Same-sex couples reveal themselves

The news that unprecedented numbers of same-sex couples declared their presence in the 2000 U.S. Census drew a fair amount of attention in the heterosexual media. This was a good opportunity to educate straight folks, but alas, who will educate their media?\nOne local gay man told The Herald-Times, "I think gay men are more interested in being in couples than they used to be ... I think, deep down, most gay men are romantics and living happily ever after is a goal for us as much as for anybody."\nThis quotation neatly expresses a widespread belief among many gay men today: that gay men did not form couples during the swinging 1970s, preferring an endless string of casual encounters to mature monogamy. AIDS sobered us and made us settle down, like lesbians (who in this myth are paragons of everlasting domesticity). What this has to do with "romance," I don't know. It sounds more like sadomasochism, where suffering purifies and uplifts the penitent, and it's an odd way to advertise the rewards of monogamy. But it just isn't true. (Luckily, other gay men quoted in the article knew better.)\nStephen O. Murray, a gay scholar, wrote in his book "American Gay;" "I remember hearing the word 'husband-hunting,' and -- along with the more common propositions -- I received a number of proposals of marriage during the clone era of San Francisco. Indeed, I accepted one!"\nThis fits with my own experience. And one of the most heart-rending aspects of the AIDS epidemic has been men with AIDS nursing their own dying lovers, or bereft men being thrown out of shared homes by vindictive families of their dead partners. If gay men hadn't formed couples, such things would not have happened.\nSo much for the first part of the myth, that gay men didn't form couples before AIDS. The second part, that gay men are now "romantic" and "living happily ever after" in couples modeled after 1950s TV sitcoms, is equally unfounded. (Please note: TV sitcoms are not an accurate depiction of heterosexual marriage.) It's impossible to say whether gay men are more likely to be or stay coupled now than we were thirty years ago. Murray cited studies which indicate the opposite, but declared them inconclusive. Are same-sex couples more numerous, or just more visible, more likely to declare themselves on government forms?\nThe conservative gay men who make these claims are often too young to remember the decadent days they stereotype. That's one advantage to being conservative and respectable: you don't have to know what you're talking about. Indeed, knowing too much can discredit you. Being respectable, by contrast, provides a cover for all sorts of disreputable activities. A good example is the gay Roman Catholic Andrew Sullivan, beloved by the "New York Times" for his scorn of gay men's sexual culture, who was recently found advertising on the Web for unprotected sex. He was indignant at being found out; apparently he thought his preaching counted, not his practice.\nI agree that most gay men are romantics, but we always have been. I've been out for thirty years now, and I don't remember a time when most gay men I knew didn't speak wistfully of finding a lover, or lament the difficulty of making relationships last. I'm presently reading gay writer Christopher Isherwood's memoir of the years 1945-1951, which reveals how even in those repressed, pre-liberation days, gay men routinely formed couples. And nowadays, just as in the past, coupling is perfectly compatible with sleeping around, between partnerships or during them.\nThe real trouble is that marriage isn't romantic -- courtship is. Romantic tales, if they end happily, "end" with marriage. This isn't a count against marriage, because romance isn't real and marriage is. It's been suggested that one reason for the high rate of divorce among conservative Protestants might be unrealistic expectations about marriage, that it means "living happily ever after." I suspect that gay men's romanticism interferes with our ability to manage relationships.\nBut not too much. Despite fantasies based on Hollywood romances, despite the destructive pressure of anti-gay bigotry, gay men have managed to sustain relationships remarkably well. We deserve credit for that.