Take *that*, assholes

September 21, 2015 11:07 PM

A Modest Proposal - David Sedaris talks about the pros and cons of getting hitched
posted by a lungful of dragon (29 comments total)

While I often dreamed of making a life with another man, I never extended the fantasy to marriage, or even to civil partnerships, which became legal in France in 1999, shortly after Hugh and I moved to Paris. We’d been together for eight years by that point, and though I didn’t want to break up or look for anyone else, I didn’t need the government to validate my relationship. I felt the same way when a handful of American states legalized same-sex marriage, only more so: I didn’t need a government or a church giving me its blessing. The whole thing felt like a step down to me. From the dawn of time, the one irrefutably good thing about gay men and lesbians was that we didn’t force people to sit through our weddings.

I always assumed I'd be in a sham (but fun!) marriage to a lady to ensure protection of certain assets and insurance claims while causally adopting some other adult male to look after my things en I'm gone. I was 15 when I figured this plan out. it was all the Gore Vidal and Isherwood I was reading.

But I'm not a romantic person, like Sedaris, I never assumed I'd would get/be allowed to get married so when it happened I just went ..oh okay this is okay. My reception was in a Starbucks while I called my Mom to tell her what happened. We've had no parties and changed no names.

I got married cause I wanted the benefits and protections afforded to straight people. My main reaction to the supreme court decision was relief that it made my accountant's life easier and made making some crazy ass adult adoption inheritance plan unnecessary and the insurance would be easier and not having to Angily be denied visiting hours access in the histology caused not family.

Oh and pension funds that's also important.
posted by The Whelk at 12:16 AM on September 22, 2015 [41 favorites]

(And to be quite frank if someone after a multi decade relationship said they wouldn't marry me to make all our finances more reasonable I'd probably stab them in the neck with a serving fork but apparently I'm not relatable )
posted by The Whelk at 12:20 AM on September 22, 2015 [31 favorites]

It's funny to me. I'm 34 and I just got married to the guy I've been with since I was 22. Neither of us seemed to think it was a big romantic thing, just like Sedaris. We went to the courthouse, got the application, went back the next day to get the license, then had a notary public friend over for dinner to sign it. We've had no party and are slowly being goaded by friends and family into accepting that we might need one (for them, clearly, not us). I've never imagined my wedding since I never imagined I'd get to have one, after growing up in Alabama.

BUT! I know so many younger gay guys who are SO DAMN EXCITED to get married to their guy and they can't wait to do the whole big shebang. I'm so happy these guys get to do it and be thrilled about it. I'm over here figuring out how much we'll save on estate taxes and making sure I have the license around in case either of us is hospitalized. These kids are getting to be romantic. There are all these awesome proposal pictures all over Facebook, just like there was back in my 20s with my straight friends (ok, so not necessarily over Facebook, but there were plenty of awesome proposal stories). Whether or not these kids are buying into the patriarchal status quo (or whatever negative vibe some people get from marriage), they're HAPPY. That right there is the best part of marriage equality. People get to do what makes them happy. And that's what's important.
posted by This Guy at 4:57 AM on September 22, 2015 [22 favorites]

It's not so much that I want to have a wedding- it's that I've been to so many boring, tacky, horrible weddings that I just want the opportunity to show heterosexual people what amateurs they are at their own institutions.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 5:32 AM on September 22, 2015 [35 favorites]

Back a decade ago, my SO and I figured it was people like us living in sinful common law that were actually destroying marriage. So we briefly considered incorporating as a limited partnership complete with powerpoint presentation and shrimp bar as a political statement.

That timing for that passed by and we never did it.
posted by clvrmnky at 5:48 AM on September 22, 2015 [11 favorites]

The battle for gay marriage was, in essence, the fight to be as square as straight people, to say things like “My husband tells me that the new Spicy Chipotle Burger they’ve got at Bennigan’s is awesome,” and “Here it is, Valentine’s Day less than a week behind us, and already my wife is flying our Easter flag!”

That is an irony lost on the people opposing same sex marriage. In the battle between "living in sin" and boring old marriage, marriage won. Hands down. Gays and lesbians are asking for marriage, demanding it as a right. What better endorsement can there be for traditional marriage?

Everyone is a winner.

Of course, as Sedaris observes, the prize for same sex couples is most likely to be the same banality that three out of five straight couples can't wait to escape, but that's another sort of irony.
posted by three blind mice at 5:50 AM on September 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

Good luck showing the world how not tacky and fabulous your wedding is going to be.

Being gay doesn't /really/ give you more taste, or the ability to glam up a tasteless, souless institution.

Get married because you want to and have the wedding you want. Accept that it may not be the most stylish thing you have ever done, and may appear dated and goofy 5 minutes from now.
posted by clvrmnky at 5:58 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

That was a joke, clvrmnky. To harvest MetaFilter points. Actually my partner and I plan to elope and then have a small reception for family and close friends.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 6:13 AM on September 22, 2015 [15 favorites]

this is kind of making me feel bad about never wanting to get married despite being in a ("straight", ftr) monogamous long-term relationship and intending to do that for, like, forever. the idea of getting married just kind of makes me feel sick for some reason, I don't even know why. for some reason civil unions/domestic partnerships are less horrible for me but Ohio requires a marriage certificate for benefits. guess I gotta finally move to Washington?
posted by nogoodverybad at 6:23 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

I have a strong suspicion that marriage gets the weird associations it does because the only parts we generally see are the awkward social performances like weddings and Valentine's Day ridiculousness. There are plenty of couples, gay and straight, who mostly get married for breathtakingly bland reasons like health insurance and pension benefits, even if they still go through the whole white wedding absurdity.

My husband and I happily lived in sin for many years until the potential of a huge international move started to loom over us. We got married and even had a big party for it, but we agree that nothing much has changed in our relationship aside from our tax status and the absurd way people treat me for being a wife instead of a girlfriend. That said, I do think being married has made us pretty damn happy, largely because it has provided peace of mind from a legal and financial standpoint and has simplified a huge amount of paperwork.

No couple should ever feel like they must get married, but they should have that choice, even if their reasons for making it are their own.
posted by Diagonalize at 6:41 AM on September 22, 2015 [4 favorites]

I think it was actually Dave Berry who pointed this out (which has me doing an interesting Dave Berry / David Sedaris compare and contrast exercise in my head right now) but...

The point of marriage is, essentially, to make a public promise to stay together. With all your friends and family as witnesses, and an official record so that nobody can ever deny it. You said you would stay. You promised. In front of everyone.

So then, if you ever decide to leave that person you promised to stay with, it's awkward and embarrassing and you have to explain to everyone what happened. The fact that the promise to stay was so public adds a little extra deterrent to leaving, a little extra security over and above the private promises. A little accountability.

Also, it proves that there is no guilt or shame associated with the relationship. "I am sleeping with this person and I don't care who knows it," a marriage license says. The kind of relationship where you can say that tends to be more secure and more comfortable than the kind of relationship you have to hide.

And then if you wear rings, it's even more public, a silent advertisement of the facts that 1) "I'm sleeping with someone already and 2) "I promised never to leave them" to every stranger who sees you.

Once Dave Berry explained it that way, I felt like I understood the value of marriage (beyond the financial and administrative details) much better, both for myself and for the people to whom it was, at that time, denied.

Maybe Dave Berry and David Sedaris should have a talk. I am very curious how that would go.
posted by OnceUponATime at 8:06 AM on September 22, 2015 [7 favorites]

Yep, that's right, nice normal marriages. Completely average and square and suburban, dull really! Just like you! That's us gays, mm hmmm. You should probably just ignore us, after all, seeing as we're all nice normal married boring couples yessiree.
posted by The Whelk at 8:33 AM on September 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

That's the thing. When I was finally able to get married, my straight best friend (who was recently divorced at the time) said something to the effect of "now it'll be hard for you if you break up". As if, the day before we signed that piece of paper, it would have been easy for me to just decide to walk away. At that point I had to wonder what he thought our relationship actually was. I mean, I married him because I love him and want to be with him forever. If anything happened to our relationship I'd be pretty devastated. There's no easy out for me, and there hasn't been for a very long time.

I think the "There is no guilt or shame associated with the relationship" is a really weird way to view marriage. Even as a gay guy that came up around ironclad closets that were nothing other than guilt or shame.
posted by This Guy at 8:35 AM on September 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

I am straight, but I dated someone from work. We were quite furtive about it for a while, and then when we went public it was super awkward with our co-workers for another while. But once we were married, it was like "Yup, we're together. Want to make something of it? I didn't think so." Felt good. That's what I mean about the No Shame thing.
posted by OnceUponATime at 8:39 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

(We're also most definitely a boring old married couple. And I love it. We get home from work and cook dinner with each other. We go out for dinner and drinks on weekends then...go home and go to bed. It's amazing how nice boring can be)
posted by This Guy at 8:40 AM on September 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

"The point of marriage" seems like it can be what the people in your marriage define it to be? Maybe. I don't know. I'm in a relationship consisting of two queer people who the world reads as heterosexual, and we've skipped marriage thus far for a lot of reasons. One of the strongest of those reasons was my unabating fury about that fact that I was allowed to marry this particular partner because he has a particular anatomical configuration while that right had been denied to me with other people I have loved or might in the future love had I not chosen this particular relationship.

These days, with that issue put to rest, I find myself much more amenable to the idea for practical reasons. We have some serious health issues going on between the two of us and I'm not sure that the paperwork we have is really going to be enough to make sure that my partner's terrible parents are kept out of any medical decisions that might come up for him. Also domestic partner health benefit taxation is a pain in the ass and we could buy ourselves a pretty nice vacation every year or beef up the retirement savings considerably with that money if we got married. Because we do have joint retirement savings. Because that's the scope on which we are planning to share our lives, even if we haven't made a public pledge to that effect. (Unless this counts. Hey, Metafilter, I super-love my partner and am looking forward to growing old and cranky with him. Witness me.)

We may do it at some point. If we do we may or may not ever mention it to anyone else, or wear rings. That's just not what marriage would mean to us. Thinking that through for myself has helped me make fewer assumptions about what other people's marriages mean to them.
posted by Stacey at 8:41 AM on September 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

I was interested to see that he was overcome by emotion at the Supreme Court decision despite not actually being interested in marriage for its own sake. I had a really similar reaction--I was pleased to have the option, I sort of needed marriage for the legal aspects, but I have never given a shit about the social stuff or the wedding party thing. I was really startled at how much emotion I had over DOMA falling and then about the Obergefell decision this summer. Like, bursting into tears and being completely unable to focus on anything else for the day emotion.

Also, as someone whose coworkers didn't find out that I had gotten married until a little over a year after the fact... I dunno, I'm raising my eyebrows a little at the publicity aspect of a marriage being the important bit. Give me my legal rights, motherfucker.
posted by sciatrix at 8:41 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

I understand the freedom of owning up to your relationships. That's the power of coming out, basically. But there are definitely other ways that can say "hey! we're together" very publicly other than getting married. We did that for years before we got the piece of paper.
posted by This Guy at 8:42 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Me too, sciatrix. I had no idea how strong my reaction would be to the Obergefell ruling until I was sobbing so loudly that my partner and cats came running into the room to make sure my mother hadn't just died or something. I flailed at them and said something about "happy tears! happy tears!" and then they backed cautiously away from me until I'd chilled the hell out. Weird.
posted by Stacey at 8:44 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Here is the thing:

“Listen,” I said to Hugh over dinner, “we really need to do this. Otherwise when one of us dies the other will be clobbered with taxes.”

“I don’t care,” he told me. “It’s just money.”

The government makes us get married as a comprehensive death plan. Comprehensive death plans are like its thing.
posted by bukvich at 8:47 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

(I mean, I also felt kind of like I was in one of those sham marriage fanfictions except that I was genuinely trying to just bring my partner to where I was so we could live together, so that probably colors how much I wanted to wave the "LOOK I JUST GOT MARRIED" thing around with a great big party.

Recently my mother asked me if I wanted to do a wedding properly since my sister was getting one and all, and I had to work really hard not to just FLEE IN TERROR at the prospect.)
posted by sciatrix at 8:53 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

really when it came down to it the point of this marriage was to keep some extant relatives away from valuable Manhattan real estate should one of us croak.

What can I say I'm a soft touch.
posted by The Whelk at 9:02 AM on September 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

Straight end of the equation here. Mr. Roquette and I are Muslim. We had to get a proper nikah. This was difficult as all get out. The local mosque would not do it. An out of town imam took care of matters. He's lived here long enough to get it about SSI and legal marriage.
We had a nice party with friends, family members and biryani and cream cheese cup-cakes and cherries, and cute pictures of us giving on another a key to each other's apartment.
Many imams are too afraid to do this for older people or people with disabilities. I think it's largely to prevent people from practicing polygyny. Given that polygyny is illegal, I see the concern.
We are just two people who found each other later in life.
We are both on disability. Even Domestic Partnership has the potential to really bugger up our lives.
It is actually cheaper for me to maintain my own apartment and for him to maintain his than it would be for us to move in together officially.
Comparable housing on the open market is too expensive for us to get together OR separately.
Getting a civil marriage would cut into our SSI quite a bit. What little I have set aside is so my kids can afford to bury me. Neither of us have pensions.

The only POSSIBLE issue is hospital visitation.
His relatives are not in the picture.
Mine love him. So basically only the hospital itself could pose a problem.
The right to marry for physically disabled people and older people really is the next frontier.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 9:14 AM on September 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

Thankfully, in the UK you have the same rights if you just live together. My pension scheme allows me to nominate anyone to be a death beneficiary.

I really don't like the concept of marriage. I've been with my partner for almost 15 years and we have a 4 year old son. I have no intention of trying to hide anything, but I find the idea that we need to embarrass ourselves into staying together by making a big fuss and brand each other with rings as more than a little weird.

Marriage is a societal crutch; a remnant of religious history and a way of locking people into outmoded compartments. Enjoy it if you want it, but stop treating people like they are different if they don't conform to your historically entrenched worldview
posted by trif at 9:34 AM on September 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

"Normal" in a marriage is the same as "normal" in anything else; everyone defines it differently. I think that was the only point I was hoping to make.
posted by Diagonalize at 9:58 AM on September 22, 2015

Years ago I was an editor at a very traditional, very square wedding photography studio. Halfway through the set of photos from one particular wedding, I realized there were two grooms. This was before gay marriage was even legal in my state.

I was so annoyed. This isn't even legal, there aren't any traditions for this, you are breaking new ground, you could throw LITERALLY ANY KIND OF PARTY YOU WANT. So you decide on tuxes from David's Bridal and a bland banquet at a suburban Sheraton?! No one even likes to GO to that kind of wedding. Gross.

This is all to say that yes, it's a great thing that everyone now has the right to be as boring and middle-of-the-road, aesthetically null as they want.
posted by jeweled accumulation at 10:52 AM on September 22, 2015

I sobbed and yelled in triumph as I read the SCOTUS blog Obergefell news.

14 months before her death, my MIL was able to legally marry her partner of 35 years. Due to Obergefell, my MIL didn't need to worry about her widow being destitute, as well as bereft - her widow receives my MIL's srivor benefits.

Although I have been proposed to and encouraged to propose to others, I have never been married, never wanted to be married, and assume I will never want to be married in the future. Marriage (or being equally able to kill people via the military) was not the main civil right I have been activating for since I was a teenager.

But I cried while reading that we, the good guys and former pariahs, won this time.
posted by Dreidl at 11:17 AM on September 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

We didn't really care about the taxation issues, and — in fact — we pay the same marriage penalty as straight couples. From a financial standpoint, there are benefits if we were to have stayed single. However, for us, the marriage laws confer rights like protecting our ability to care for each other if we get sick or incapacitated. It also protects us from companies and businesses that want to discriminate against us in different ways. The marriage ceremony, however, wasn't to emulate what straight people do or co-opt rituals by straight people, it was to get our family and friends together — some whom we hadn't seen in a few years — and to celebrate our happiness with them. People we'd gotten to know over decades: we also introduced them to each other. You see a common thread in the friendships made and why you congregate with certain people, but they maybe get to see a glimpse of it, too. Legal rights can't make those important connections, but they allow them to flourish and nourish for years on end, helping make for a richer and fuller life. No good reason why straight people should have a monopoly on that, but no good reason exists as to why we should abstain from it out of some vague sense of entitled otherness, either.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 12:44 PM on September 22, 2015 [4 favorites]

My wife and I were on the crowded airport shuttle bus to our hotel after a long, harrowing journey that took an entire day of driving on the autostrada of Italy to the Milan airport. Exhausted, stinking, more fights per hour than I can ever remember, when both of our phones buzzed with the alert from the NYTimes announcing the ruling. And yes, we both had tears in our eyes, and I think next to 9/11 I'll remember that moment of "where were you when" more than most. Take that assholes, indeed.
posted by docpops at 4:59 PM on September 22, 2015 [2 favorites]