Korean Job Discussion Forums

[daskalos]

I have a guilty secret. I don't really care if we, as a nation or species, call legal recognition of gay relationships "marriage" or "civil unions." What I care about is that whatever legal recognition we give allows me the same rights as marriage. Call it whatever you want to, if it gives me the legal right to visit my husband in the hospital, if it means I don't have to file a will for him to inherit whatever I pass on when I pass away, if it means he is presumed to own what I do, if it means our relationship can be the basis for my husband's immigration to the U.S., that he can be carried on my health insurance, well, people can call it "banana pudding" if they want to. I don't care.

I suppose the main reason I don't care is that I've never really been one of those people who insist that gay relationships are just like straight ones. I know, I know, there are many gay people and others quite heavily invested in this idea, and I suppose it makes some sense for those gay couples who go through whatever it is they choose to do to have children (adoption, implantation, one-off hetero-sex, turkey basters) to model their relationships on the opposite-sex paradigm, but that paradigm, in my experience, really has only limited application to gay relationships. If we can accept the idea that women and men are different, body and brain, then we must at least be open to the idea that long-term gay relationships have some fundamental difference to straight ones. Two male egos, two male libidos - how can that dynamic (or the lesbian one) resemble, too closely, man and woman? Gay people are different. Our unions are different. Are there commonalities with straight people and straight unions? Sure. But carrots and cattle have commonalities, too. Rocks and lettuce have commonalities, but we are allowed to think of carrots, cattle, rocks and lettuce differently, without needing to vilify any of them. The dynamics behind gay relationships (long and short term) are fundamentally different than straight ones.

In my experience (personal and anecdotal), gay relationships that model themselves on straight ones are the least functional, the least satisfying to everyone concerned. In my experience (personal and anecdotal), the glue that holds together long-term gay relationships is generally far stronger than with straight ones. Adoptions and turkey basters aside, there is no "for the good of the children" to consider. Until recently, there's been no legally binding contract that must be abrogated to get out of a gay relationship, yet throughout history, deeply abiding gay couples have endured, with little press or fanfare. In the last 40 years of openness and acceptance, the numbers of those relationships have multiplied drastically, but in my experience, gay relationships that endure are not so like straight marriages that I must insist on everyone calling them marriages.

So I don't care what you call my relationship, but I do care that it's currently, widely (though no longer universally) held in contempt, legally.

You may, however, have noticed that I refer to my husband as "my husband." That's the flip side of this, for me. You can call my relationship whatever you want to, the state can call it anything it feels comfortable with, the church can ignore it completely, but I call it a marriage, and if you don't like that, I don't care. In fact, I call it a marriage even in the absence of any legal recognition of it at all. I call it a marriage even though the lack of legal recognition of it is why it's been ten years since I have lived in the same house, the same country as my husband. In that time, my marriage has been conducted by way of mostly annual visits and daily phone calls.

And I have noticed that lots of people, either by way of principled belief or political expediency, are deeply invested in giving me my rights but calling those rights "banana pudding." I've noticed that there are lots of banana pudding-ers. And I wish the gay people fighting on the front lines of this battle were a little less concerned about langauge, a little less strident in their insistence that gay people are just like straight people, and a little more invested in practical realities.

That said, Bravo to Vermont, Iowa, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Holland, Belgium, Spain, Canada, South Africa and Mexico City. Bravo to Britain, Washington DC, and any of the states, nations and municipalities anywhere that have chosen to accord equal rights, even if they do see, as I do, a difference between gay people and straight people. There is nothing wrong with being different, and there is nothing wrong with calling different things by different names. But there is something wrong with making laws denying fundamental rights on the basis of those benign differences.

At any rate, I just needed to say all this, but as I said, it's my guilty little secret, so please don't report me to Gay HQ for not toeing the line that only by calling it Marriage is it Equal. (I find the "separate but equal" condemnation somewhat specious.) And yes, some day I do hope my husband and I are permitted to be legally pronounced "Banana Pudding." Or whatever. I'm just not all that particular about what you call it.

Das

[Gopher]

Daskalos: don't let them get you down. The Constitution is on your side -- whether America realizes it or not today.

[Bibbitybop]

The US government should not recognize religious arrangements.

Only civil unions certified by court appointed servants should qualify for legal benefits. Marriages by pastors/priests/churches should only qualify for benefits within the overseeing religious organization.

Problem solved.

[bacasper]

I agree that there is a qualitative difference between hetero- and homosexual relationships, and male and female one, too, for that matter. I haven't been able to understand why gays want to imitate straights in marriage. One would think they'd be able to come up with something better.

[Tiger Beer]

[Big_Bird]

I think one of the most horrible things must be when two people who have loved each other for years are separated due to illness - with the other not being able to visit a very sick lover in hospital - and hostile family members being able to veto visits. I've heard of some tragic examples. Kind of like the old days when common-law spouses were not legally recognised.

Living overseas must also be scary - when you can't get a dependents visa to keep your spouse in the country, for example.

[lithium]

Please direct questions about all things gay to Underwaterbob.

[Panda]

I hear ya.

[daskalos]

[Captain Corea]

On a personal level, I want nothing to do with homosexuality. I see it as having little to no place in my life.

That being said, I think it is abhorrent that many countries do not allow recognition of said unions. While I may want nothing to do with it, their union does not adversely affect me, and they should be allowed all the rights and privileges afforded to 'straight' couples.

Call it what you will... but it needs to be allowed.


Bibbitybop: I also agree with what you said.

[Underwaterbob]

[loggerhead007]

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

[Pluto]

OP, I hope you find these new data comforting:

[Pluto]

New Hampshire's libertarian cred increases: