[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: Imperfect Unions

Sun Aug 15 13:10:53 PDT 2004

The article below from NYTimes.com 
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Imperfect Unions

August 15, 2004
 By JONATHAN RAUCH 

Washington - What happened to Governor McGreevey - that is,
James E. McGreevey, the Democratic governor of New Jersey,
who announced his resignation on Thursday because he was
secretly gay and had "shamefully" conducted an extramarital
affair - was strange, to say the least. Pundits wondered
whether there would be broader ramifications for gay civil
rights, same-sex marriage or American politics. I doubt it.
A rich and seemingly unique concatenation of homosexuality,
adultery, suspicions of political featherbedding, and
rumors of extortion and sexual harassment made the
McGreevey scandal look like an aberration. 

What happened to Mr. McGreevey - the man, not the governor
- was not strange at all. It was familiar to almost every
gay American of Mr. McGreevey's generation. Marriage, not
homosexuality, lies at the heart of it. 

Mr. McGreevey is 47. I am 44. We have in common being among
the early members of the post-Stonewall generation. We came
of age in the 1970's, when overt expressions of anti-gay
animus were becoming unacceptable in polite company. The
worst of official repression was past. Vice-squad raids and
scandalous arrests and federal witch hunts were not central
fears in our lives. There was still plenty of unofficial
discrimination and ugly and ignorant rhetoric, and we all
feared the low-grade terrorism known as gay-bashing. But on
the whole we were free, as no previous generation had been,
to get on with our lives. 

There was one thing, however, we knew we could never aspire
to do, at least not as homosexuals. We could not marry. 

By that I mean not just that gay couples could not marry.
Self-acknowledged gay people - coupled or single, adult or
adolescent, open or closeted - also could not hope to
marry. The very concept of same-sex marriage had yet to
surface in public debate. We grew up taking for granted
that to be homosexual was to be alienated and isolated, not
just for now but for life, from the culture of marriage and
all the blessings it brings. 

Social-science research has established beyond reasonable
doubt that marriage, on average, makes people healthier,
happier and financially better off. More than that,
however, the prospect of marriage shapes our lives from the
first crush, the first date, the first kiss. Even for
people who do not eventually choose to marry, the prospect
of marriage provides a destination for love and the
expectation of a stable home in a welcoming community. 

The gay-marriage debate is often conducted as if the whole
issue were providing spousal health insurance and Social
Security survivors' benefits for existing same-sex couples.
All of that matters, but more important, and often
overlooked, is the way in which alienation from marriage
twists and damages gay souls. In my own case, I did not
understand and acknowledge my homosexuality until well into
adulthood, but I somehow understood even as a young boy
that I would probably never marry. (Children understand
marriage long before they understand sex or sexuality.) I
coped by struggling for years to suppress every sexual and
romantic urge. I convinced myself that I could never love
anybody, until the strain of denial became too much to
bear. 

Others coped differently. Some threw themselves into
rebellion against marriage and the bourgeois norms it
seemed to represent. Some, to their credit, built firmly
coupled gay lives without the social support and investment
that marriage brings. And some, determined to lead "normal"
lives (meaning, largely, married lives), married. 

At what point Mr. McGreevey realized and acknowledged he
was gay I don't know. I do know that many gay husbands
begin by denying and end by deceiving. Perhaps that was so
in his case. 

Opponents of same-sex marriage sometimes insist that gays
can marry. Marriage, they say, isn't all about sex. It can
be about an abstinent, selfless love. Well, as Benjamin
Franklin said, where there is marriage without love there
will be love without marriage. I'm always startled when
some of the same people who say that gays are too
promiscuous and irresponsible to marry turn around and urge
us into marriages that practically beg to end in adultery
and recklessness. 

For most human beings, the urge to find and marry one's
other half is elemental. It is central to what most people
regard as the good life. Gay people's lives are damaged
when that aspiration is quashed, of course. Mr. McGreevey
can probably attest to that. But so are the lives of
spouses, of children. Mr. McGreevey can probably attest to
that, too. 

The country is still making up its mind about same-sex
marriage. Massachusetts has it. Most states have
pre-emptively banned it. On Thursday, the California
Supreme Court invalidated about 4,000 same-sex marriages
performed by the city of San Francisco, but gay-marriage
advocates hope that this is a temporary setback. Through
litigation now working its way through the system,
California's highest court may yet overturn the state's
gay-marriage ban. 

The McGreevey debacle suggests why all Americans, gay and
straight alike, have a stake in universalizing marriage.
The greatest promise of same-sex marriage is not the
tangible improvement it may bring to today's committed gay
couples, but its potential to reinforce the message that
marriage is the gold standard for human relationships: that
adults and children and gays and straights and society and
souls all flourish best when love, sex and marriage go
together. Nothing will ever make the discovery of
homosexual longings easy for a young person. But
homosexuality need not mean growing up, as Jim McGreevey
and I and many others did, torn between marriage and love. 

Jonathan Rauch is the author of "Gay Marriage: Why It Is
Good for Gays, Good for Straights and Good for America." 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/15/opinion/15rauch.html?ex=1093600653&ei=1&en=ca4f23b9a888d8a2

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