Sexual tug-of-war

Gay marriage and the fight for equality in the United States are still all over the map. Monday, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed the Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act, allowing same-sex couples certain benefits that married couples are given, such as making medical decisions for one another.

In Hawaii, the state Senate Judiciary Committee passed a bill for civil unions Tuesday. In addition, Maryland is revving up to be the sixth state that allows gay
marriage.

But with these few advances toward equality comes their antitheses: an anti-gay marriage bill in Wyoming, a possible gay marriage ban in Iowa (a state that since 2009 has allowed same-sex couples to marry),  and legislation in New Mexico that restricts gay marriage.

This proves to me that America is still entrenched in social norms, still wrapped in dogma from our puritanical migrant past.

With Illinois’s civil unions bordering our conservative state, it will be the closest thing to gay marriage Indiana has ever seen. And yet gay marriage and civil unions don’t look bright in Indiana’s future.

This year Indiana will likely vote in favor of an amendment banning gay marriage. But if a constitutional amendment does pass this year, it still has to be voted on after the next election and then won’t reach voters until 2014.

I’m not holding my breath for Indiana, or for a federal bill passing to allow gay marriage anytime soon. Instead I’ll imagine a country that, as a whole, isn’t stuck battling for equal rights, where an ongoing tug-of-war doesn’t persist over what constitutes a “marriage.”

Oh wait, those countries do exist, like in the Nordic circle, where there is little opposition to gay marriage. Even our northern brothers and sisters in Canada have jumped on board and decided not to be so uptight about marriage.
Why is sexuality in our culture so taboo, as if it isn’t an instinctive attribute given to us by biology?

A large chunk of European countries have already embraced sexuality as a fluid part of human existence, and they seem to be moving past those sexual-
social qualms.

I only wish the United States could be as progressive on such social issues. As a country, we need to fully recognize the separation of church and state and realize that the constitution can adapt to our contemporary world. I mean, how could the forefathers have foreseen these kinds of civil liberty dilemmas when writing the Constitution?

Open homosexuality and the push for same-sex marriage rights were non-existent when the Constitution was written. I doubt there was any positive gay visibility in 1787. Thus, we should be looking at what rights and liberties the nation is denying a group of citizens based on fear and stigma bred from Western Judeo-Christian beliefs and
archaic texts.

In a world already overpopulated, would it really matter if society were to display non-procreative sexual behavior?

Maybe someday the United States will make up its mind and see marriage as it is today, in relation to our society of diverse and fluid sexual identities.     


E-mail: mfiandt@indiana.edu