Heya

Miss me? LOL

I've been thinking. Yeah, I know that's dangerous and scary, but sometimes it happens despite my best intentions.

I read something awhile ago (here) written by a Lesbian blogger (posting under the name PortlyDyke which right away makes me a fan). The whole post is very interesting, but what really struck me was a section close to the end. The intro to it, for those of you who don't want to read the article, is that she was discussing a political measure curtailing gay and lesbian rights (Oregon 1988 Measure 8 to be exact) with a straight friend. One thing led to another, and then this:

So, I issued her and her husband a challenge (and I'll issue the same challenge to any straight coupled allies here who want to raise their awareness of LBGTQ issues):

Spend an entire week pretending that you're not a couple. Don't write a check from a joint bank account. Hide all the photographs in your home and office which would identify you as a couple. Take off your wedding rings. Touch each other, and talk to each other, in public, in ways that could only be interpreted as you being "friends". Refer to yourself only in the singular "I", never in the "we". When you go to work on Monday, if you spent time together on the weekend, include only information which would indicate that you went somewhere with a friend, rather than your life-mate. If someone comes to stay with you, sleep in separate beds. Go intentionally into the closet as a couple. For a week.
PortlyDyke from Shakesville

And what I always come back to when I think about trying it: Can't be done. For me, I know that I can't even begin to do that. After 18 years with WhatsHisFace, he's a part of me. Oh sure, I don't have any pictures up in the office, but I'd have to remove a ton of them from our home. I could take off the wedding ring, but there's a band there even with no ring (sorta like the tell-tale white ring when folks go to a bar and try to be single for a night). I could try the pronoun game, but it's become ingrained in me to say "we" and "us" when I'm talking. I'm not giving up the good bed and I don't care who would come over. And the capper is that I unconsciously touch him in non-friend ways all the time when we're in public (whooo, that sounds bad, doesn't it?). I mean to say, that I touch him on the hand, or arm, or put my arm around his shoulders and rub his back. Dead giveaways, whatever your gender/sexual identity makeup.

So what does that mean in the context of PortlyDyke's challenge? It means that I'm too old and tired to pretend. And if I'm too old and tired to even contemplate trying, what must it be like for couples who have lived like that for years? Decades even. It boggles my mind.

Why bring it up now? Well, today I read an article in the New York Times about the California Supreme Court decision to allow gay marriage. For the first time, my thought wasn't about how that affected other people. It was about me. How would I be affected if society didn't allow me to marry the person I love? Would it make things any different? I'd love to say no. I'd love to say that "official" recognition of our bond or lack thereof would have no impact on us. Some romantic crap about our love knowing no limit or allowing no outside interference. (I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.) But I haven't lived in a spun-sugar cloud world for many years. (You know, I'm not sure I've ever lived in cotton candy land. At least not when it came to me. Other people, sure. I'm all over thinking and hoping the best for other folks. That probably says something, huh? I'll just stuff that over here in this convenient pigeon hole and we'll be moving right along.)

Right. Where was I? Cotton candy land, not a resident. Check. I don't think that I'd love WhatsHisFace any less if we weren't sanctioned. Don't get me wrong. It's just that, well... There's a groove, a channel, if you will. When you go from even living together for multiple years, like we did, to marriage, things change. In a way, things become easier. I don't mean as a couple. We did experience a shift in how we thought once we were married. I don't know if it's the same for everyone, but there was a subtle and yet profound difference once the whole thing was said and done. No, I mean things changed in the day to day life. The wheels are greased when you're married. Everything is all figured out for you and you just fill out the paperwork. Sign here and now you get the stuff when the other one dies. Fill this form out and now the two of you get to choose which health plan is the best and both of you get it! Do this weird ritual and now you're assured rights and privileges when the other falls ill (including but not limited to: Police notification! Hospital access! Loving support from family/friends/neighbors/clergy!). Do this dance, and if (Creator forbid) things don't work out, you have entire libraries of law dictating the format for how things get split.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. The obvious, top of the head bennies. There's a whole host of other intangible social perks that just about any single person (single over the age of Get Over Yourself at any rate) can probably recite a whole lot better than I can.

If I had to do this dance without the approval of my family and society. Without the social and legal support structure in place. Well. I'm not sure it would survive. There's only so many cards stacked against you that a person can take. The stresses of all that would have to affect you. The small argument that blows into a full blown war because both of you are under pressure from everything around you telling you that you're just wrong. That small voice in your head, you know the one. The voice that remembers every insult ever hurled in your general direction and every constructive criticism and every disapproving glare. That voice. It would whisper in your ear at the worst possible times. It's hard enough to make it work with all of the support. Can anybody who's ever had a (failed or successful) marriage or committed relationship imagine what it would have been like if your entire support system (mother, father, siblings, best friend, mentor, pastor, etc) was dead-set against the whole thing?

Let's go back to that NYTimes article I mentioned before. Here's a quote from someone opposing gay marriage (a lawyer with Advocates for Faith and Freedom, which argued against same-sex marriage before the California court):

Mr. Tyler said he was especially troubled by the court’s drawing on a 1948 ruling that overturned a state ban on interracial marriages.

“Where is the court going to rationally limit marriage if it’s not a union between a male and female?” he said. “There is no evidence to establish that a homosexual lifestyle is an immutable characteristic such as race.”

Lovely, isn't it? He wrapped up the whole "What's next? People marrying donkeys? 50 year olds marrying toddlers? This makes it all legal!" argument with the "It's a personal choice! They should just change their minds and be normal!" all into a neat little two-sentence sound byte. The fun thing for me is that using his own logic, it implies that Mr. Tyler himself must be attracted to men. Yep, ol Lawyer for the Faith and Freedom set just told us that he gets his knickers in a twist for some hot male flesh. It's not an immutable characteristic of his that he's attracted to hott chix, right? I don't know about you, but that gives me such a subversive joy.

I have no conclusions. Well, maybe that's not true. I like boys (and WhatsHisFace in specific). The faithful would have me believe that's just a phase, but I'm holding pretty strong to the idea that it's just how I'm wired. I like all the little bennies that come with a socially accepted lifestyle, but I'd love to give everyone access to that club. It's no skin off my nose to let new members in - as a matter of fact, I may be naive, but I think it strengthens the whole institution to bolster the numbers a bit. Sort of a "you respect mine and I'll respect yours" thing.

Oh, and apparently, I have not lost my knack for long, rambling, half-coherent posts. Heh.

PS - Yes, I know that my grammar is atrocious. I know that I have weird sentence fragments all over the place, and not a few misspellings. Grit your teeth if you must. Whiteout your screen if you want. I'll even cheerfully accept hurled grammatical insults. Just please don't hold it against all my English teachers. They really tried. :D