In which Andrea Takes It Personally

I have what you might call a conventional marriage, in that I’m a woman married to a man, and we have a little boy and a few cats and a mortgage and a station wagon.  This conventional marriage is partly to blame for why I’m so late in posting my contribution for Blog for Equality Day. 

For those of you who aren’t privileged enough to enjoy the Exalted State of a conventional marriage, let me tell you:  the blessed institution comes with an awful lot of inequality built into it, and for starters there’s apparently this whole section that got left out of the executive summary I read before I spoke those vows that says if you’re the one in the marriage with boobs, basically taking care of the baby is your responsibility; whereas the other one, the one without boobs?  He can change his plans at the last minute to have dinner with colleagues and then work late at the office.  So:  sorry this post comes at the end of a very, very long day.

I used to be totally mystified by the stupid right-wing rhetoric about “defending marriage” or “saving marriage.”  When I first heard someone use that phrase, I think I just snorted bewilderedly at the idea of legions of straight marriages exploding in messy divorce as husbands and wives everywhere looked at images of gay people being married at city hall on TV and immediately saw that the Exalted State they thought they were enjoying had in fact become a Prison of Inequality and that A Better Option was now available — “See you later, honey!  I’m off to Boston to find true happiness!” I imagined that that door slamming on the Suburban American Marriage would be like the slamming door at the end of Ibsen’s Doll’s House, shocking the audiences of the late 19th century with the heretical notion of women’s autonomy. 

But that’s not what the rhetoric is about at all, of course.  The bigots aren’t out to preserve their own marriages from any outside threat of temptation or pollution or individual empowerment – they’re trying to preserve a legal privilege for themselves.  What they really want to “save” is the complex set of civic, social, fiscal and legal definitions that afford them an advantage over people who don’t wear wedding bands.  They value the Exalted State because, well, it’s exalted.  Over others.

Can you imagine the capitalist classes being so bald in their attack on the middle and working classes?  If the estate tax had been nicknamed, say, the “Defense of Wealth” act, instead of the “death tax”?  Preserve our privilege!  Don’t share it with anyone else!  While we’re at it, let’s bring back feudal serfdom, and the droit du seigneur!

Before my husband and I were married we lived for several years in New York as a Domestic Partnership, a type of legally protected long-term commitment that could also be outlawed by the proposed Marriage Protection Amendment.  Without it, we couldn’t have afforded to pay for separate health insurance policies.  In all honesty, claiming the tax benefit of a single return was one of the big reasons why we officially tied the knot when we did — invoking civic sanction and recognition for a committed relationship that had already stood the test of six years, four apartments, five different jobs, thousands of miles of travel, and a new kitten.  We got to ask the District Justice who married us to please take out all the mentions of God from the ceremony, and we’ve never asked for any other kind of authoritative blessing on the union – what we got was the real deal, a civil marriage, something so simple and so obvious.

Here’s some of what it gives us the right to do:

• If one of us is critically injured or ill, the other one can visit at the hospital.
• We can buy health insurance together at a discounted rate.
• We can file tax returns that accurately reflect the fact that one of us makes much more money than the other, and that two of us live mostly on a single income.
• We can call ourselves a family, and no one gives it a second thought.

Pretty exalted stuff, don’t you think?  You can see why someone would want to deny others these privileges, can’t you?  No?

Neither can I.

Please — don’t let this farce go any further.  Contact your senator and let them know:  SB1250 should never, ever pass a vote.  Thanks.