I dreamed that Ingrid and I were visiting Ingrid's relatives in Arkansas. She had a couple of old friends there who she was still in touch with, and one of them was a guy who, for complicated legal or logistical reason, needed to get married. So somehow it got decided that Ingrid should marry him, right away, within the next few days.
At first I went along with this, and didn't think it was a big deal. But as the dream went on and the wedding plans moved forward, I got increasingly upset. It started occurring to me that Ingrid's marriage to this guy would have real legal standing, greater legal standing than our domestic partnership. And the wedding was happening in a church, apparently to make Ingrid's fundamentalist relatives and the groom's fundamentalist relatives happy... and I was getting very weirded out by the fact that Ingrid was going along with this. The dream ended with me at the church just before the wedding, feeling like I had to keep our relationship a secret even though most people pretty much knew about it (a bunch of the other wedding guests were glaring at me), and not sure if I was supposed to sit in the front row with the family or sit in the back as if I was just another guest, and getting very freaked out and and hurt and increasingly sure that this was a very bad idea.
This was obviously a pretty upsetting dream, and I was very relieved when I woke up (although bummed that Ingrid had already left for work and I couldn't ask her to reassure me). I also woke up remembering that, in fact, California law says that domestic partners have to dissolve their partnership before one of them can re-marry -- which helped bring me back to the reality that Ingrid would, in fact, never do this. (It sometimes takes me a while to realize that my dreams aren't real and don't make sense.)
Reality note: Ingrid has fundie relatives in Mississippi, not Arkansas. I have no idea why my dream-brain translated that into Arkansas.
I have to admit that I'm ambivalent about "domestic partnerships" and "civil unions" and other similar legal constructs designed to afford same-sex couples some/most/all of the legal benefits of marriage without actually allowing them to marry.
I mean, good for them for making the effort to do away with some forms of discrimination. Heath insurance coverage and legal standing and adoption are important, and I'm glad that same-sex couples are "allowed" to have these things in some states. That's a good thing.
Here's what bugs me though. I have no reason to believe that the love that same-sex partners feel for each other is any different from the love that heterosexual partners feel. I have no first-hand experience in this area, being terminally hetero, but call it a hunch. I just have this sense that human beings feel real, human love for their partners regardless of their sexual orientation. To deny that, I feel, would be to imply that some people are not fully human, wouldn't it?
Now, I'm not a marriage expert or anything, but isn't marriage supposed to be all about love? Isn't that the point? So what does the sex of the partners have to do with it? That's just a matter of what's in our pants. Marriage is supposed to be about what's in our hearts.
Posted by: Buck Fuddy | April 04, 2007 at 04:39 PM