind of a counterfeit. It’s associated with wealth, power, and idolatry (esp. in the Old Testament). There’s an overview of the idea in Revelation and elsewhere at this website, though I haven’t looked closely enough at it to characterize the theology as amillenial, premil, etc, etc., though it seems at least Protestant and anti-Catholic.
I’m not saying that Shawn is necessarily taking up this particular idea (in fact, I don’t know how he interprets the symbol of Babylon), but that it’s pretty common to see Christianity as necessarily opposed by idolatrous forces which can align themselves with secular powers. Yet this idea in America is a strange bedfellow for the idea of “Christian America”, in which people apply Old Testament injunctions to Israel to the US (”If my people will humble themselves and return to me, etc.”) So there’s kind of a love-hate relationship with the government in popular Christian theology.
You can also see this decent overview at Wikipedia, though it’s not going to be a great source to understand the nuances of Christian interpretations of Revelation, which are legion…obscure New Testament pun intended.