Proud Marry, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise

June 27, 2009 Martha Thomases 2 Comments

I like New York in June. How about you?

And one of the things I like most is the annual Gay Pride Parade that takes place on the last Sunday of the month (tomorrow!). It’s the culmination of a month of Gay Pride events, including parades in Queens, themed author appearances at area bookstores, and the incursion of happy gay tourists in Greenwich Village, Chelsea, and the city in general.

This year, there’s even more excitement than usual. Between the time I’m writing this (Thursday morning) and the time you can first read this (Saturday morning), the New York State Senate is supposed to vote on legalizing marriage between two people of the same gender.

Because our state government is even more dysfunctional than yours, I’m not holding my breath, nor messing with my deadline, waiting to see what happens. I’m kind of outraged that the civil rights of a group of people are subject to the vote of the legislature and not automatically protected by the Constitution. However, since I’m frequently awake and read the newspapers, I’m always kind of outraged.

The Gay Pride Parade appeals to me as a mammal. It’s a celebration of the body. Usually, the weather is gorgeous, and there is a plethora of beautiful people with very few clothes, dancing, marching, basking in the sunshine. There are also thousands of people, less conventionally beautiful, wearing very few clothes, dancing, marching and basking in the sunshine. After watching for a few minutes, anyone with a warm-blooded pulse will experience joy, and a pride, not necessarily about one’s own sexuality, but in having a body at all.

Bodies are wonderful things. I don’t go anywhere without mine. Bodies permit us a multitude of pleasures. We can taste, hear, smell, see and touch. If we’re lucky, we can share these senses with other people.
When I was a young feminist, back in the early 1970s, I had no desire to get married. I thought marriage was a tool of the patriarchy, an institution designed to control female sexuality and guarantee the property rights of men. I still think that’s part of the truth.

However …

For those of us who aren’t in college anymore (as I was in those aforementioned early 1970s), we have to make some choices in our lives. After paying a lot of attention to my relationships, I learned that they were infinite in their variety. There were people with whom I wanted to have sex, people with whom I wanted to talk, people I loved, and people with whom I could work well together.

Sometimes categories overlapped. Sometimes I liked to talk to someone I also wanted to sleep with. Sometimes I worked with someone to whom I was attracted. Sometimes I worked with someone I liked talking to.

And when I found someone who fit all these categories (and more!), we moved in together. It was so much more efficient to have this person in the same household. And when we decided the relationship worked, and we wanted our dishes to match, we got married.

My relationship with my husband is unique. It has nothing to do with anyone else’s relationship. What works for us has nothing to do with what does – or doesn’t – work for you. If circumstances change, and I enter into another, similar relationship, it will be uniquely different from this one.
We never vowed sexual fidelity but (as far as I know) that’s how things have worked out. We didn’t get together because of a desire to have children, but that’s how things have worked out. In other words, we didn’t get married because we wanted to enter into a holy sacrament.

To the extent that I believe in marriage, it’s because I think my community benefits from stable households. My husband and i take care of each other, and that means we’re able to better take care of the civic responsibilities of our neighborhood, our country and our planet.

None of this has anything to do with what we like to do in bed. Not only do you not want to know, but i insist you refrain from telling me what you like (unless I’m very drunk, and Michael Davis is listening, and it involves applesauce). But I do want you to be happy, and if that means you want to get married, then that’s what I want for you.

And if you need help picking out a china pattern, just ask.

Media Goddess Martha Thomases hopes to be outside for tomorrow’s Gay Pride Parade because she’s been cooped up enough from all the rain.