Gay Marriage? Anything Between Humans Is Good With Me

There can be no doubt that support for same-sex marriage is gaining momentum, which is fine with me.  News abounds all over the internet, including major network type media outlets. By March or so, the issue is expected to make it to the Supreme Court.  As much as this is an issue whose time is come, it is also a “push button” issue, one sure to evoke emotional responses as people hide behind pre-structured belief systems that preclude thinking.  I mean, once people say things like “Christian” or “right,” the issue is thought through or at least parroted and no thinking is necessary.

I am not surprised that the lovely stirrer up of right wing thought, Fox News, is already getting folks stirred up for March. My job, at least in part, is to put things in context.  By this I mean human — maybe clinical medical and psychiatric, but mostly human — context.  The world is a pretty awful and foreboding place.  It is also a lonely place, where a lot of people have trouble making dyadic, or one to one, relationships.

The first problems come somewhere around 18 months, where young humans typically have a relationship with an object, known as a “transitional object.”  This is the age when typically a child runs about with a thumb in the mouth and the other hand dragging a soft-but-soiled blanket.  This is a treasured possession which the child does not desire to relinquish under any circumstances. My husband can testify to the fact that I have really healthy relationships with my personally owned blankets, which I will leave on the sofa or on the bed as indicated, and which I will relinquish while I come to the office. I actually know many adult women who collect dolls and stuffed toys and seem to “need” them around and you know what?  I have no trouble with this, as long as nobody gets hurt and everybody is happy.

Nevertheless, it remains a lonely and difficult world, and there are a lot of lonely people.  As a matter of fact, one of many brilliant things the Beatles came up with, one of the pieces of brilliance seemingly obscured and not enhanced by cheers or swooning, is the wonderful song titled “Eleanor Rigby:”  “All the lonely people; where do they all come from?” I have mused many times over the excessive loneliness of my own life, prior to location of my own true love.  I have come to the considered conclusion that the best really good way to face life for me, and for other people who so desire, is with another human who serves as a “partner.” Over the years, I have treated people with every possible sexual orientation or presentation that I could imagine; as well as some that I could not have imagined. I have treated people with and without medically identified reasons to present as any kind of intersexual states; gays, hermaphrodites, transgenders, transvestites, chromosomal disorders, people whose moms got hormones during pregnancy, and post traumatic sexual organ reconstruction. I have asked every one of them pretty much the same kind of questions. What kind of sexual fantasies do you have?  When you imagine yourself as half of a couple, what is the other person like?  When have you been happiest in the presence of another person?  What were you doing? If I ask other questions, I cannot think of them now.  I am sure that others come up as we talk, and equally sure that I am constantly working to make such as non-prejudicial as possible. In this world, where lots of people have lots of sexualities, I would like people to have the joy of a relationship with another human.  No problems with inanimate objects as long as there is no health risk.  Any questions; well that is a reason to visit a doctor, or your local Planned Parenthood if relevant.  But humans and humans together, procreative or not, is a gateway to survival and maybe even joy in a world that is becoming increasingly complex, and seemingly, increasingly hostile. Ideologically mixed marriages used to be an issue; that sure has faded.  As always, the sect I know best is Judaism, where marriages between Jews and non can result in offspring buried in some magically designated corner of the cemetery. It always bothered my parents at least a little that my husband was from Kansas and had a perceived familiarity with pigs, limited in actuality to his proclivity for eating their flesh, which I applaud since he enjoys it so.  My Father-of-Blessed-Memory thought my husband raised pigs — as did everyone who inhabited the Sunflower State — nothing this erudite human I married would ever have considered. You might ask, as many have actually asked me, where a highly reflective human such as I would draw the line.  In other words, what would be an inappropriate human marriage or sexual congress; for that matter, what is verboten. The answer is to me, obvious.  I have trouble with humans having sexual relations and/or marriage with animals. I will not trouble you with the details of stories of how a young man may relate to barnyard animals — one of six in Kansas, according to the literature — or what happens to women.  I do know that someone in Oklahoma actually has published articles on the human and cow experience. I only know that there may be all sorts of issues of health and cleanliness, and this alone is my worry.  Although, I may muse about how such folks relate to other humans. Like everyone, I have heard stories.  In Paris, there was a famous story about a woman who charged people to stand behind a one way mirror while a man was asked to have a relationship with a scared and confused chicken.  The woman made money and the chicken survived for whatever chickens were meant to do. In this hemisphere, women have been invited to have relationships with horses or donkeys. Back in France, I have a memory so repressed I think I forgot to tell my husband.  I was sitting down to dinner at one of the wonderful meals provided by on call cooks of wonderful hospitals of northern France, when a male staff surgeon asked me if I would enjoy the company of an “experienced” and well endowed horse.  He assured me that I would be quite amused and it would be great fun, and I would also be well compensated for my time — much more than my hourly pay as a physician. I told him I was flattered he thought of me in such context; as I truly was, as nobody had ever thought of me as anything but a book nerd.  But I respectfully declined, as that simply was not and is not my sort of thing.  He was visibly disappointed, and the whole thing was ludicrously polite.  But I draw the line at, well, humans and animals being together, only for health reasons.

The clip of a man marrying a horse is famous, and strangely enough, it is the first thing that came to mind when I thought of what would be a non-human marriage. I have actually seen this one reproduced in a book, as one of the great Jerry Springer shows of all time.  Frankly, I have no trouble with playing “dress-up” like a wedding with a horse.  I do have trouble if people and animals are having, shall we say, “intimate relations.” I will admit that I also have some problems with any sexual practices that are physically dangerous.  Like when people die from auto-asphyxiation or the like. I want people to stay alive and not get sick or die.  I want people to enjoy love. So I have taken this already ridiculous prejudice against gay marriage and reduced it to absurdity.  I can think of absolutely no reason why any relationship between two humans of any sexual identity or inclination should not be together. I applaud such folks when the depth of their relationship is such that they want forever and that they want to take public civil recognition — all of those wonderful things that people choose when they choose marriage.

Lots, I mean lots, of people approaching marriage get cold feet.  This is why we have so many traditions, like garters and throwing bouquets.  Many of these are from the Elizabethan Era.  Some date from the Roman era, or before.  The shoes tied to the back of the car really mean that the bride has been deprived of shoes so that she cannot run away. Nobody wants to run away here.  Two humans want to be married.  The state has put itself in the impossible place of wanting to limit this, or pronounce this wrong. Gay marriage should not be a debate.  It should be a celebration and joy; two humans finding each other in an increasingly complex and hostile world.