We all know of the great divide between gays and lesbians in the face of the vast number of people who oppose gay/lesbian marriages. I think the gay world did a lousy job of selling the idea of g/l marriage. Little recognition was taken of the centuries of sacred tradition behind the word marriage. It stirred up a hornet’s nest because the word marriage carries so many levels of sanctity, religiousness, mythology, and yes, fear.
In the story, a monarch from one kingdom would marry a princess from another country, and the two countries would become one for all intents and purposes. Marriage was and is a powerful, sacred and social institution.
What gays and lesbians are fighting is not just against their opponents, but against the sanctity of a sacrosanct custom. They really are fighting a battle of semantics. What you call a thing gives power to that thing. The word is mightier than the sword, and that word is marriage.
Many people will support civil unions, but they will not support gay and lesbian marriages. Just as profane words have great power, so does the word marriage. We all know the power of racial or religious epithets. Don Imus learned the power of a few words. He cost her his lucrative job.
My advice is: do it and don’t call it marriage. Predominantly, the word marriage meant a religious ceremony, an event sanctioned by the church. Use semantics to your advantage, not to your detriment. Remove the letter m from marriage and substitute gl, g for gay, l for lesbian, and you have the word glarriage. An exclusively g/l activity. Tony and Hal say, “We’re having a glarriage on Sunday. I hope you can be there. Mary and Louisa had a beautiful glarriage ceremony last week.”
Do not fight against the sacred words. Make up your own word. Don’t always look for “to your face” confrontations. Realize the power of the word marriage. One in two marriages ends in divorce. So why do heterosexuals fight so much against the concept of gay marriage? Because the word marriage is almighty. It’s sacred, man. The word divorce often means failure; the word marriage means success. To some it means the ball and chain. Marriage is a rite, not a right.
If you want to be dazzled, you have my blessing. Let’s use new words to fight the old words that are so loaded with controversial baggage that they sink under their own weight. Many heterosexual couples live for years as unmarried couples and are perfectly happy. Some fear marriage and its burden of legal and social responsibilities, as they should.
Fight for the garage. Fight for sanity. Gays and lesbians should not seek to co-opt all heterosexual institutions and icons. That is not the way to progress, to be recognized and accepted. Don’t fight your opponents head on; go around them. Get yours. Get in your own car. Gays and lesbians should have their own institutions and icons. Then they can say to Sally and Bill, “You can’t be glarriage. That’s our thing. You’ve got your stupid, worn-out wedding buggy; we’ve got the latest glariage. Get lost.”
Even my computer’s spell checker has been adjusted so that it doesn’t flag glarriage as a misspelled word. It used to give me the possible alternative of the word junk or garage. You fight words with words. A heterosexual might say, “Oh, I don’t care if Barry and Jim get smitten. That’s their thing. I’d be furious if I thought they were going to try to get married. Over my dead body.”
The same is true of the abortion debate that has torn this country apart for the last fifty years. The controversy has deep religious roots. Much of the problem has been one of semantics. The words used in the debate are loaded with high points. The phrase “fight for life” moves people. “The fetus is a living person.” Try to fight those words.
Why do you think Republicans fighting to repeal the estate tax call it an estate tax? Because they realize that people don’t care too much about the word inheritance, but they prick up their ears when they hear the word death. That word is pregnant with meaning, I bet. Words have power. More power than policies or ideas.