THE LAST WORD
Anna Quindlen
The Same People
Scream, shout, jump up and down. No matter. The gay-marriage issue is over and done with. The upshot: love won.
During his sophomore year in high school, one of our sons mentioned at the dinner table that a classmate had come out of the closet. I can't even remember which of the two boys it was, and that's not only because my memory is now so bad that I can reread mystery novels and not recall whodunit. It's because the announcement was such a big nothing among the kids that it was only slightly more noteworthy than "pass the mac and cheese." Unlike my own high-school friends, these kids took gay for granted.
One of the most transformative social movements over our lifetime has been the battle for gay rights, and the key to its great success has been the grass-roots phenomenon of exploding stereotypes by simply saying, "Yes, I am." Each time the woman at the next desk or the guy down the street lets it be known that he or she is gay, it takes another brick out of the wall of division. Or, as Ellen DeGeneres told John McCain on her show recently, "We are all the same people, all of us."
That's what the California Supreme Court said when it ruled that gay couples should have the right to marry as a matter of basic equality. Before you could say "Jonathan and Andrew request the honour of your presence," opponents were suggesting that civilization would crash and burn if two guys could register at Pottery Barn and raise kids in a ranch house. All those wailing that gay marriage is an invention of amoral modernism might want to consider these lines from a Roman poem of the second century A.D.:
"The bearded Callistratus married the rugged Afer/Under the same law by which a woman takes a husband./Torches were carried before him, a bridal veil covered his face." And afterward everyone sat down to salmon, rice pilaf and chocolate mousse. Well, actually, I made up that last part just as surely as some people are making up the dire consequences of same-sex troth-plighting.
In the wake of the court's decision, those folks vowed to find a way to protect the sanctity of hetero marriage, that time-honored staple of sitcom mockery and savage custody fights. Polls showing opposition to gay marriage were proffered to prove that the court had overstepped its bounds, ignoring the fact that the most sacred business of judges is not to ratify the will of the majority but to protect the minority from its tyranny.
It is true that the California Supreme Court is something of a Scandinavia of jurisprudence, willing to get out front on social issues. But it's not really courts and legislatures that will settle this issue. It's the neighbors, friends and family members who have come out and made the political personal—and lovable. Jennifer? Smart, funny Jennifer? Of course she should be able to marry Anne. They're perfect together.
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Member Comments
Posted By: redheadranting @ 07/31/2008 10:40:13 PM
Comment: I write a blog about growing up in a mixed orientation marriage, http://kidsofqueers.blogspot.com/, and all the hurt that each family member endured. No child should have to grow up that way. As someone said, and I can't remember who, "if you would allow us to marry each other we'd stop marrying heterosexuals"
It's about time this happened.
Posted By: narnold @ 07/11/2008 2:49:35 PM
Comment: I'm going to try to speak on behalf of many of us. I realize, from perusing the comments below, that I will be open to harsh criticism, but I remind any about to do that in so doing that they are engaging in the very same behavior they are flatly claiming to condemn - said behavior being intolerance.
Quindlen and others call for love and tolerance, and who can disagree with that? Of course gays and lesbians need to be accepted as people. However, it is a principle of life in general and certainly is part of any moral tradition that one need not accept a person's behavior to accept them as people. Otherwise, we would be absolutely devoid of any way of saying that any action - say child molestation - was wrong or bad. I think what many people object to is not gays per se, but the aggressive way in which many try to put a gay relationship on the same level with marriage. Intolerant, you say? Perhaps, if sex were just for kicks - then anything would do, and wouldn't even have to be mammalian, as another commented. But to hold this view requires a person to blind himself to the beauty of sexual reproduction and to the complementarity of the sexes. What I'm getting at is that moral considerations aside, it's absolutely ridiculous to say that homosexual love is in some way the equivalent of marriage. To say it is is to water down marriage. There are those of us left that realize the importance of marriages in society, and some of us tend to react rather strongly when that very foundational belief is attacked.
To recap: yes, gays need love, not hate, from us. But we need not pretend that their relationships are marriages. And therein lies the challenge - you say society needs to accept gays; remember that gays also need to reciprocate that acceptance to those who disagree with them. Difficult? Of course! But not impossible.
Posted By: ericdrexil @ 07/04/2008 1:50:04 PM
Comment: When I was about 12 years old I first realized it. It was hard to deal with but many of my friends were coming to the same conclusion about themselves. I was an omnisexual. Yes, its true. We realized what society expected of us. We knew it was wrong. We chose to pursue our feelings. Sex: was for all. Sex, was indeed for all who would hold still in our presence, away from bothersome crowds. Females first but most anything would do. Didn't even have to be a mammal. We didn't brag about it. Often we laughed about it , and at each other. I guess you would have called us perverts. That name didn't bother us. We were in love....with sex.