The homosexual community is angry in California. It feels betrayed by blacks who came out in droves to vote for Barack Obama and while at this task voted for Proposition 8, against gay marriage. Blacks resent that homosexuals equate gay rights with civil rights. The civil rights movement sprang from the belly of the black church where conservative Christian theology often cavils against the sin of homosexuality. Blacks may vote for liberal Democrats, but a majority of them are not willing to embrace the homosexual way of life as normal or give homosexuals a pass into the kingdom of the married.
Marriage has a long history across the globe. It is rooted in tradition and religion. It is a conservative concept, a stabilizing force, once considered essential for reining in the wandering tendencies of men, giving women and children security and establishing the family as the fundamental unit of society. Over the years, it has been disparaged by the avant-garde as a boring and confining invention for two people in love.
In modern societies, particularly in the West, young men and women have dissolved old societal taboos by living together, having children out of wedlock, moving in and out of relationships, swapping partners and generally consigning marriage to the status of an anachronism or an afterthought.
While a lot of young heterosexuals see marriage and commitment as traps and have a rather blase attitude about the virtues of marriage or its legal benefits, many homosexuals, at this time, seem to desire nothing more than to be married.
They want to marry, they say, for spousal benefits and rights like Social Security, pensions, inheritances, green cards, citizenship, Medicare, joint filing of income taxes, hospital visitations, end of life decisions, shared child custody, family leave and health insurance. But this is only partly true. Homosexuals also seek validation, vindication and societal acceptance through the traditional institution of marriage. Many adopt children or are foster parents; science can help them have their own children, and they see no reason why these children should be denied the legitimacy and security of belonging to married parents.
Religious heterosexuals are particularly affronted by this reasoning. To them marriage is a workable institution only if it is allowed to occur between a man and a woman such that each child can have a mother and a father. Instinctively recoiling against homosexuality as an unnatural lifestyle, these traditionalists argue if marriage can be between two men or two women, it can be between groups of three or more of any gender thus opening it to future challenges from various parties, weakening it over time and throwing society into chaos.
All of this back and forth is steeped in irony. Homosexuals, often nonconformist in their thinking, want to embrace the conventions of marriage. Heterosexuals, at least some, who have done as much as possible to eviscerate marriage, are not thrilled that homosexuals think enough about commitment to want to marry.
Homosexuals eventually will win this fight, state by state, because young heterosexuals black, white, Asian and Hispanic are not passionate about holding a monopoly on marriage.
After that, the day may not be far off when homosexuals and heterosexuals march together against those demanding they want to marry three or more partners at a time. “Homosexuals stodgy and stout defenders of marriage, denying polygamists their right to marriage equality?” you ask. By this time they could be devoted to marriage while divorcing like crazy, living in sin or killing each other over child custody. Why not? Stranger things keep happening around us all the time.
Usha Nellore is a writer living in Bel Air. Reach her at [email protected].
