When I was sixteen, I knew for certain that I would never get married. I had just broken up with my boyfriend of two years, I was playing music, I was getting good grades, and, in my mind, I was on my way to becoming a very successful career woman. I couldn’t be bothered with marriage. I guess I hadn’t really seen any successful marriages when I was growing up, and, I was losing interest in guys. Two years later, when I came out of the closet, I reconfirmed this. I knew I would never be with a man, so, duh, I would never be married. Very simple.
I believe in long-term, monogamous relationships. In fact, that is the only thing I am interested in. I want the family, the home, the life—I just don’t want to be married to get it. Marriage is crumbling as we speak. The ugly truth about marriage has been obfuscated in the rhetoric of THE DESTRUCTION OF THE AMERICAN FAMILY. Oh, please. The American family is not being destroyed because some gay people are crazy enough to want to get married; it’s being destroyed because marriage kinda doesn’t work anymore (for the most part—I know there are exceptions, people).
Let’s face it, in the 1950s, people weren’t happier in marriage, they just didn’t complain about it. Divorce has long been taboo because of religion or social status, but those restrictions have been waning over the last fifty years—even Catholics get divorced now. People get divorced and remarried all the time without fearing loss of reputation or rights. Back then, there wasn’t divorce because people didn’t speak up about their misery. Now, they can, and they do. The destruction of the American family? For real—it never was all that great in the first place.
I don’t like talking about gay marriage. I can’t for the life of me figure out why gay people would want to participate in that mess. I don’t want some piece of paper binding me to the debt of my partner. I don’t want to change my name. I don’t want to have to go through the legal system to get my Indigo Girls’ CDs back if I break up with someone. I don’t want the government involved in my relationship at all—I can screw it up just fine on my own.
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