Wednesday, March 24, 2004
WEDDING BELL BLUES #1-7
seven days of fun...
WHAT FOLLOWS ARE THE DAILY ENTRIES OF A 7-DAY E-MAIL ESSAY PROJECT (posted last to first) which led me to this BLOG, written on the occasion of my lover's and my celebration of 17 years together and 6 years (non-legally) wed. I intend to continue, weekly or so, on contrary American topics well beyond that of gay marriage.
More to come, soon (ish).
--Barrie Jean Borich
Minneapolis, MN
For comments: Please visit to my Web site, www.barriejeanborich.net, and send me mail via my GUEST BOOK.
WEDDING BELL BLUES #7
10 March 2004
[HAPPY ANNIVERSARY DARLING]
Disobedience, Choice, and Liberation
Today I am thinking about the images, words, and ideas that make up the
atmosphere Linnea and I wake up into everyday, and in particular on this
morning six years after our own renegade wedding.
Yesterday as I drove deep into the Minnesota prairie to teach my Tuesday
afternoon class at St. Olaf, I was listening to an Audible.com subscription
program "In Bed with Susie Bright." Most of you probably know that Susie
Bright, formerly known as Susy Sexpert, is a writer and commentator on the
subject of sexuality. I love this program because it's frank and funny and
welcoming to all and because Susie holds nothing back. Yesterday Susie was
talking as usual about how she feels we live best in our bodies when given
the opportunity to enjoy liberation and choice, and I started to think about
those two words--liberation--choice--and what they mean to me as an American
lesbian who has chosen to live 17 of my 44 years with one mannish woman
who liberates ("to set free from socially imposed constraints" ) me on a
daily basis.
Some feminists, perhaps even the famously polyfidelitous Susie Bright, would
say that marriage as a concept is the opposite of liberation. One of you
sent me an e-mail earlier this week reminding me that that the tradition of
marriage comes directly out of property laws in which a man possesses a
woman— well let me just quote the eloquent Martha Roth here— "who will
service his sexual needs and insure the continuity of his DNA in exchange
for which he will feed, clothe and house her." I thank Martha for these
thoughts, even as I don't actually need reminding. The spectre of the
marriage tradition, as it is practiced by some, is always draped behind and
around this debate, which is why so many lesbians struggle with it. Even one
of our most famous "family-man" sorts of lesbians, Melissa Etheridge, has
been quoted as saying she has trouble getting the word "wife" out of her
mouth.
But I don't think words must be wedded to their roots, or at least not to
their roots alone. I think language twists and transforms with time and use.
Old definitions may not vanish or cease to inform. Perhaps we can look at
the old meanings as warnings of what we might slip back into, if we stop
choosing and start sliding. But I also think that balances shift, and that
connotation matters.
As I've said before, in the process of writing _My Lesbian Husband_ I came
to terms with using the word marriage to describe my relationship with
Linnea, mainly because of the word's translation value. No other word worked
to describe to our families who we are to each other, and in the end that
mattered to us more, personally, than our need to stand with our backs to
dominant culture tradition. And I keep noticing—as other lesbian writers I
respect and love tell their stories of wrestling with these words and
suddenly finding themselves in San Francisco kissing their own brides of
disobedience—that it can be, as it was with us, the use of the word marriage
that leads our families and colleagues and neighbors to finally offer
focused congratulations, and yes, spoken love to what we have created
between ourselves. Perhaps some people come from families of visionary
thinkers who don't need such help to understand. My family, with its roots
deeply imbedded in the south side of Chicago white ethnic prejudices and
paradigms, appreciated a leg up.
There is something liberating about being told you are loved. It's
physically freeing. It gives you room to grow and grasp and continue to
create. It gives you the space to breathe in your own body, and thus, after
years of social dis-association allows you to feel the tips of your fingers
again.
This is why I am so infuriated that this country, the mother America who is
supposed to be welcoming her tired and huddled masses— and OK, I know that
is mostly BS, but am I really wrong to want it to be the truth?—that this
supposedly open society of ours keeps giving her hard unyielding back to
those of us who might like to share in the liberation that comes of full
access to shared language and shared culture.
Maybe we don't need the state to back us up on this. After all, a country is
not really a mother, we don't need its permission to exist, and another
definition of to liberate is to steal. Linnea and have existed quite well
together, thank you, without a bit of sanction from the state. As I've said,
we could certainly use some of the benefits the state offers those they
class (thank you Juliet) as more worthy than we are, but we can and do live
outside of those protections. But the thing is —despite these mean times
(thank you Lucia) I can't help but want to believe in the progression of
America into the country it says it is. I want to believe in social
revolution and transformation and waking up to a new day and all of that
glop. Why shouldn't I want that? Why shouldn't we all want that? Isn't that
finally what it's supposed to mean be an American, in the best, most
liberated sense of the word? And at the risk of sounding like Sally Fields,
is it wrong to want to be one of the loved? But no, let me rephrase...is it
wrong to want to be the child of a country capable of such love? It is,
after all, the country I want to remodel here, not myself, at least not in
this regard, and not the breathtaking invention of queer culture.
And so on Linnea and my anniversary I am thinking of love and sex and play
and work, and soaking in the mineral springs of another country. By tomorrow
morning we will be in Iceland and perhaps this will all look very small from
that view. In the meantime I must repeat the obvious, which is that the
atmosphere of my country lately feels more poisonous than sustaining— the
queer hating constitutional amendment frenzy just a tiny part of it—and yet
Linnea and I keep choosing each other and in doing so we keep freeing each
other from the constraints that might tell us our choice is not worthy of
the love of America.
Bjb 10 March 2003
[I will revive this forum, in some weekly form or another, upon our return.
Thanks for reading. ]
“Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on
Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long.” Leonard Cohen
_
Wedding Bell Blues #6
Tuesday 9 March
Barrie Jean Borich (and collaborators)
Tonight's offering is a compilation of interesting tidbits and impassioned ruminations from people who have written me over the past few days.
First, I want to comment on some of the news that showed up in today's mailbox. In Seattle, well-known sex columnist Dan Savage and a lesbian colleague brought their beloveds to city hall to apply for marriage licenses, and were denied. THEN, Mr. Savage inquired if he could apply for a license to marry his lesbian colleague even though "he didn't really like her." That license, of course, was approved. And so tell me again about how we can't redefine the definition of marriage because it is a sacred tradition?
Also, a friend wrote to tell me that the fall guy of my comments in yesterday's missive, Anderson Cooper, is gay and out. A quick Google search confirms this, along with the interesting information that he is the son of Gloria Vanderbilt, was the subject, as a babe, of a 1969 Diane Arbus portrait, is the object of obsession of one internet citizen who hopes he will agree to father her child, and is the former host of the TV Reality show "The Mole"—one of those programs I include in my constitutional amendment against things that gross me out. This led Linnea and I to wonder this evening if an out gay man might push the gross-out angle because he feels intimately aware of how it feels to be the target of revulsion? Or does the fact that he's gay in no way exempt him from being a snot? No conclusions yet, but one commenter did write to tell me she has affection for Anderson because she knows his mother, which leaves me predisposed to at least TRY to watch him next with the benefit of the doubt of an benevolent Auntie.
And finally, speaking of Aunties, I include below an eloquent letter from Linnea and my "nephew" Nik, who as some of you are aware has undergone a few transformations since first meeting Auntie Barrie and Uncle Linnea at the Mountain Dew infused age of 16. Nik (who is now 30) addresses an aspect of the queer wedding blitz that I have been thinking about but have yet to adequately address, namely —is it right to even call this a "same-sex" wedding debate? These proposed constitutional amendments, Dubya's as well as the state version approved today by a Minnesota Congressional Committee—insist that marriage must be reserved for one man and one woman. What does that mean in these days of increasingly fluid gender identity, especially in a state in which the human rights amendment includes the protection of transgender citizens?
Read on for Nik's words (with apologies for certain obvious font edits designed to make sure your e-mail filters don't bump us.)
Tomorrow, 10 March, is Linnea and my Vegas wedding anniversary, which I will commemorate here with the last essay of my week- long shock and spew.
bjb March 2004
***
Hey Barrie -
I just wanted to let you know that I have appreciated your thoughts on
queer marriage. While you may know, historically I tend to opt out on
political issues all together, I have found myself in moments of utter rage
with this one. This is interesting, as technically the issue will never
affect me directly. I mean, I intend to complete my transition with an
amended birth certificate which will allow me to marry,
heterosexually-ever-after. So, I think to myself... Why does this issue
really get my goat? (impacts to friends and loved ones aside)
While I am not as well spoken and politically savvy as you are in this
arena, I think it is my trans-perspective (if you will) that it is creating
both a disconnect from the issue yet a fury of anger as I witness all
that is going on.
You know me, I live a relatively straight life. Doing the
hetero-corporate-white-collar thing by day, queer-fetish
happy-martini-in-one-hand, cigar-in-the-other-type-guy (with strong lesbian
roots) by night. So I sat down here to try and get out the duality of this
life of mine and try to identify what it is that's really bugging me here. I
thought you might be interested in my thoughts, as I try to sort them out.
A scenario that keeps coming to my mind is a trans-couple I know of. Two ftm
dudes who are doing the trasnfag thing. They chose to amend only one birth
certificate so to that they could legally marry as "man" and "wife" even
though they are living and loving as man and man. And I wonder how this
would bode to those who are so against same-sex‚ marriage? Especially those
who sour at the mere thought of two men (or women) kissing. What about two
men—who used to be women—who are now married as man and wife, but
f*ck*ng like man and man? (Even I sometimes struggle getting my brain around
it.) Yet, at the end of the day, they have all the rights that same bio-sex
couples long for. Their rights granted by a system that was created to
support the traditional man/woman union demonstrating it's own out
datedness by its lack of recognition that bio-sex can be altered thus
throwing a who stick into the tradition of such union.
So I guess my question is— is this really about same-sex‚ marriage? Or is
it really about queer marriage? Sex can be amended. While being trans opens
the opportunity for me personally to fall into the man/wife perspective
(much to the delight of those who support transsexuals because they are
assimilating), it also allows others to bend it. Is this really about two
people of the same bio-sex having equal civil rights as two of opposite
bio-sex? Or is it about destroying this concept that a socially recognized
man and a socially recognized woman are the only valid union to be legally
recognized? I personally can think of plenty of trans/queer combinations
that would be able to legally marry as man/women (amended or not). Perhaps
those are the couples who should be standing on the steps of city halls
around the nation demonstrating to the country that this is a **queer**
civil rights issue, not just simply the same-bio-sex unions. We all deserve
the right to engage in a legal union with another, regardless of not only
sex, but gender and sexuality as well. And I hate to say it, but same
bio-sex couples are pretty vanilla in the grand spectrum of queer... yet
it's those couples who are so radically opposed. Interesting, I think.
Guess that's why it's bugging me. Thanks for reading. I would love to hear
your thoughts.
-NIK
[MY thoughts, btw, are that Nik has hit it smartly on the nose.:). --bjb]
__
Wedding Bell Blues #5
Monday 9 March
Barrie Jean Borich
[In the true spirit of the BLOG, this one is a little rough folks:)].
Linnea and I have been having an argument over the last few weeks over CNN’s
Anderson Cooper and the politics of revulsion. I think Anderson exhibits the
tiniest bit of squeamishness over the subject of LGBT sexuality. Linnea’s
thinks he’s playing devil’s advocate, wearing a persona appropriate to his
role as the Post-9/11-CNN-cutting-edge-30-something anchor.
I base my opinion on what seemed to me his obvious discomfort year or so
back, when Rosie O’Donnell came out. He interviewed Rosie on the morning
show and I swear to dog (I can’t say g-o-d after yesterdays’ comments,
right?) I saw him smirk, and he couldn’t even manage to say the word
lesbian.
But Linnea and my most recent conversation about Anderson has to do with his
coverage the week the Mayor of San Francisco started handing out those
renegade marriage licenses. I’m not even sure if it was the Mayor he was
interviewing at the moment that cut me, or one of the lawyers, or one of the
required family value twerps that the news shows always include on these
panels. It’s not the interviewee I can’t shake, but Anderson’s question,
which he repeated several times. I paraphrase here, but it was something
along the lines of, “But what do you say to the people who react with
REVULSION when they see these same-sex couples kissing. Because some people
find this REPULSIVE. They are REPULSED at the sight of men kissing men, and
women kissing women.”
Linnea says, well he’s right. Some people are repulsed by the thought of
what same-sex lovers do together, no matter if, aside from a bit of
anatomical variation, it is not really much different that what the majority
of heterosexuals who are doing it do.
But the revulsion of a few has long been the problem of many. My feeling is
that by saying it, again and again, Anderson Cooper (whose own sexual
preference is unknown to me) validated that revulsion, even if he is not
personally repulsed (or that twin opposite, which is illicitly turned on.)
Linnea thinks (if I understand her correctly) Anderson was just getting to
the real crux of the issue, bringing the messy truth out into open.
I honestly don’t have a clue which of us is right here, but this leads me to
think about how socially legitimate it is, still, for people to express
revulsion, or even refer to revulsion at the sight of something no steamier
than a same-sex courthouse kiss, and that out of this revulsion comes
permission to propose such things as constitutional amendments to keep us
illegal. To be repulsed is to cause disgust, queasiness, perhaps even public
vomiting. Isn’t this what Laura Bush means when she states she is “shocked”
but the new wave of same-sex marriages?
Linnea always brings up Quentin Crisp at this point in the conversation, who
said (and I paraphrase again, very likely badly) that they don’t hate US,
just what we DO. Well alright then. If they can legislate against us for
what we do (and very often do better than them, I suspect) then I would also
like to propose a few amendments myself, one for every little thing that
repulses me—no matter how personal or unsupportable, no matter if mentioned
in the holy texts of any faith.
And so I propose the following acts or items, or any person acting with
intent to commit support or preserve any of the following acts or items
shall be hereby prohibited:
Paris Hilton (with or without her video);
Public vomiting;
Semi-automatic machine guns;
TV shows where American celebrities eat worms;
White people who claim they were Native Americans “in a past life”;
The religious right and its minions;
Racist remarks made by my relatives;
School systems that allow American kids to graduate without learning to
read;
Ted Nugent;
Pro Football (Sorry Linnea, but this is MY amendment);
Sports mascots based on images of American Indians;
Fat jokes;
MacDonalds;
Viagra spam;
TV shows where people vote each other off the island;
War in Iraq;
President Bush and all his minions;
Fictional Elections;
Governor Pawlenty and his minions (most notably the ones who insist on
destroying public transportation);
Steak tartar;
Janet Jackson's Super Bowl performance costume (excluding the costume
malfunction which does not bother me);
Junk faxes;
Patchouli (Sorry—this puts me outside much of the lesbian fray, but it’s
always smelled to me like public vomiting);
Cleaning the bathroom;
Clothing decorated with American Flags;
People who neglect their dogs;
Gay republicans;
Republican Lesbians (all three of them);
Whatever Dubya and Laura do when they do it;
Web sites that sell term papers to college students;
DOMA;
Supposedly progressive politicians who voted for DOMA.
So what do you think Anderson Cooper. Are you as REPULSED as I am by all
those Republican Pachouli-wearing lesbians, feeding steak tartar to their
dogs as they send out unsolicited Viagra faxes and channel surf between the
Redskins game and the new Paris Hilton Video? There oughta be a law.
__
Wedding Bell Blues #4
Sunday 6 March 2004
Barrie Jean Borich
Today I am thinking that the debate over same-sex marriage in the media is all wrong. Reading through the letters in this morning's Minneapolis Star Tribune, the arguments are all more of the same tired conversation. "Gays should not marry because the Bible says gays should not marry" vs. "our relationships are just as sacred as theirs".
While some LGBT love matches MIGHT be sacred—whatever the word sacred means to any one individual— in some cases the opposite may just as well be true, meaning our relationships may be as much an abomination as theirs. It is HUMAN relationship we are talking about here. Real humans still really do clash and scratch and kiss and bite and make love and create family in any way they know how, just we've always done, and some days that's kind of sacred and some days it looks more like the devil's handiwork. I don't think the PR cover of simply "sanctifying" our relationships will help our cause in the long run as I also seriously doubt that unquestioning sanctification of heterosexual marriages has much chance of helping those relationships survive, when and if they ought to survive. GLBT lives do require the dignity that comes of being assumed to be full citizens, but I don't understand why, in terms of the fight for civil marriage, this should be anything but a secular discussion. What will help LGBT relationships in the long run is to let us at our civil rights, so we can get on with the mess of living as Americans are supposed to be able to live, in diverse dignity and choice.
Why do we keep dragging this discussion back to God. The news coming from San Francisco and Portland and even the unruly streets of Chicago is all about CIVIL marriage. Concrete civil rights are at stake. For instance—I lost my health insurance this Fall when my long-time beloved Linnea left the University to take a good job in the state community college system. As I am a freelance writer and teacher with pre-existing health conditions, this situation put us at risk. It's WRONG that in this rich and bomb-happy country anyone's basic health care needs are linked to either employment or marital status, but the fact is they are not only linked but soldered. The reason Linnea lost domestic partner benefits when she became a state employee is because the state of Minnesota, in blatant defiance of our state civil rights laws, TOOK THIS BENEFIT AWAY from same-sex domestic partners.
It took months of ridiculous paper shuffling delays, but I did manage to replace my health insurance with an expensive and high-deductible self-employed plan. Unlike the countless Americans suffering from the country's health care non-system, I am no longer at quite the risk I was when uninsured this Fall. And don't get me wrong—I know I am a lucky duck, both because I enjoy the health benefits of a thriving 17+ year old relationship and because I manage to make enough money to pay too much for my health insurance. But I am also pissed, not so much because of what I don't have but rather because of WHY I don't have it. I am no longer insured at anywhere near the rate I was during the tiny oasis of time when I so charmingly experienced what it feels like to have equal citizen benefits. And now, because all I can get is major medical coverage, its cost me 80 bucks just to see my doctor last month about a sinus infection. I'm not dying here, just taking note of the difference in my status and (the symptoms of the sinus infection aside) I can taste it in my mouth.
If I were legally (rather than what, metaphorically?) married to Linnea, who has a job with benefits, I wouldn't have to cough up 80-out-of-pocket bucks plus the price of meds to treat a sinus infection. Linnea and I don't fit through that narrow doorway of what is legally considered family —which I contend is not a sacred portal, but rather a legal loophole—so I have to either cough up the dough, add to charge card debt or avoid the doctor altogether. I'm lucky enough right now to be able pay, but I haven't always, and lots of people aren't. I have straight friends who felt perfectly married without legal sanction, but made it legal for no other reason than one of them needed access to health care. Linnea and I don't have that choice. But whether the best solution to this blatant unfairness is same-sex marriage or flexible domestic partnership law or a tear-down of American health care, my point today is simply that this is a civil injustice issue, and if smart people work at it the problem can be solved. Why mix it up with all this highly unprovable hoo-ha about God.
We are supposed to be a country that welcomes all faiths and even faithlessness. And surely most people must have received the e-mails by now listing all the OTHER things the Bible might be interpreted to say, and yet we have the sense to avoid imbedding into American law. For instance, here's one that came to me in an e-mail last week: "A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed" (Deut22:13-21). While there may be some Americans who believe such things (and I pray they are not my neighbors) such Bible-based belief is hardly a good reason to meddle with the constitution.
The Constitution of the United States already promises us that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." This means, in part, that as a country we may not insist that a religious-based life has more rights than a secular-based life. Therefore, using the interpretation of one subgroup's holy texts to deny the goodies of civil marriage to same-sex couples is deeply contrary to the American way. So is the proposed (vile and hateful) constitutional amendment to limit civil marriage to the increasingly suspect categories of one "man" and one "woman."
So to those who insist on continually dragging this public discussion about rights of citizenship discussion into the private realm of belief or disbelief in the Bible, what I say is this. Please— could you just get a room?
--
WEDDING BELL BLUES #3
I have many friends and acquaintances in the queer world who have long felt the issue of same-sex marriage is a red herring, an assimilationist back peddle, a dance with the conservative devil. I understand this view, up to a point. I used to feel much the same.
During the focused five years I spent wrestling with this question, in the form of my book My Lesbian Husband (which is less a soapbox argument for queer marriage than it is an attempt to understand how the long-time lesbian couple fits and does not fit into the American tableau of family and community ritual) I asked the same question many times. Are we married? Do Linnea and I wish to associate our long and thriving relationship with a dominant culture that has always excluded us?
I continue to think this is a good question, but not just for queers. It’s a question all conscious and progressive Americans should ask and keep asking about every one of our institutions. What is the definition of family? What are the rights and demands of the workplace? Why don’t we all have access to quality health care? How can we keep our society alive and pliable and alert to how all of the people are living their lives? Whatever the issue, we ought to be constantly asking who’s on the inside and who’s on the outside, and finally and most importantly who is excluded and why. For me this line of questioning has brought me to the conclusion that America is not something I must fight to enter, or choose to stay outside of, but rather that the definition of American must be recast to include me and mine along with a great many others still left out beyond the borders.
Which is finally the reason I have come to the position that same-sex couples MUST have access to that elusive marriage license. NOT because “fidelity” is a family or conservative value that queers must embrace in order to be finally accepted into the fold. The license to marry is not necessarily any more of a conservative issue than the license to drive. The right wing does not, as HomoCons such as Andrew Sullivan claim, own the notion of “fidelity” just as heterosexuals don’t own (as much as they are encouraged to believe they do) the gaseous and ever-shifting reality of American culture. Culture is by nature an evolving thing defined not from above but rather by the lives lived inside its climate. And fidelity—which means, simply, loyalty and allegiance—is a concept that takes many forms, not all of which look much like the traditional values version of the “marriage.”
The reason same-sex couples are excluded from the choice (not the obligation, or even the expectation but—read my lips—the choice) to enter into a legal civil marriage is the plain and unambiguous hatred and revulsion directed toward our self-defined fidelity to our homes, families, and abiding love for each other. These are loves that can be, in many cases, models of flexibility, creativity and communication, 100 times more groundbreaking than the old-packaged-as new headlines from the entertainment world announcing that some gay men are good at grooming and wardrobe selection and some lesbians have figured out how to make babies without sleeping with men.
The fight for same-sex marriage is not a red herring, is not a merely personal issue, and is not an acquiescence to the Republican agenda. It has sprung full born onto the steps of the San Francisco courthouse simply because one brave elected official—at what could still turn out to be a great risk to his political career—chose to defy the authority of which he is part by assuming LGBT people are among those citizens whose rights are protected by the state constitution. Whether any particular queer couple SHOULD marry is clearly a personal decision, and of course, some should not, for the same reasons some straight couples should not. But the new wave of matrimony as a form of civil disobedience is an historic moment in the history of GLBT liberation not because of what we should or should not choose, but rather because of WHY we are still forbidden the choice.
We are forbidden the marriage license because we are still publicly hated, and therefore intentionally shut out. We still are so hated by some sectors of this society that a sitting president has actually promised to amend the constitution rather then entertain the possibility of supporting our civil rights. We are still so hated that stagnant and vile threads of the dominant culture allow even our supposedly good-hearted Democratic presidential frontrunners to feel free to announce “I just don’t believe in it.” We will continue to be hated until all our public institutions are sufficiently examined, deconstructed, re-visioned, and finally made anew with the intent to include rather than exclude. It’s not that we aren’t already here, already “married,” already American. Rather it’s that we aren’t yet fully seen as such; we aren’t yet visible in the picture. That simple and profound piece of paper from the city hall is a concrete and radical step toward reclaiming America for what and who we really are.
Barrie Jean Borich
5 March 2004
--
Wedding Bell Blues #2
Dear Editor: [cc RT Rybak, Peter McLaughlin, Gary Schiff]
I am struck this morning by the curious beauty of news accounts from
Chicago, queer protesters crowding the streets to demand, of all things, a
marriage license. But even though the practical issues on the table—health,
bereavement and inheritance benefits as well as the simple inalienable
right to visit a sick beloved in the hospital—ought to be basic civil
rights, I don’t really believe “marriage” itself is the motivating point
here, any more than I believe all these new marriages will automatically
have any more longevity than spur-of-the-moment straight marriages would be
likely to have. Yet I do believe the wedding-related events of the past few
weeks are earth-shakingly significant, for the simple reason that access to
civil marriage is a rights issue, a visibility issue, a statement against
hate and a signifier of whether or not GLBT citizens really do, according to
our city and state, have a right to exist.
A couple like myself and my beloved may not, for any emotional or family
reasons, need to make another more “legal” wedding then the one we created
for ourselves in Las Vegas, six years ago this week, and we have no
questions, after more than 17 years, about the validity of the lives we
spend together. Still, we tear up when we see the news coverage of couples
lined up to marry in San Francisco, Portland, and upstate New York to speak
loud the love that once dared not speak its name, and we laugh in delight at
the coverage of GLBT protesters taking to streets of my home city of
Chicago to demand same-sex weddings NOW. I love these images because they
make my people visible in new, surprising, and deliciously diverse ways. I
think about my lesbian marriage every day in the most mundane and
un-fabulous manner, because I have the normal human need to be aware of my
own life. Now, all of sudden, my college freshmen composition students,
straight or queer, want to write papers on same-sex marriage, and straight
colleagues I pass in the halls of the many schools where I teach as an
adjunct are whispering in excitement over an issue which they don’t NEED to
be thinking about, but ARE thinking about. Suddenly my life is better woven
into the fabric of my communities, and this feels like positive change.
Which is why I fervently hope Minneapolis or Hennepin County or any
institution of local government who gets there first finds a way to disobey
the little laws, as the Mayors of other cities have done, and pay heed to a
higher law—not only our state law promising GLBT citizens equal rights, but
the greater law demanding we simply do the right thing. Let’s join the
beauteous swell making my GLBT people, and all of your relationships to us,
truly visible for the first time in American history. This could turn out
to be a very nice anniversary present.
Sincerely,
Barrie Jean Borich
Author and Teacher
___
Wedding Bell Blues #1
Dear Mayor Rybak: [cc: Gary Schiff Minneapolis Star and Tribune]
They've been doing it for weeks now in San Francisco. Every day a new city
is doing it. Today they started doing it in Portland.
When will Minneapolis jump in? When will you do what your San Francisco
brother has done? Let's have lesbian and gay marriage HERE and NOW. This
city NEEDS some sort of display of our progressive identity amidst a state
that has turned against us. Every since Wellstone's death there has been a
pall hanging over what was once one of the most progressive locales in the
country. Meanwhile the national Democratic party front runners don't have
the guts to stand up fully and without apology for basic GLBT civil rights,
even while the President they hope to defeat proposes one of most hateful
constitutional amendments in American history. Even our dear Wellstone was
a wimp on this issue.
Progressive politicians such as yourself have walked in our parades for
years now, and have accepted our handshakes and good will in engage for what
you tell us is your support. So now here's your chance to walk the walk.
Let's get Minneapolis on the map while this issue is still hot and
happening.
I am a writer who has written a book on living in a long-term lesbian
"marriage." The book is about my beloved's and my long conversation about
whether we want to word "marriage" to describe the life we have built
together. (The book is called _My Lesbian Husband_ and is coming in the
mail to you.) We finally decided that we DID want to call ourselves
"married" because it was the only way to make our commitment visible in a
society, and within families, incapable of understanding who we are to each
other without the weight of common and shared societal language--such as the
word "marriage." Six years ago we were married in Las Vegas, without the
license. Lately we've talked about going to San Fransciso get married
again....but we've already had the experience of traveling to our wedding.
It would mean so much more to be able to do it here, casually and
intimately, in the city that we claim as our home.
Do this and we will be happy to participate with you, loudly and vocally.
My beloved, Linnea Stenson, is the Grand Marshall of this year's Twin Cities
Pride and would love to use some of the attention of her office to publicize
our cities vocal embrace of GLBT civil rights, as well the reawakening of
Minneapolis to the energy and activism of the pre-Republican coup years.
How about March 10th? We've been together for 17+ years, but March 10 is our
six year wedding anniversary (and the day before we hop on a plane to
Iceland for our anniversary trip.) Give us something to celebrate.
So do it Mayor Rybak. Lift the conservative pall. Join the wedding party.
Please.
Sincerely,
Barrie Jean Borich and Linnea Stenson
seven days of fun...
WHAT FOLLOWS ARE THE DAILY ENTRIES OF A 7-DAY E-MAIL ESSAY PROJECT (posted last to first) which led me to this BLOG, written on the occasion of my lover's and my celebration of 17 years together and 6 years (non-legally) wed. I intend to continue, weekly or so, on contrary American topics well beyond that of gay marriage.
More to come, soon (ish).
--Barrie Jean Borich
Minneapolis, MN
For comments: Please visit to my Web site, www.barriejeanborich.net, and send me mail via my GUEST BOOK.
WEDDING BELL BLUES #7
10 March 2004
[HAPPY ANNIVERSARY DARLING]
Disobedience, Choice, and Liberation
Today I am thinking about the images, words, and ideas that make up the
atmosphere Linnea and I wake up into everyday, and in particular on this
morning six years after our own renegade wedding.
Yesterday as I drove deep into the Minnesota prairie to teach my Tuesday
afternoon class at St. Olaf, I was listening to an Audible.com subscription
program "In Bed with Susie Bright." Most of you probably know that Susie
Bright, formerly known as Susy Sexpert, is a writer and commentator on the
subject of sexuality. I love this program because it's frank and funny and
welcoming to all and because Susie holds nothing back. Yesterday Susie was
talking as usual about how she feels we live best in our bodies when given
the opportunity to enjoy liberation and choice, and I started to think about
those two words--liberation--choice--and what they mean to me as an American
lesbian who has chosen to live 17 of my 44 years with one mannish woman
who liberates ("to set free from socially imposed constraints" ) me on a
daily basis.
Some feminists, perhaps even the famously polyfidelitous Susie Bright, would
say that marriage as a concept is the opposite of liberation. One of you
sent me an e-mail earlier this week reminding me that that the tradition of
marriage comes directly out of property laws in which a man possesses a
woman— well let me just quote the eloquent Martha Roth here— "who will
service his sexual needs and insure the continuity of his DNA in exchange
for which he will feed, clothe and house her." I thank Martha for these
thoughts, even as I don't actually need reminding. The spectre of the
marriage tradition, as it is practiced by some, is always draped behind and
around this debate, which is why so many lesbians struggle with it. Even one
of our most famous "family-man" sorts of lesbians, Melissa Etheridge, has
been quoted as saying she has trouble getting the word "wife" out of her
mouth.
But I don't think words must be wedded to their roots, or at least not to
their roots alone. I think language twists and transforms with time and use.
Old definitions may not vanish or cease to inform. Perhaps we can look at
the old meanings as warnings of what we might slip back into, if we stop
choosing and start sliding. But I also think that balances shift, and that
connotation matters.
As I've said before, in the process of writing _My Lesbian Husband_ I came
to terms with using the word marriage to describe my relationship with
Linnea, mainly because of the word's translation value. No other word worked
to describe to our families who we are to each other, and in the end that
mattered to us more, personally, than our need to stand with our backs to
dominant culture tradition. And I keep noticing—as other lesbian writers I
respect and love tell their stories of wrestling with these words and
suddenly finding themselves in San Francisco kissing their own brides of
disobedience—that it can be, as it was with us, the use of the word marriage
that leads our families and colleagues and neighbors to finally offer
focused congratulations, and yes, spoken love to what we have created
between ourselves. Perhaps some people come from families of visionary
thinkers who don't need such help to understand. My family, with its roots
deeply imbedded in the south side of Chicago white ethnic prejudices and
paradigms, appreciated a leg up.
There is something liberating about being told you are loved. It's
physically freeing. It gives you room to grow and grasp and continue to
create. It gives you the space to breathe in your own body, and thus, after
years of social dis-association allows you to feel the tips of your fingers
again.
This is why I am so infuriated that this country, the mother America who is
supposed to be welcoming her tired and huddled masses— and OK, I know that
is mostly BS, but am I really wrong to want it to be the truth?—that this
supposedly open society of ours keeps giving her hard unyielding back to
those of us who might like to share in the liberation that comes of full
access to shared language and shared culture.
Maybe we don't need the state to back us up on this. After all, a country is
not really a mother, we don't need its permission to exist, and another
definition of to liberate is to steal. Linnea and have existed quite well
together, thank you, without a bit of sanction from the state. As I've said,
we could certainly use some of the benefits the state offers those they
class (thank you Juliet) as more worthy than we are, but we can and do live
outside of those protections. But the thing is —despite these mean times
(thank you Lucia) I can't help but want to believe in the progression of
America into the country it says it is. I want to believe in social
revolution and transformation and waking up to a new day and all of that
glop. Why shouldn't I want that? Why shouldn't we all want that? Isn't that
finally what it's supposed to mean be an American, in the best, most
liberated sense of the word? And at the risk of sounding like Sally Fields,
is it wrong to want to be one of the loved? But no, let me rephrase...is it
wrong to want to be the child of a country capable of such love? It is,
after all, the country I want to remodel here, not myself, at least not in
this regard, and not the breathtaking invention of queer culture.
And so on Linnea and my anniversary I am thinking of love and sex and play
and work, and soaking in the mineral springs of another country. By tomorrow
morning we will be in Iceland and perhaps this will all look very small from
that view. In the meantime I must repeat the obvious, which is that the
atmosphere of my country lately feels more poisonous than sustaining— the
queer hating constitutional amendment frenzy just a tiny part of it—and yet
Linnea and I keep choosing each other and in doing so we keep freeing each
other from the constraints that might tell us our choice is not worthy of
the love of America.
Bjb 10 March 2003
[I will revive this forum, in some weekly form or another, upon our return.
Thanks for reading. ]
“Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on
Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long.” Leonard Cohen
_
Wedding Bell Blues #6
Tuesday 9 March
Barrie Jean Borich (and collaborators)
Tonight's offering is a compilation of interesting tidbits and impassioned ruminations from people who have written me over the past few days.
First, I want to comment on some of the news that showed up in today's mailbox. In Seattle, well-known sex columnist Dan Savage and a lesbian colleague brought their beloveds to city hall to apply for marriage licenses, and were denied. THEN, Mr. Savage inquired if he could apply for a license to marry his lesbian colleague even though "he didn't really like her." That license, of course, was approved. And so tell me again about how we can't redefine the definition of marriage because it is a sacred tradition?
Also, a friend wrote to tell me that the fall guy of my comments in yesterday's missive, Anderson Cooper, is gay and out. A quick Google search confirms this, along with the interesting information that he is the son of Gloria Vanderbilt, was the subject, as a babe, of a 1969 Diane Arbus portrait, is the object of obsession of one internet citizen who hopes he will agree to father her child, and is the former host of the TV Reality show "The Mole"—one of those programs I include in my constitutional amendment against things that gross me out. This led Linnea and I to wonder this evening if an out gay man might push the gross-out angle because he feels intimately aware of how it feels to be the target of revulsion? Or does the fact that he's gay in no way exempt him from being a snot? No conclusions yet, but one commenter did write to tell me she has affection for Anderson because she knows his mother, which leaves me predisposed to at least TRY to watch him next with the benefit of the doubt of an benevolent Auntie.
And finally, speaking of Aunties, I include below an eloquent letter from Linnea and my "nephew" Nik, who as some of you are aware has undergone a few transformations since first meeting Auntie Barrie and Uncle Linnea at the Mountain Dew infused age of 16. Nik (who is now 30) addresses an aspect of the queer wedding blitz that I have been thinking about but have yet to adequately address, namely —is it right to even call this a "same-sex" wedding debate? These proposed constitutional amendments, Dubya's as well as the state version approved today by a Minnesota Congressional Committee—insist that marriage must be reserved for one man and one woman. What does that mean in these days of increasingly fluid gender identity, especially in a state in which the human rights amendment includes the protection of transgender citizens?
Read on for Nik's words (with apologies for certain obvious font edits designed to make sure your e-mail filters don't bump us.)
Tomorrow, 10 March, is Linnea and my Vegas wedding anniversary, which I will commemorate here with the last essay of my week- long shock and spew.
bjb March 2004
***
Hey Barrie -
I just wanted to let you know that I have appreciated your thoughts on
queer marriage. While you may know, historically I tend to opt out on
political issues all together, I have found myself in moments of utter rage
with this one. This is interesting, as technically the issue will never
affect me directly. I mean, I intend to complete my transition with an
amended birth certificate which will allow me to marry,
heterosexually-ever-after. So, I think to myself... Why does this issue
really get my goat? (impacts to friends and loved ones aside)
While I am not as well spoken and politically savvy as you are in this
arena, I think it is my trans-perspective (if you will) that it is creating
both a disconnect from the issue yet a fury of anger as I witness all
that is going on.
You know me, I live a relatively straight life. Doing the
hetero-corporate-white-collar thing by day, queer-fetish
happy-martini-in-one-hand, cigar-in-the-other-type-guy (with strong lesbian
roots) by night. So I sat down here to try and get out the duality of this
life of mine and try to identify what it is that's really bugging me here. I
thought you might be interested in my thoughts, as I try to sort them out.
A scenario that keeps coming to my mind is a trans-couple I know of. Two ftm
dudes who are doing the trasnfag thing. They chose to amend only one birth
certificate so to that they could legally marry as "man" and "wife" even
though they are living and loving as man and man. And I wonder how this
would bode to those who are so against same-sex‚ marriage? Especially those
who sour at the mere thought of two men (or women) kissing. What about two
men—who used to be women—who are now married as man and wife, but
f*ck*ng like man and man? (Even I sometimes struggle getting my brain around
it.) Yet, at the end of the day, they have all the rights that same bio-sex
couples long for. Their rights granted by a system that was created to
support the traditional man/woman union demonstrating it's own out
datedness by its lack of recognition that bio-sex can be altered thus
throwing a who stick into the tradition of such union.
So I guess my question is— is this really about same-sex‚ marriage? Or is
it really about queer marriage? Sex can be amended. While being trans opens
the opportunity for me personally to fall into the man/wife perspective
(much to the delight of those who support transsexuals because they are
assimilating), it also allows others to bend it. Is this really about two
people of the same bio-sex having equal civil rights as two of opposite
bio-sex? Or is it about destroying this concept that a socially recognized
man and a socially recognized woman are the only valid union to be legally
recognized? I personally can think of plenty of trans/queer combinations
that would be able to legally marry as man/women (amended or not). Perhaps
those are the couples who should be standing on the steps of city halls
around the nation demonstrating to the country that this is a **queer**
civil rights issue, not just simply the same-bio-sex unions. We all deserve
the right to engage in a legal union with another, regardless of not only
sex, but gender and sexuality as well. And I hate to say it, but same
bio-sex couples are pretty vanilla in the grand spectrum of queer... yet
it's those couples who are so radically opposed. Interesting, I think.
Guess that's why it's bugging me. Thanks for reading. I would love to hear
your thoughts.
-NIK
[MY thoughts, btw, are that Nik has hit it smartly on the nose.:). --bjb]
__
Wedding Bell Blues #5
Monday 9 March
Barrie Jean Borich
[In the true spirit of the BLOG, this one is a little rough folks:)].
Linnea and I have been having an argument over the last few weeks over CNN’s
Anderson Cooper and the politics of revulsion. I think Anderson exhibits the
tiniest bit of squeamishness over the subject of LGBT sexuality. Linnea’s
thinks he’s playing devil’s advocate, wearing a persona appropriate to his
role as the Post-9/11-CNN-cutting-edge-30-something anchor.
I base my opinion on what seemed to me his obvious discomfort year or so
back, when Rosie O’Donnell came out. He interviewed Rosie on the morning
show and I swear to dog (I can’t say g-o-d after yesterdays’ comments,
right?) I saw him smirk, and he couldn’t even manage to say the word
lesbian.
But Linnea and my most recent conversation about Anderson has to do with his
coverage the week the Mayor of San Francisco started handing out those
renegade marriage licenses. I’m not even sure if it was the Mayor he was
interviewing at the moment that cut me, or one of the lawyers, or one of the
required family value twerps that the news shows always include on these
panels. It’s not the interviewee I can’t shake, but Anderson’s question,
which he repeated several times. I paraphrase here, but it was something
along the lines of, “But what do you say to the people who react with
REVULSION when they see these same-sex couples kissing. Because some people
find this REPULSIVE. They are REPULSED at the sight of men kissing men, and
women kissing women.”
Linnea says, well he’s right. Some people are repulsed by the thought of
what same-sex lovers do together, no matter if, aside from a bit of
anatomical variation, it is not really much different that what the majority
of heterosexuals who are doing it do.
But the revulsion of a few has long been the problem of many. My feeling is
that by saying it, again and again, Anderson Cooper (whose own sexual
preference is unknown to me) validated that revulsion, even if he is not
personally repulsed (or that twin opposite, which is illicitly turned on.)
Linnea thinks (if I understand her correctly) Anderson was just getting to
the real crux of the issue, bringing the messy truth out into open.
I honestly don’t have a clue which of us is right here, but this leads me to
think about how socially legitimate it is, still, for people to express
revulsion, or even refer to revulsion at the sight of something no steamier
than a same-sex courthouse kiss, and that out of this revulsion comes
permission to propose such things as constitutional amendments to keep us
illegal. To be repulsed is to cause disgust, queasiness, perhaps even public
vomiting. Isn’t this what Laura Bush means when she states she is “shocked”
but the new wave of same-sex marriages?
Linnea always brings up Quentin Crisp at this point in the conversation, who
said (and I paraphrase again, very likely badly) that they don’t hate US,
just what we DO. Well alright then. If they can legislate against us for
what we do (and very often do better than them, I suspect) then I would also
like to propose a few amendments myself, one for every little thing that
repulses me—no matter how personal or unsupportable, no matter if mentioned
in the holy texts of any faith.
And so I propose the following acts or items, or any person acting with
intent to commit support or preserve any of the following acts or items
shall be hereby prohibited:
Paris Hilton (with or without her video);
Public vomiting;
Semi-automatic machine guns;
TV shows where American celebrities eat worms;
White people who claim they were Native Americans “in a past life”;
The religious right and its minions;
Racist remarks made by my relatives;
School systems that allow American kids to graduate without learning to
read;
Ted Nugent;
Pro Football (Sorry Linnea, but this is MY amendment);
Sports mascots based on images of American Indians;
Fat jokes;
MacDonalds;
Viagra spam;
TV shows where people vote each other off the island;
War in Iraq;
President Bush and all his minions;
Fictional Elections;
Governor Pawlenty and his minions (most notably the ones who insist on
destroying public transportation);
Steak tartar;
Janet Jackson's Super Bowl performance costume (excluding the costume
malfunction which does not bother me);
Junk faxes;
Patchouli (Sorry—this puts me outside much of the lesbian fray, but it’s
always smelled to me like public vomiting);
Cleaning the bathroom;
Clothing decorated with American Flags;
People who neglect their dogs;
Gay republicans;
Republican Lesbians (all three of them);
Whatever Dubya and Laura do when they do it;
Web sites that sell term papers to college students;
DOMA;
Supposedly progressive politicians who voted for DOMA.
So what do you think Anderson Cooper. Are you as REPULSED as I am by all
those Republican Pachouli-wearing lesbians, feeding steak tartar to their
dogs as they send out unsolicited Viagra faxes and channel surf between the
Redskins game and the new Paris Hilton Video? There oughta be a law.
__
Wedding Bell Blues #4
Sunday 6 March 2004
Barrie Jean Borich
Today I am thinking that the debate over same-sex marriage in the media is all wrong. Reading through the letters in this morning's Minneapolis Star Tribune, the arguments are all more of the same tired conversation. "Gays should not marry because the Bible says gays should not marry" vs. "our relationships are just as sacred as theirs".
While some LGBT love matches MIGHT be sacred—whatever the word sacred means to any one individual— in some cases the opposite may just as well be true, meaning our relationships may be as much an abomination as theirs. It is HUMAN relationship we are talking about here. Real humans still really do clash and scratch and kiss and bite and make love and create family in any way they know how, just we've always done, and some days that's kind of sacred and some days it looks more like the devil's handiwork. I don't think the PR cover of simply "sanctifying" our relationships will help our cause in the long run as I also seriously doubt that unquestioning sanctification of heterosexual marriages has much chance of helping those relationships survive, when and if they ought to survive. GLBT lives do require the dignity that comes of being assumed to be full citizens, but I don't understand why, in terms of the fight for civil marriage, this should be anything but a secular discussion. What will help LGBT relationships in the long run is to let us at our civil rights, so we can get on with the mess of living as Americans are supposed to be able to live, in diverse dignity and choice.
Why do we keep dragging this discussion back to God. The news coming from San Francisco and Portland and even the unruly streets of Chicago is all about CIVIL marriage. Concrete civil rights are at stake. For instance—I lost my health insurance this Fall when my long-time beloved Linnea left the University to take a good job in the state community college system. As I am a freelance writer and teacher with pre-existing health conditions, this situation put us at risk. It's WRONG that in this rich and bomb-happy country anyone's basic health care needs are linked to either employment or marital status, but the fact is they are not only linked but soldered. The reason Linnea lost domestic partner benefits when she became a state employee is because the state of Minnesota, in blatant defiance of our state civil rights laws, TOOK THIS BENEFIT AWAY from same-sex domestic partners.
It took months of ridiculous paper shuffling delays, but I did manage to replace my health insurance with an expensive and high-deductible self-employed plan. Unlike the countless Americans suffering from the country's health care non-system, I am no longer at quite the risk I was when uninsured this Fall. And don't get me wrong—I know I am a lucky duck, both because I enjoy the health benefits of a thriving 17+ year old relationship and because I manage to make enough money to pay too much for my health insurance. But I am also pissed, not so much because of what I don't have but rather because of WHY I don't have it. I am no longer insured at anywhere near the rate I was during the tiny oasis of time when I so charmingly experienced what it feels like to have equal citizen benefits. And now, because all I can get is major medical coverage, its cost me 80 bucks just to see my doctor last month about a sinus infection. I'm not dying here, just taking note of the difference in my status and (the symptoms of the sinus infection aside) I can taste it in my mouth.
If I were legally (rather than what, metaphorically?) married to Linnea, who has a job with benefits, I wouldn't have to cough up 80-out-of-pocket bucks plus the price of meds to treat a sinus infection. Linnea and I don't fit through that narrow doorway of what is legally considered family —which I contend is not a sacred portal, but rather a legal loophole—so I have to either cough up the dough, add to charge card debt or avoid the doctor altogether. I'm lucky enough right now to be able pay, but I haven't always, and lots of people aren't. I have straight friends who felt perfectly married without legal sanction, but made it legal for no other reason than one of them needed access to health care. Linnea and I don't have that choice. But whether the best solution to this blatant unfairness is same-sex marriage or flexible domestic partnership law or a tear-down of American health care, my point today is simply that this is a civil injustice issue, and if smart people work at it the problem can be solved. Why mix it up with all this highly unprovable hoo-ha about God.
We are supposed to be a country that welcomes all faiths and even faithlessness. And surely most people must have received the e-mails by now listing all the OTHER things the Bible might be interpreted to say, and yet we have the sense to avoid imbedding into American law. For instance, here's one that came to me in an e-mail last week: "A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed" (Deut22:13-21). While there may be some Americans who believe such things (and I pray they are not my neighbors) such Bible-based belief is hardly a good reason to meddle with the constitution.
The Constitution of the United States already promises us that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." This means, in part, that as a country we may not insist that a religious-based life has more rights than a secular-based life. Therefore, using the interpretation of one subgroup's holy texts to deny the goodies of civil marriage to same-sex couples is deeply contrary to the American way. So is the proposed (vile and hateful) constitutional amendment to limit civil marriage to the increasingly suspect categories of one "man" and one "woman."
So to those who insist on continually dragging this public discussion about rights of citizenship discussion into the private realm of belief or disbelief in the Bible, what I say is this. Please— could you just get a room?
--
WEDDING BELL BLUES #3
I have many friends and acquaintances in the queer world who have long felt the issue of same-sex marriage is a red herring, an assimilationist back peddle, a dance with the conservative devil. I understand this view, up to a point. I used to feel much the same.
During the focused five years I spent wrestling with this question, in the form of my book My Lesbian Husband (which is less a soapbox argument for queer marriage than it is an attempt to understand how the long-time lesbian couple fits and does not fit into the American tableau of family and community ritual) I asked the same question many times. Are we married? Do Linnea and I wish to associate our long and thriving relationship with a dominant culture that has always excluded us?
I continue to think this is a good question, but not just for queers. It’s a question all conscious and progressive Americans should ask and keep asking about every one of our institutions. What is the definition of family? What are the rights and demands of the workplace? Why don’t we all have access to quality health care? How can we keep our society alive and pliable and alert to how all of the people are living their lives? Whatever the issue, we ought to be constantly asking who’s on the inside and who’s on the outside, and finally and most importantly who is excluded and why. For me this line of questioning has brought me to the conclusion that America is not something I must fight to enter, or choose to stay outside of, but rather that the definition of American must be recast to include me and mine along with a great many others still left out beyond the borders.
Which is finally the reason I have come to the position that same-sex couples MUST have access to that elusive marriage license. NOT because “fidelity” is a family or conservative value that queers must embrace in order to be finally accepted into the fold. The license to marry is not necessarily any more of a conservative issue than the license to drive. The right wing does not, as HomoCons such as Andrew Sullivan claim, own the notion of “fidelity” just as heterosexuals don’t own (as much as they are encouraged to believe they do) the gaseous and ever-shifting reality of American culture. Culture is by nature an evolving thing defined not from above but rather by the lives lived inside its climate. And fidelity—which means, simply, loyalty and allegiance—is a concept that takes many forms, not all of which look much like the traditional values version of the “marriage.”
The reason same-sex couples are excluded from the choice (not the obligation, or even the expectation but—read my lips—the choice) to enter into a legal civil marriage is the plain and unambiguous hatred and revulsion directed toward our self-defined fidelity to our homes, families, and abiding love for each other. These are loves that can be, in many cases, models of flexibility, creativity and communication, 100 times more groundbreaking than the old-packaged-as new headlines from the entertainment world announcing that some gay men are good at grooming and wardrobe selection and some lesbians have figured out how to make babies without sleeping with men.
The fight for same-sex marriage is not a red herring, is not a merely personal issue, and is not an acquiescence to the Republican agenda. It has sprung full born onto the steps of the San Francisco courthouse simply because one brave elected official—at what could still turn out to be a great risk to his political career—chose to defy the authority of which he is part by assuming LGBT people are among those citizens whose rights are protected by the state constitution. Whether any particular queer couple SHOULD marry is clearly a personal decision, and of course, some should not, for the same reasons some straight couples should not. But the new wave of matrimony as a form of civil disobedience is an historic moment in the history of GLBT liberation not because of what we should or should not choose, but rather because of WHY we are still forbidden the choice.
We are forbidden the marriage license because we are still publicly hated, and therefore intentionally shut out. We still are so hated by some sectors of this society that a sitting president has actually promised to amend the constitution rather then entertain the possibility of supporting our civil rights. We are still so hated that stagnant and vile threads of the dominant culture allow even our supposedly good-hearted Democratic presidential frontrunners to feel free to announce “I just don’t believe in it.” We will continue to be hated until all our public institutions are sufficiently examined, deconstructed, re-visioned, and finally made anew with the intent to include rather than exclude. It’s not that we aren’t already here, already “married,” already American. Rather it’s that we aren’t yet fully seen as such; we aren’t yet visible in the picture. That simple and profound piece of paper from the city hall is a concrete and radical step toward reclaiming America for what and who we really are.
Barrie Jean Borich
5 March 2004
--
Wedding Bell Blues #2
Dear Editor: [cc RT Rybak, Peter McLaughlin, Gary Schiff]
I am struck this morning by the curious beauty of news accounts from
Chicago, queer protesters crowding the streets to demand, of all things, a
marriage license. But even though the practical issues on the table—health,
bereavement and inheritance benefits as well as the simple inalienable
right to visit a sick beloved in the hospital—ought to be basic civil
rights, I don’t really believe “marriage” itself is the motivating point
here, any more than I believe all these new marriages will automatically
have any more longevity than spur-of-the-moment straight marriages would be
likely to have. Yet I do believe the wedding-related events of the past few
weeks are earth-shakingly significant, for the simple reason that access to
civil marriage is a rights issue, a visibility issue, a statement against
hate and a signifier of whether or not GLBT citizens really do, according to
our city and state, have a right to exist.
A couple like myself and my beloved may not, for any emotional or family
reasons, need to make another more “legal” wedding then the one we created
for ourselves in Las Vegas, six years ago this week, and we have no
questions, after more than 17 years, about the validity of the lives we
spend together. Still, we tear up when we see the news coverage of couples
lined up to marry in San Francisco, Portland, and upstate New York to speak
loud the love that once dared not speak its name, and we laugh in delight at
the coverage of GLBT protesters taking to streets of my home city of
Chicago to demand same-sex weddings NOW. I love these images because they
make my people visible in new, surprising, and deliciously diverse ways. I
think about my lesbian marriage every day in the most mundane and
un-fabulous manner, because I have the normal human need to be aware of my
own life. Now, all of sudden, my college freshmen composition students,
straight or queer, want to write papers on same-sex marriage, and straight
colleagues I pass in the halls of the many schools where I teach as an
adjunct are whispering in excitement over an issue which they don’t NEED to
be thinking about, but ARE thinking about. Suddenly my life is better woven
into the fabric of my communities, and this feels like positive change.
Which is why I fervently hope Minneapolis or Hennepin County or any
institution of local government who gets there first finds a way to disobey
the little laws, as the Mayors of other cities have done, and pay heed to a
higher law—not only our state law promising GLBT citizens equal rights, but
the greater law demanding we simply do the right thing. Let’s join the
beauteous swell making my GLBT people, and all of your relationships to us,
truly visible for the first time in American history. This could turn out
to be a very nice anniversary present.
Sincerely,
Barrie Jean Borich
Author and Teacher
___
Wedding Bell Blues #1
Dear Mayor Rybak: [cc: Gary Schiff Minneapolis Star and Tribune]
They've been doing it for weeks now in San Francisco. Every day a new city
is doing it. Today they started doing it in Portland.
When will Minneapolis jump in? When will you do what your San Francisco
brother has done? Let's have lesbian and gay marriage HERE and NOW. This
city NEEDS some sort of display of our progressive identity amidst a state
that has turned against us. Every since Wellstone's death there has been a
pall hanging over what was once one of the most progressive locales in the
country. Meanwhile the national Democratic party front runners don't have
the guts to stand up fully and without apology for basic GLBT civil rights,
even while the President they hope to defeat proposes one of most hateful
constitutional amendments in American history. Even our dear Wellstone was
a wimp on this issue.
Progressive politicians such as yourself have walked in our parades for
years now, and have accepted our handshakes and good will in engage for what
you tell us is your support. So now here's your chance to walk the walk.
Let's get Minneapolis on the map while this issue is still hot and
happening.
I am a writer who has written a book on living in a long-term lesbian
"marriage." The book is about my beloved's and my long conversation about
whether we want to word "marriage" to describe the life we have built
together. (The book is called _My Lesbian Husband_ and is coming in the
mail to you.) We finally decided that we DID want to call ourselves
"married" because it was the only way to make our commitment visible in a
society, and within families, incapable of understanding who we are to each
other without the weight of common and shared societal language--such as the
word "marriage." Six years ago we were married in Las Vegas, without the
license. Lately we've talked about going to San Fransciso get married
again....but we've already had the experience of traveling to our wedding.
It would mean so much more to be able to do it here, casually and
intimately, in the city that we claim as our home.
Do this and we will be happy to participate with you, loudly and vocally.
My beloved, Linnea Stenson, is the Grand Marshall of this year's Twin Cities
Pride and would love to use some of the attention of her office to publicize
our cities vocal embrace of GLBT civil rights, as well the reawakening of
Minneapolis to the energy and activism of the pre-Republican coup years.
How about March 10th? We've been together for 17+ years, but March 10 is our
six year wedding anniversary (and the day before we hop on a plane to
Iceland for our anniversary trip.) Give us something to celebrate.
So do it Mayor Rybak. Lift the conservative pall. Join the wedding party.
Please.
Sincerely,
Barrie Jean Borich and Linnea Stenson
