Have you ever heard of Marc Goodwin and Mikhail Gallatinov?
I suspect not. Because these gentlemen are both currently serving life sentences for murder at Full Sutton Prison, in Britain. Last year they became the first men to marry one another inside the British penal system.
According to news accounts, the couple were housed in separate wings of the jail, but had been meeting regularly for assignations in the prison library. (Reading can open up whole new worlds!) They eventually managed to get themselves moved to the same wing–though in separate cells–so that they could see each other more regularly. Once they decided to tie the knot, they wrote their own vows for a ceremony performed in the—I kid you not—children’s play alcove in the visitor’s center.
I mention all of this because the story of Goodwin and Gallatinov causes some trouble for our prevailing orthodoxies on sexuality and the law.
The liberal, albeit non-scientific, consensus these days is that sexuality is immutable. Which is to say, that progressive orthodoxy insists that people cannot change their sexual preferences. However they might be inclined, they were “born that way.”
What makes Goodwin and Gallatinov so interesting is that while they have just become partners in the first same-sex marriage inside a British prison, the reason they were each in jail in the first place were hate crimes targeting homosexuals. Here’s how the Guardian put it:
So which is it? Could the homophobic murders have been committed by gay men—in which case, they weren’t really “homophobic,” then, were they? Or did Goodwin and Gallatinov’s sexuality evolve in prison? In which case, maybe people aren’t simply “born this way.” And while we’re at it, if same-sex marriage is broadened to include even prison inmates, then why have gender-segregated prisons in the first place? Doesn’t the prospect of gay inmates having daily contact with their spouses cause a disparate impact on heterosexual inmates?
This sort of confusion is where the sexuality and gender revolution of the last twenty years leads. And it’s only going to get worse.
