Managed to lose this one yesterday. Nice column by John Corvino that puts many of my prior statements on the role of marriage in society into sharp focus:
Two decades ago, when I first came out of the closet, my mother had an irritating habit of referring to my boyfriend as my “friend.”
You could almost hear the scare-quotes around the word as she would speak it. “This is John’s, um, ‘friend.’”
. . . .
Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when Mark (my partner of seven years) and I were visiting my parents in Texas. We stopped by the large salon where Mom recently started working.
I’d visited the place before, but Mark hadn’t, so Mom grabbed him by the hand and started introducing him around. “Hey, everybody—I want you to meet my son-in-law.”
Corvino and his partner are not married, and even if they, the laws in his parents' home state wouldn't recognize it, but that's not what's important here. It's the familial and social recognition of their relationship as being the same as any married straight couple's that helps change the boundaries of what we accept.
It also touches on the issues I raised in my post on First Kisses: by putting ourselves into the social reality of "couples" as it exists, we change that reality. No apologies, no excuses: that's just the way it is.
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