Comments on: Trois Hongroises

By: BiB

BiB — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 02:44:02 +0000

Marsha, apologies (again. Keep not getting round to things these days) for taking such an age to reply. Where were we? The Royal Wedding? No, no, sorry. Gay marriage. Do you know, I must say that a good many years ago, when it seemed like a distant prospect, I didn’t give that much of a toss myself and, if I’m remembering my gay contemporaries’ attitudes right, neither did they. I’m sure I’ve mentioned here before that my ex met a much older gay couple in London just before the legislation was about to come in and they planned to be down the Town Hall on day 1. For practical reasons too, because marriage, I guess, stopped the state getting its hands on oodles of their cash if one of them croaked – though, actually, on this point, surely a will would get round that. Still, it wouldn’t have been automatic without a will and outside marriage. I suppose that was the difference – but also, because they were very much from a different generation who’d grown up not taking anything for granted, they wanted to make the most of the new rights they’d been given. And, personally, even though I won’t evangelise and do the gay equivalent of bible-thumping and speaking out against those gays who DON’T marry, it seems like such an obvious right to have, now that it’s here, that it’s very well worth protecting and, as in the case of California, fighting for.

By: marshaklein

marshaklein — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 21:08:18 +0000

This is a really interesting comments thread (is that the right term?) which has made me think about all sorts of related things in the last couple of days – everything from why a married women who doesn’t take her husband’s surname talks about keeping her ‘own’ name (it isn’t, it’s her father’s so she’s still defined in terms of the males in her family) to whether the whole notion of ‘marriage’ is changing (yes and no!) Also, I hope my previous comment did not come across as being against gay couples having children. I’m not – I just meant that having children inevitably alters the dynamics of any relationship.

Best wedding I ever attended was Anglo-Finnish. Restrained, elegant and the pastor had the most wonderful bass-baritone voice.

By: BiB

BiB — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 12:31:45 +0000

I went to an Anglo-Polish wedding in London once which was very good fun. I was called upon, as the person who knew three words of any foreign language, to translate the best man’s speech into Polish for the mother of the bride. Seeing as it mentioned both the death of her husband and the death of her granddaughter, I’m afraid there were tears all over the shop, though perhaps that was my grammar. Anyway, there were Polish songs and there was dancing, so I was happy.

Yes, maybe a gradual approach is better. Let’s get some legal recognition of gay relationships first and then perhaps go on tweaking or making improvements with time. When I was looking at that German discussion of Homoehe, there was talk of already amending one tax rule for married gay couples, but you can be well sure that it wasn’t the one about granting married persons’ allowance/deduction/whatever it’s called.

By: narrowback

narrowback — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 04:17:48 +0000

here in the States you can substitute the town hall experience with a venue/ceremony of your choosing. You then have to have the officiating individual certify on a document that the “marriage” ceremony took place. You still have to obtain a license from the civl authorities but that can been done in a fashion similar to renewing your driver’s license sans any ceremonial conotation…and I think that’s the crux of the problem here in the states

Bib, no we don’t currently have civil unions here in Illinois. Some cities and Cook County have adopted a domestic partnership “registration” but in and of itself it doesn’t accord any civil or legal rights. However, the registration is recognized by some employers and other institutions for purposes of insurance benefits, family leave, etc.

The core of my discussion with my country buds (btw I just have to send you a pic of me feeding the goats) was whether the drive for “marriage” in the context described above as opposed to “civil union” only inflames the opposition and would are chances for success be improved if we just dropped the term “marriage”.

Our conclusion? Religion should stay out of politics and politics should stay out of religion…the state should legally recognize our unions – civil unions – and if the churches don’t care to – fuck em. Like we could give a shit

would you believe that I also perused that BNP list? Gawd knows who I thought I’d find tho I did have some doubts about a guy from East Belfast I met some years ago…

worst wedding I ever attended was a polish one here in chicago… a broiling un-airconditioned church in august with a lot of extraneous ceremony that I’d not encountered in the irish and italian versions

By: BiB

BiB — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 01:17:14 +0000

Mr D, not sure. I have been to a French wedding, which seriously wasn’t going to happen in a church, the father of the bride being a convinced (and English) atheist and her mother being an equally convinced atheist of Jewish origin and the daughter herself not giving a toss and being about 70 months pregnant. But I do remember there being fuss about her having to pretend she lived at her father’s gaff so she could marry in the sweet little town hall there. I know France is big on its ‘laïcité’ but don’t know whether it applies to marriage too.

I scrabbled around looking for that BNP member list at first but soon got bored a) because it took so long not to find an overloaded site and b) because when I could finally open it, it took me about half an hour just to scroll as far as Aardvark. Rest assured, I was NOT expecting to find your name on there.

By: Mr D

Mr D — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 19:38:37 +0000

Am I right in thinking that straight marriages in France – and for that matter also Germany and probably many other places – are officially civil? You have to do the town hall thing, and the church is optional?

On the other topic: yeah, I was shocked when I realised what I’d written and how it sounded. I had to double-check that my name wasn’t on that BNP members list. But I can take comfort in knowing that it doesn’t represent who I am and what I believe. My friends suggested I should spend less time staring at the TV screen, so that I have more time to think instead of just being bombarded with stuff and allowing my brain to go on holiday. I can also see homophobia coming from all parts of society in Britain. I do, however, stand by my Copenhagen comment. I’ve never heard of any white-Dane homophobia, whereas I’ve heard (and experienced) abuse from young men with an immigrant background. There are two issues here, though: one is a question of reporting. The second is that it’s not skin colour but culture. For instance, most of the Turks in Denmark are from very conservative villages in the east of the country (they’re mainly Kurds, in fact). Add that background to being put down constantly by Denmark’s politicians and journalists, and of course they want to find another group to attack. But anyway, I hope we can draw a line under this now.

By: BiB

BiB — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 17:41:05 +0000

Marsha, nonsense. You are as qualified to comment as anyone else and non-gayers have just as much right to comment on gayness as gayers themselves. And vice versa. We’re all one big happy family, after all. And gayness (or straightness) is only one aspect of the human condition and… oh god, I can feel myself wanting to write something nasty about Melanie Phillips. But, yes, with regard to what the church has to say about gayness, I’m afraid I’m in the fuck-’em club too. Not that I that much mind them saying it, in a way, as, unless one wants to spend one’s life in tears hiding under the sofa, you can’t listen to all attacks on gaiety and take them personally/seriously. And, obviously, I know a squillion people who are religious and don’t mind at all that their faith has it, amongst other things (many of them good, of course, and I still think of myself as Christian, culturally), that gays are wicked. (I used to follow this sort of thing much more closely but I believe some encyclical or other from the Vatican downgraded gays from inherently wicked and said just gay acts themselves are.) (I agree, actually. They can be well wicked if you’re lucky.) But these pronunciations are pointless, aren’t they? Gay people simply exist. There are no two ways around it. And there aren’t even that many of us. And if a religion thinks, by being one-size-fits-all about things that it can, in its own eyes, perfect humanity, well, it should probably grow up, shouldn’t it? Anyway, even within a faith, people pick and choose the bits they want and don’t want, and more power to their elbow. As an atheist, I simply don’t care two hoots about what a religion has to say about me loving the Russian.

Narrowback, and have they got the right to legalise their partnership in some way where they are? I remember reading one blogger – couldn’t find it now if I tried – who wrote about the whole Proposition 8 thing. He was straight and conservative, as he put it. But he argued in favour of all marriages being civil. Getting the religion out of it altogether, at least as far as the legality was concerned. Mind you, if, knowing the Lutherans, they do start allowing gay church weddings, it might be a bit of a hoot to go to one. Must befriend some gay Norwegians immediately.

By: marshaklein

marshaklein — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 10:17:33 +0000

I’m hugely unqualified to comment, but that’s never stopped me in the past…
It seems to me that the difference lies more in the inability of straight people to easily pigeonhole the partners in a gay marriage/partnership. It is, even in these supposedly enlightened times, still generally assumed that in a male/female relationship, the male is the dominant partner (the question ‘what is the occupation of the head of the household?’ when directed at me still means ‘what does your husband do?’ and not just because he IS the main wage earner. There seems to be a great fascination among some straight people for working out which partner is the ‘wife’ (or ‘husband’ in a lesbian couple) ie the submissive or dominant one. The matter of producing children undoubtedly complicates things (it complicates EVERYTHING!) but I’m at a loss to understand exactly why a gay couple are viewed as different to a childless, straight couple. I think Narrowback makes a good point above – hell, I wasn’t allowed to marry in the Catholic church (Brian is technically Catholic) because I’m not baptised – although I suppose, for some people legal recognition alone isn’t enough, although personally I feel that if the Christian church can’t accept people for who they are, fuck ‘em.

By: narrowback

narrowback — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 01:06:07 +0000

I had an interesting discussion of the topic with my Thanksgiving Holiday hosts, a gay couple of 15 years who live on a farm in a VERY rural part of the state… the princpal point they made was putting aside the religious conotations of a church wedding, what’s the difference between a civil partnership and a civil marriage as long as the state gurantees the same rights/privledges to both? Both governmental actions take place in the same city clerks office in the basement of city hall…it’s not as if we want to troop down to Our Lady of the Fourteen Virgin Martyrs to have the parish priest throw some holy water on us.

By: BiB

BiB — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 23:02:02 +0000

Good points, Geoff. In the past, I used to think, “If folks’ objection is just to the name, then let them come up with another name.” But, yes, fuck that. I’m not sure if Eingetragene Lebenspartnerschaft sounds very romantic (or catchy) either but it is referred to as Homoehe mostly anyway which pretty much tells it like it is. I was just on a website and commenters describing Germany’s gay marriage said it had all the obligations of regular marriage and none of the perks!