Sailboats, thanksgiving, and growing up loving lesbians

I've been thinking about four women who formed two couples in my childhood. I've been thinking about Jane and Carla, Christine and Rachel. (No, not real names). I've been thinking about them in terms of explaining how it is that I, a hetero man, became so focused on gay and lesbian rights.

Until my parents divorced when I was six, we lived in Santa Barbara (my father taught at the university). Most of my parents' friends were academic couples. Somehow, early on, little Hugo figured out that adults seemed to come in pairs, just like my mother and father. In my life, it was obvious that sometimes a pair could be two women. (If my parents had any good gay male friends, I don't remember them). But I do remember Jane and Carla vividly. They had a sailboat, and one particularly happy memory from my childhood is of sailing out from Santa Barbara on a weekend afternoon, Carla guiding the boat, Jane and my parents laughing and watching my baby brother, me munching on chocolate. I felt happy and loved and safe surrounded by these grown-ups who loved us and each other.

The last Thanksgiving that we spent as a family -- before the divorce -- was, as I remember, a small affair. My parents invited just one couple: Christine and Rachel. I was only six or so, so my memories aren't clear. But I remember being clear on the fact that Christine and Rachel went together the way my mom and dad went together. I had no idea what sex was, or what being a couple really entailed. I just knew that most adults paired up, and that it didn't really matter whether men were with women or women with women. What mattered was finding another adult to be with. That seemed to be very important.

Though our early childhood memories can be deceptive, it seems to me that these four women were around at least as often as any straight couples my parents knew.

I haven't seen any of those women for years. My parents divorced, and I moved with my brother and mother to Central California. It wasn't until I was in early adolescence that I realized what the nature of those women's relationships had been. I was perhaps 13 when, in the course of a serious and thoughtful discussion about homosexuality, I rather innocently asked my mother if she knew any lesbians. She laughed and explained about Jane and Carla, Christine and Rachel. I was floored, and then realized "of course!" The word "lesbian" was used as a laughing pejorative by my male friends, who discussed the graphic details of women's sexual relationships with each other with a mix of excitement and revulsion. To be able to connect it to these four women whom I had loved and felt safe with was a profound awakening.

The very word "lesbian" to me still conjures up Carla and Jane's sailboat (that is, when it doesn't conjure up the residents of a Greek island in the northeastern Aegean.) I've got quite a few lesbian friends in my life today -- as well as gay male friendships. Indeed, some of the closest relationships I've had with women in my adult life have been with lesbians. While the stereotype of an older generation of gay women is of folks who were deeply mistrustful of men (often with damned good reason), I note that a great many younger lesbians today are able to form enduring, affectionate, truly honest and "platonic" friendships with straight men. I don't think we're going to get the straight man/lesbian version of "Will and Grace" on TV anytime soon, but we may be on our way.

I've wandered from my topic. Really, it isn't much of a topic at all. It's just that when I think about same-sex marriage or other homosexual issues, I flash back to these women from my childhood. To me, who they were and how they lived seem utterly normal, healthy, and good. It goes without saying that seeing these four women with each other did not harm or undermine me in any way.

And even now, when I hear words like "unnatural" or "immoral", I think about real people whom I loved and who I believe loved me. I think about sailboats, Thanksgiving dinners, and chocolate. And when folks start condemning or pathologizing women and men who lived and loved like Jane and Carla, Christine and Rachel, I get very, very, very angry.

Comments

[DJW]

But that isn't marriage, because marriage is about children. Are there marriages without children? Yes, of course. But gay unions are intrinsicly sterile. They can't, absent technology, be generative.

John, two questions.

First, given these premises, shouldn't you oppose marriage rights for post-menapausal and otherwise sterile women (and, for that matter, permenantly impotent men)? At least on the question of whether women are post-menapausal or not, a simple medical test can determine this quite easily. If this is the state's only appropriate rationale for what you concede is discrimination, my dear Grandmother's recent remarriage seems quite illegitimate.

Two, what's wrong with technology? (or, what Amanda said).

[joe]

I’m with DJW on this one-- wouldn't want to excluded anyone who isn't generative. In fact, while were at it, let's change our whole social structure-- see what happens. We’ll use our enlightened wisdom and powerful reasoning skills, as previously demonstrated, to be more inclusive and less discriminating on a future society (hint Hollywood sci-fi movie).

Brothers and sisters, I now decree you may literally marry your siblings, don’t worry about any I’ll effects in generating offspring, science can make you sterile—at least till the time we can fully manipulate genes. Men women intermarry as you please, even marry your children, have as many husbands and wives as you desire. Now is the generation of the liberation of consenting adults, do as you please amongst yourselves.

You may scoff, however this reasoning you are using leads directly there, or there about.

[Amanda]

Joe, you're right. We shouldn't ever even touch our social structures, much less totally overhaul them. Think about how society collapsed last time we dramatically redefined marriage, in fact redefined it way more dramatically than this simple expansion will do--when it was changed from the ownership model to the partnership model. Cities burned to the ground, I recall. Bestiality and incest were rampant in the street and god knows no one was able to raise a child to save his or her life.

Worse, women got uppity.

[joe]

Amanda: Trying to cloak an argument by stating, this-is-the-way-it-was, this-is-the-way-it-is-now, as a model demonstrating progress-- may work to convince the initiate feminist. Come on, by necessity women couldn’t have been the property of men from the “beginning”. Out of necessity there had to be some sort of division of responsibility, and I would guess much of the divisions were based on the strengths or weaknesses of gender (I’m also guessing there was some efficiency to their “madness”). I would also imagine women worked the fields, saddled the horses, and fought wars, while men would mend their cloths, cook meals, and care for children—and all the while never thinking they were crossing gender roles. Social structures have changed, back and forth. Homosexuality has been accepted in prior societies to varying degrees. I don’t think there is any argument that in allowing homosexuals to marry-- that there is PROGRESS. I do believe the matter concerns what a particular society wants.

I like uppity women, they’re sexy.

[Amanda]

What societies until now had legal equality between husband and wife, then, joe?

[John]

Heck-I have my nephew and niece tugging at me, so I can't respond properly to either of you just now, but I will. DJW: Gay unions are intrinsically (sp?) sterile. They can never be anything else, if you rule out human interference in the natural process. Sterile heterosexuals don't alter the nature of the heterosexual union in general, it's still generative, just like gay people having children by technology doesn't make the union any less sterile. After all, someone has to provide the other half of the genetic material who isn't one of the partners to the union.

[Amanda]

Seriously, what does that have to do with whether or not you should get to visit your lifetime partner in the hospital, file your taxes with that person, and inherit his/her property when he/she dies?

I'm not having kids. My boyfriend cannot cough up the requiste 50% genetic material. Do I forsake my right to marriage?

[Astarte]

John - You're still going under the assumption that marriage is based on procreation, which is an object of the chruch, and not of the government.

Joe - You make the point for marriage evolution by yourself. In the early ages of the US, there were no marriage laws; couples just called themselves married by common-law. The very first marriage laws were created to keep families from inbreeding, and to delineate property rights (man owns everything, woman owns nothing). Marriage continued to evolve after that, and the rights associated with marriage are facing another evolution. I don't see anything wrong with that, and neither does anyone else, and your beligerance to Amanda and feminism in general brings nothing to the conversation.

[NancyP]

Joe upthread is one good reason why amateurs should not practice genetics, or any other science, without a license. But then maybe he doesn't understand multigenic inheritance, pleiotropism, etc.

If one of the gene variants contributing to homosexuality also has a selective benefit for the general population, the variant will stick around without requiring that the homosexual actually distribute his or her own personal copy.

[NancyP]

I might also add, why do the conservative Christians fixate on homosexuality as a "lifestyle choice" when their choice of denomination and theology is CLEARLY a lifestyle choice? After all, there are hundreds of denominations and thousands of unaffiliated churches.

[mythago]

Sterile heterosexuals don't alter the nature of the heterosexual union in general

Neither do homosexuals. My marriage doesn't change a whit if two gay men in San Francisco can legally marry.

[cutoff]

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