"I No Longer Recognize Marriage"
Coming on the heels of the class I taught last night about equity and language, comes Tom Ackerman's newfound denial of the validity of marriage:
Yesterday I called a woman’s spouse her boyfriend.
She says, correcting me, “He’s my husband,”
“Oh,” I say, “I no longer recognize marriage.”
The impact is obvious.
I like this. Simple. Obvious. Brilliant.
I find it interesting that many of the same people who argue that civil union is an obvious solution for gay couples-or, like my stepmother, who wonder why, if people are going to be gay, they would want to be married*-bristle or question when someone assigns to them the very terms they seem to think are okay for other people.
If there's no difference between a marriage and a civil union, except maybe that a religious official officiates the first and a civic official officiates the second, then why doesn't everyone who isn't actively religious get civilly unioned? **
Could it be that the words do indeed symbolize different things? Could it be that the words do have the power to connote validity, acceptance, permanence, and even sanctity? That we react differently to the information that a person is married than to the information that they're cohabitating? That we assign different rights and privileges to people on the basis of their marital or non-marital status?
Maybe?
via onceupon
* Her version of logic goes something like this: Gay people are accepting that they're not like her and other non-gay people who constitute the mainstream. So if you're going to not do one mainstream thing, clearly you should accept that you're just outside the mainstream, and reject all of the tenets of the mainstream. I haven't yet asked her which side of the road gay people should drive on.)
** You would think that here in the socialist-libertarian republic of Canuckistania, where same-sex marriages are legally recognized, I wouldn't need to ask these questions. Yet there are still people here, like my parents, who question the validity of gay marriage, even as they accept the law.
Yesterday I called a woman’s spouse her boyfriend.
She says, correcting me, “He’s my husband,”
“Oh,” I say, “I no longer recognize marriage.”
The impact is obvious.
I like this. Simple. Obvious. Brilliant.
I find it interesting that many of the same people who argue that civil union is an obvious solution for gay couples-or, like my stepmother, who wonder why, if people are going to be gay, they would want to be married*-bristle or question when someone assigns to them the very terms they seem to think are okay for other people.
If there's no difference between a marriage and a civil union, except maybe that a religious official officiates the first and a civic official officiates the second, then why doesn't everyone who isn't actively religious get civilly unioned? **
Could it be that the words do indeed symbolize different things? Could it be that the words do have the power to connote validity, acceptance, permanence, and even sanctity? That we react differently to the information that a person is married than to the information that they're cohabitating? That we assign different rights and privileges to people on the basis of their marital or non-marital status?
Maybe?
via onceupon
* Her version of logic goes something like this: Gay people are accepting that they're not like her and other non-gay people who constitute the mainstream. So if you're going to not do one mainstream thing, clearly you should accept that you're just outside the mainstream, and reject all of the tenets of the mainstream. I haven't yet asked her which side of the road gay people should drive on.)
** You would think that here in the socialist-libertarian republic of Canuckistania, where same-sex marriages are legally recognized, I wouldn't need to ask these questions. Yet there are still people here, like my parents, who question the validity of gay marriage, even as they accept the law.