The Married State
Capitalist Pig
I shall not soon forget an evening I had with my friend Andrew Sullivan, the
most eloquent of the gay conservatives, about a decade ago. The issue of
homosexual marriage was then just beginning to stir. Look, Andrew, I said in
effect, are you sure about this? We've just reached a point where America is
more open to, and more reconciled with, its gay citizens than any society in
history. The AIDS crisis didn't lead to panic or quarantine. Gay-bashing
politicians have learned that the tactic rebounds on them. The armed forces
are at least willing to compromise, and might have gone further than that if
not for Bill Clinton's cowardice. And, just at this moment, you want to
increase the stakes and demand not just equal rights but identical rights,
in an area where the mainstream already feels vulnerable. I may have added
something flippant about the idea of marriage somehow missing the point of
being gay. (In other words, glad as I am not to be gay, if I were I would
think, well, at least I don't have to go through all that.)
It was as well for me that this discussion took place at my own dining-room
table. Make no mistake: This is an argument about the socialization of
homosexuality, not the homosexualization of society. It demonstrates the
spread of conservatism, not radicalism, among gays. For the infuriated
Andrew, it became clear, the achievement of the married state was the
consummation (all right, excuse the expression) and not the overstatement,
of the advances in recognition that had already been won. As to my second
point, or observation, how dare I imply that the gay state was somehow
promiscuous or irresponsible?
Well, I do know how I had allowed myself to run away with that last idea,
but on reflection this had been largely an aspect of my identification of
homosexual life with youthful narcissism and had little bearing on the
choices being made by, or offered to, people of my now advanced age. What do
I really know about this, when I ask myself? I know that homosexuality is
innate in our species, and perhaps in other species also, and thus that it
is nonsense to speak of it as an offense to "nature," and nonsense on stilts
to speak of it as an offense to any presumable Creator (belief in whose
intentions is Andrew's problem and not mine). I know that homosexuality is a
form of love, not just a form of sex, and thus that it deserves respect if
not reverence. I know that our theocratic enemies are, and that our former
totalitarian enemies were, ugly and paranoid on the point.
W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman -- at home.
I also know many "married" homosexual couples, either from life or from
literature. Thekla Clark's beautiful profile of her friends W.H. Auden and
Chester Kallman ("Wystan and Chester") is indeed a portrait of a marriage:
full of storms and miseries but undoubtedly both a stable life-relationship
in itself, and a bulwark for other heterosexual couples: godsons and
god-daughters, adopted "nephews" and "nieces." Gore Vidal and Howard Austen
had played the same role in the lives of many of their friends, and of their
friends' children, even if Gore himself still has aesthetic and
philosophical objections to being defined as gay, and even if I suspect
Auden would have felt somewhat absurd declaring that he was married.
So, even if I did not feel much more strongly about an unmolested
Constitution than I do about most things, I would first have to answer the
question: How do gay marriages threaten or challenge heterosexual ones? And
with this comes another question: Why are the advocates of the one and only
and immemorial man-woman marriage apparently so chronically insecure? On the
same floor as the Hitchens family live two chaps, who are as clearly spliced
as any couple I know. They hold responsible Washington jobs, they take an
interest in the civic health of the city, and they help raise the children
of a previous marriage into which one of them had entered. (Never forget, by
the way, the forgotten hell that was the consequence of pressure for gay
people to try to marry heterosexuals and make a go of things.)
In any domestic emergency involving my wife or daughter, I would probably
turn first to these neighbors. The only discomfiting thing I find about
their domestic arrangements is their practice of clasping hands for grace
before meals. I can't make myself feel that my own marriage is undermined,
or rather would be undermined, if they could legally tie the knot. Would I
dance at their wedding? Undoubtedly, and always assuming I would be asked.
Would my tenderly nurtured daughter go into shock? I can't see it happening.
On the other hand, if Charlize Theron and her beau were to wed and to move
in next door, neither I nor my wife (assuming that the beau is the one
pictured at the Oscars) would have complete peace of mind. Indeed, the Ten
Commandments specifically caution me only against other heterosexual
marriages. I say they warn me, because these injunctions only bother to warn
men against coveting their neighbor's wives, or indeed any other of his
animals or chattels. If this is all that god understands about the human
nature he is said to have set in motion, we may all hope to slip by.
I share many of the misgivings that are expressed about opportunistic
grandstanding by judges or mayors, but surely this problem, and not
sexuality, ought to be the province of constitutional law. The Texas sodomy
statute, for example, should have been struck down or repealed not as a
"rights" or "equal protection" matter, but because it was an attempt to
instate the teachings of a book that not all of us regard as holy, and to
make an establishment of religion. Nothing can possibly violate the letter
and spirit of the Constitution more than that.
When I become bored or irritated by the gay marriage battle -- and I do, I
sometimes do -- I like to picture the writhing faces and hoarse yells of the
mullahs and the fanatics. Godless hedonistic America, not content with
allowing divorce and pornography, has taken from us our holy Taliban and our
upright Saddam. It sends Jews and unveiled female soldiers to our lands, and
soon unnatural brotherhood will be in the armed forces of the infidels. And
now the godless have an election where all they discuss is the weddings of
men to men and women to women! And then I relax, and smile, and ask my
neighbors over, to repay the many drinks and kind gestures that I owe them.
Mr. Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His book "Thomas Jefferson" is
forthcoming in the "Eminent Lives" series, from HarperCollins.