arguing with homophobes: i love my dreams

Last Thursday I went to a lecture called "How to argue with homophobes: feminist advice for troubled times". It was an enlightening experience, largely because I found some kindred spirits who feel the same way I do about some things, namely, same-sex marriage. You see, I have come to the conclusion that I don't really agree with the concept of marriage in general (this is not to say I will never get married, well, married according to my own definition of marriage anyway). I just happen to believe that the "institute" of marriage has changed so significantly over the last few decades, as has the whole family concept - this is not just because of changing patterns in religious thought/belief/practice, but because of changing economies and job markets, a higher-mobility society, different family dynamics, etc. I mean everyone knows that marriages are failing left, right and center. We have large numbers of single-parent families, unstable family/home situations/etc. The point I'm trying to get to is that there are alternative ways to live as a couple or as a family. However, because I am gay, I feel I HAVE to fight for same-sex marriage - to actually say to the straight world that I don't agree with marriage as a concept would only be co-opted by the enemy - you know what I mean.

The other interesting thing about this lecture was the concensus that we might be fighting the wrong battle when it comes to same-sex marriage. It's not necessarily the right to marry that we should be concerned about, it is actually being considered "persons" under the law. And, if you look at our history, it was not all that long ago when women were finally considered persons. So I suspect that us gay people are a long way from being considered people.

I've been thinking about this. When I look at myself and my circle of friends and how we process these issues, we tend to focus on the concrete things that affect us as individuals, or as part of a homosexual couple. This makes sense - we want to marry the person we love, but we can't. We want to share benefits (and we can now, to an extent). We want to be welcomed home for Christmas without being judged. We want to hold our partner's hand in public without fear of the consequences. It takes a certain process of thought to tie it all together to fight the war to get us recognized in the constitution. But I suppose it's these little battles, like same-sex marriage, that will get us there.

Anyway, of course there was a small discussion around the whole purpose of marriage being to procreate. Why no one ever talks about infertile straight couples, or couples that choose not to have children, or people who marry too old to have children, is beyond me - their marriages are still legitimate. But whatever. This conversation carried over into a dream I had the other night:

I was a nun in training. Me and the other trainees were told that we had one final test to perform to prove our devotion to God - we had to procreate (I understand that this is completely all wrong, but hey, it's a dream). I was SO angry that to go through this. I couldn't understand how it would prove anything. But, I went along with it. Us nuns were paraded into a room and we were each given a white poker chip. Then they shuffled in a bunch of men. We got to choose which one we procreated with by offering our poker to chip to whomever we fancied. Well, there was one man who was actually a woman pretending to be a man. Of course I picked up on this right away and offered her my poker chip. Then we got down to business. When the other nuns realized what had happened, I was whisked away to a small, solitary cell to recover from what they consider a very traumatizing experiencing. I was crying, not because of the trauma, but because I was upset they took me away from her. They mistook my tears for pain and fear, and excused me from the procreation excercise. I was elated.