Thanks, But No Thanks

Except that now we do have husbands, and I’m having a little bit of trouble accepting that. You could argue I’m getting tangled up in semantics, but semantics have always been at the root of the same-sex marriage movement — getting access to that word, "marriage," because we didn’t want it to be called something else, because there’s no such thing as separate-but-equal. That’s what we’ve always said. From the beginning, this struggle has been premised on two chief desires — equal legal protection, and equal social recognition — and we said we couldn’t get the social recognition with civil unions, because civil unions feel like "marriage lite."

I feel differently. I don’t think civil unions feel like marriage lite because I don’t think they feel like marriage at all, and that’s what I like about them. I never want to marry my boyfriend, but I might want to get civil unioned. I might want to recognize our bond with an institution that’s not entrenched in ancient rules and traditions. And yes, part of it is about the language: a civil union. It sounds so pure and efficient and progressive and European and, I don’t know, civil. Like a sensible foreign car, the 2008 Civil Union, from Acura.

It sounds pretty gay, actually, and I like that. It also has no religious connotations whatsoever. I was raised in an essentially atheist household, and have at least once heard my dad utter the phrase, "Fuck the Bible." When I was in grade school, many of my friends went to church on Sundays, and being ten, I wanted to do what my friends were doing. At my request, my mother twice took me to the Episcopalian mass at the church downtown. But after two consecutive Sundays of being dressed in a suit and forced to listen to a grownup lecture me, I told my mom I thought church was weird. "That’s why we don’t go," she replied.

And that’s why I don’t want to get married — because it feels weird, and I can’t help that. Even if I bypassed the church and picked up my marriage certificate at City Hall, it would still feel like a religious indoctrination. Today, the two institutions are far too enmeshed to separate, and I can’t make the biggest decision of a partnered person’s life just because it’s considered good for the cause.

What’s more, even today, children are a tacit component of marriage. A childless marriage is regarded as less stable and vaguely scandalous, possibly involving key parties. Many lifelong gay couples never want to have children, and I’m pretty sure that’s the camp I’m in. I’d rather not be a part of a club that assumes its male members are future father figures, because I don’t see myself that way.

I’ll admit, I’m embarrassed to find myself essentially agreeing with the social conservatives on this: marriage doesn’t fit my relationship, because my relationship is composed of two dudes. If I weren’t gay, I might be more open to religion. If I were straight, I might be in a relationship where children were likely. Our definition of monogamy might not have the flexibility that it does. Though such unconventional marriages aren’t unheard of, they’re still much more the exception than the rule. I’d prefer an institution where the rules are still unwritten, a post-millennial bond with flexibility its main trapping.

Let me give you a hypothetical. What if, from the get-go, the gay-rights movement’s goal had been to get civil unions? What if we made this choice not because we thought we didn’t deserve marriage, but because we didn’t think it was the right fit? Would we be less fixated on having access to that word if we were the ones rejecting it, rather than feeling like it’s being dangled just out of our reach?

At this point, the debate is a bit academic. It appears that civil unions will become the laserdiscs of legal relationships, a fleeting stopgap until we’ve completed the transition to what we’ve decided is better. Once same-sex marriage is everywhere, civil unions will disappear for good, and for gay couples who want to go legal, marriage will be the sole option. It’s a hell of a step up from no recognition whatsoever, but a square peg for some of us, nonetheless.  n°

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Will Doig writes for all sorts of fabulous and exciting magazines. He was
raised in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Today he lives in Brooklyn.