Sonja Turbot: Existential Investigator, Page 31
You know, until this past week I didn’t think homophobia was a proper phobia. In America there’s a whole lot of fear coming out over the prospect of gay marriage being legalized. Irrational fear. Crazy fear. Get-these-spiders-off-of-me fear. The type of fear that would normally call for therapy and sedatives.
As a Canadian, I’m kind of proud that legalizing gay marriage wasn’t such a big deal in our country. I say “kind of” because I know it’s not that Canadians are better people than Americans are, it’s just that we’re more laid back. Yeah, sure, we have some types who would like to deny gay people their rights, but to do that they’d have to go organize a demonstration and write up a bill and have you seen how much snow we’ve got outside? It’s just too much bother to go meddling in everyone else’s lives. Sometimes, apathy is the greatest tool that social justice has.
Most of the arguments against gay marriage centre around the sanctity of “traditional marriage”. If you allow gay marriage you’re destroying the institution of “traditional marriage”, they say. Civilization falls not long afterwards. Bull. Traditional marriage is not an institution which is in danger of disappearing. It’s an institution which has already been wiped out, and for the most part that’s a good thing.
Allow me to explain. Back in the old days, when you hit the proper age you got married. To whom? To whoever was available. Maybe your parents could arrange a partner, or maybe your church. Maybe you’d have to sail around the bay for weeks looking for someone who wasn’t too closely related. In any case, you didn’t have a whole lot of choice in the matter. You didn’t wait for your one true love because by the time you found them they’d already be married to someone else. In a best case scenario you’d be partnered with someone you actually liked. In an adequate case scenario you’d be partnered with someone who wouldn’t make you consider suicide more than once or twice a year.
There was a clear division of labor in those days. The man would go fishing, do the carpentry and heavy lifting. The woman would cook the food, make the clothes, and rear the children. The children, for their part, would start working as soon as they were able. Marriage wasn’t about love or companionship, it was all about survival. Your only options were to get married when you could, or risk starving to death in the winter. Now that I think about it, pretty much everything was about survival back then.
If I were a gay man living in pre-industrial Newfoundland, my idea bride might very well be a lesbian woman. That way, I’d only need to have sex once or twice a year and wouldn’t need to feel guilty about it. Maybe on our silver wedding anniversary I could shave my chest and she’d pretend I was Mary Walsh… ahem. Back to the subject at hand.
This is traditional marriage. It was sexist, it was unfair, and we enjoyed it… just not enough to keep on doing it. These days most people marry for love, which is fine, though if you want to marry for money or some other reason there’s no law preventing you from doing so. It’s important for people to remember their traditions, to know where they came from, and one of the reasons is so we can stop making the same stupid mistakes we made in the past.
Edit- I’ve edited this post a bit in response to comments from my mother. The original implied that religious people in general were against gay marriage, while in fact in Canada at least many religious people were among those supporting gay marriage (the United Church, the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto, and at least certain members of the Anglican Church to name a few. Go Georgies!). I also was a bit unclear on the historical context of marriage in Newfoundland, which I hope has been cleared up in this version. Everything written here is my own opinion and not necessarily the opinion of any of my fictional characters.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:29 am
“This is traditional marriage.”
THIS IS SPARTAAAA!
Which, when you think about it, is actually topically, in a tangential sort of way.
Also, as a Massachusetts resident, I can say that legalizing gay marriage has yet to cause the fall of civilization in these parts.
May 6th, 2009 at 9:02 am
I’m pretty sure the only means of treatment for homophobia is exposure therapy.