Figuring Out the Opposition

Sigh. Gay marriage. Where to begin? Despite whatever one might glean from my notes here (ie, that beyond poop, I err on the side of prude), I have not really had strong feelings about gay marriage. Obviously, as a right, yes, gays should be able to marry, I want it to become legal, I won’t do anything to stand in its way, and if you let me know where the rally is happening, I will probably show up. But as one whose religious experiences have all happened during yoga classes, the whole God-aspect of marriage doesn’t matter much to me. It’s seemed that the gay marriage debates and initiatives provided a great opportunity for marriage reform, to take a big-picture look at how people live now, and not just gays and lesbians—that by focusing on getting gays into the club, we’re passing up an opportunity to reassess and redefine our little unions and how they integrate into our little societies. But whatever. I am probably wrong and/or confused and/or missing the point.

But some things still make me irate, and one of the reasons I get red-faced and high-pitched when one brings up gay marriage is because of the homophobia it seems to inspire. I went to North Carolina last week because one of my mom’s best friends, Leslie, and her family were staying with my Dad for a few days. Leslie holds a very special place in the trajectory of my gay life (and for many other non-gay reasons, too). My mom may or may not have come to terms with my being gay, but the friends she chose, almost all of them, certainly did. And Leslie, she lived in New York for eight years, which was enough for me to be obsessed with her, and on top of that, she was/is an avid theatergoer, and used to send me Playbills and long letters written on the back of junk mail and scratch paper describing the shows she had seen.

So I shared a car with Leslie and her three kids (who are all amazing, of course) and we drove to Asheville and we got to talking about gay marriage. As a California resident, she saw the ugly underbelly more up-close than me, even though everything she told me about Prop 8—the Mormons, the misinformation, the touchy “race” issue, the propaganda—I had already read about. We expressed bafflement at how something like gay marriage can be such a hot-button issue, when the only people whose lives will be affected are those who are gay and who wish to be married. This is something I think about a lot; like, with civil rights—and I know that this is sometimes a dangerous comparison to make—at least in spite of the moral wrongness of racism, I can see where the bigots are coming from even though it is not right because some assholes only see things in economic terms. But with gays getting married? How can you oppose it for any reason except for you-are-a-homophobe? Then she told me about a family member, and elderly woman who has two gay grandchildren and whom, “even though [I] know [I] am probably making a mistake,” could not bring herself to vote no for Prop 8. My heart started beating a little faster and I got fidgety, but I thought: This is a generational thing, these people just need to die off, I’ll let it pass. But then she told me about someone else, a guy her age (she’s middle aged, a step down generationally from the woman described above), who lives in a big, progressive, urban center, who has a gay nephew he’s fairly close with, and who also voted in favor of it. He also “just couldn’t do it.”

What in the hell? And: For shame! Doesn’t this contradict everything we’ve ever believed about being gay and being out and how the unification of gays and non-gays comes to establish itself? If having gay people whom you love and respect in your life does not endear you to the idea that they should be given access to the troubling institution of marriage, then what will? What I am hoping is that these are two incidental, isolated cases; but the fact that Prop 8 passed probably means that there is a congealed trend here beneath the surface.

Is it anything more than “love the sinner, hate the sin” mumbo-jumbo? Leslie did tell me that both of these people are Catholics. When I first heard that phrase—from a very practicing Methodist at my Methodist college in Oregon but who so enjoyed having '80s dance parties in her dorm room that she couldn’t not have a few of us around, and found that to her surprise she loved every second of it—it sounded a lot like “separate but equal” and seemed hugely hypocritical and almost voodoo-fetishey. And, I mean—what kind of gay person is going to tolerate that? (This girl cited a person at her church who had done some “gay acts” but who thought it was a problem and who went to church and was very active and vocal about how hard he was working on fixing himself; she thought this guy was “noble.” Needless to say, that was the end of my friendship with her.) I think what’s also happening is the “icky factor”: Dudes doing it? Ick! While sometimes people side with their faith, it doesn’t seem like the issue of right or wrong is always the problem—the two people Leslie mentioned both said they “just couldn’t do it,” indicating that there is an emotional, logic-defying thing happening in their hearts and brains.

See, I am trying to figure out what’s up with the opposition. Because I don’t think that my getting irate or haughty or banishing such naysayers from my life is helping the cause. How do we combat this kind of stuff with compassion? Is there a dialogue that is not happening? Do we need to be more patient? Do we need to re-frame (or re-nudge [4th paragraph down]) the issue?