When gay Americans marry
Aug. 17th, 2004 10:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistToday I read an interesting take on the James McGreevey (ex-New Jersey governor who resigned because he got caught being homosexual) situation.
When the Lewinsky scandal broke, there was a lot of speculation about What Hillary Knew and When She Knew It. Many wondered if Bill and Hillary's marriage wasn't a loveless, sexless sham, a marriage of political convenience, a marriage about power, not love. Many concluded that Bill and Hillary must have had an "understanding" about outside sexual contact. For some, Hillary's decision to stay with Bill confirmed their suspicions about the existence of an understanding.
Watching Mrs McGreevey beam at her pretty-mouthed gay American husband, I found myself wondering aloud to my pretty-mouthed gay American boyfriend (I have a thing for pretty mouths, what can I say?) whether, like the Clintons before them, Mr and Mrs McGreevey might have had an understanding. Just as Hillary had to know Bill could be true to her only in his fashion, so it seems pretty clear that Mrs McGreevey had to know her husband was a homo all along.
If she did know that her husband was gay and didn't care, Mrs McGreevey isn't alone. It's impossible to know how many straight women are happily married to men that they know are gay - the census hasn't gotten around to that question yet - but they're out there. I know two married straight woman/gay man couples: in both cases, the men and women were friends who decided to marry after concluding that romantic love simply wasn't in the cards for them. Their marriages are loving compromises that have allowed all involved to settle down and start families. Defeat and resignation turned into something lasting and good. Is that the case with the McGreeveys?
Of course, for a high-profile couple like the McGreeveys, their marriage could be about something more than affection and resignation. Some people marry for status and power - another charge laid at the feet of Bill and Hillary by angry conservatives. Oddly enough, the obtaining and hoarding of status and power are the true hallmarks of "traditional marriage". If Mrs McGreevey married for those reasons, she's in good company.
But let's suppose that Mrs McGreevey didn't know. What if she looked so composed during the press conference because she downed a handful of Xanax a moment or two before it began? What if she, like most straight women who discover their husbands are gay, is devastated by the news? (Self-help titles available on Amazon include The Other Side of the Closet: The Coming-Out Crisis for Straight Spouses and Families and My Husband Is Gay: A Woman's Survival Guide.) If that's the case, I hope the religious right has the decency to send Mrs McGreevey - and every other woman out there who discovers she's married to a closeted gay man - an apology. For isn't duping poor straight women into marrying us the religious right's advice to gay men?
According to the Falwells, Robertsons and Santorums of the world, I'm supposed to think less about the South African Olympic men's swim team and more about hell (hot!) and eternity (long!). Then I'm supposed to go find a woman I can trick into marrying me. So what if the foundation of my marriage is a lie? So what if I have to struggle against my sexual and emotional needs all my adult life? Do what you gotta do, faggot: if you need to think about other men - like, say, all those nice boys on the South African Olympic swim team - in order to perform sexually for your wife and make some babies, Senator Santorum says go for it. And if the truth about my sexuality were to ever come out - if I were, say, threatened with a $50m lawsuit by my same-sex piece on the side - the poor woman I've lied to will feel humiliated and violated but, shit, no one ever said that marriage was all sweetness and light, right?
If it does nothing else, the McGreevey marriage highlights the chief absurdity of the arguments of those opposed to gay marriage: gay men can, in point of fact, get married - provided we marry women, duped or otherwise. The porousness of the sacred institution is remarkable: gay people are a threat to marriage, but gay people are encouraged to marry - indeed, we have married, under duress, for centuries, and the religious right would like us to continue to do so today - as long as our marriages are a sham. Even as an openly gay man, McGreevey can remain married to his wife and smoke all the pole he likes on the side. There ain't no law agin' it, Senator Santorum. But how does this state of affairs protect marriage from the homos, I wonder? If an openly gay man can get married as long as his marriage makes a mockery of what is the defining characteristic of modern marriage - romantic love - or if he marries simply because he despairs of finding a same-sex partner, what harm could possibly be done by opening marriage to the gay men who don't want to make a mockery of marriage or who can find a same-sex partner?
Gay Americans - the out variety - no doubt expect the newly out McGreevey to follow the standard high-profile/celebrity coming out story arc: write a book, get a boy/girlfriend, go on Oprah, make ass of self (see Greg Louganis, Ellen DeGeneres, Rosie O'Donnell, et al). Not me. I'm hoping for a different outcome this time. In my perverse heart of hearts, I hope Mr and Mrs McGreevey remain married. It might help Americans realise that people marry for lots of different reasons and that romantic love need not be the only reason - or even a reason - that two people decide to spend their lives together. And if the idea of a gay man married to a woman makes America uncomfortable, well, perhaps they should let us marry each other.
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because he got caught being a homosexual
Date: 2004-08-17 02:34 pm (UTC)Also, it pissed me off that Diane Sawyer (in a morning newscast the day after he resigned) chose to focus on the angst and heartbreak of women who have been married to gay men. Because, of course, the guys wife *couldn't* have known, and there's no *way* they could possibly have come to some kind of mutually agreeable arrangement in that arena. Bah.
Diane Sawyer has become a fluff-journalist. I even remember when she reported news occasionally. Bah, again.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-17 02:46 pm (UTC)Of course he was dishonest and corrupt. He's homosexual!
...the angst and heartbreak of women who have been married to gay men.
Well, it's not as if the gay men have any angst and heartbreak to worry about! They're super, thanks for asking.0
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-17 09:46 pm (UTC)thank you for posting about it.
Irony time
Date: 2004-08-18 08:45 am (UTC)