Friday, July 16, 2010

Gay couples teach us that open relationships are awesome!

As elite culture turns homosexuals into our heroes and role models (Do we have a gay superhero yet?), research is documenting that open marriage is common among gay men (shocker, I know). In a study of 566 gay couples, only 45 percent had even made the promise to be monogamous.The findings are so essential to the welfare of American society, the NIH forked out 3.5 million additional dollars to continue the study for five more years.  

And these coupled gay men generate catchy memes for the rest of us. Dean Allemang, who just started a new relationship, dispensed this gem: "I don't own my lover, and I don't own his body," he said. "I think it's weird to ask someone you love to give up that part of their life. I would never do it."

10 comments:

  1. Saint Louis4:32 PM

    Well, it makes sense for a homosexual man to have a nonchalant attitude to straying. Men instinctively desire their women to be faithful because they want some assurance that the woman's children are also his own. But if the person you're inseminating doesn't have the right equipment to receive and carry your seed, then this motivation is lost.

    I'd be interested to see how lesbians feel about their partners straying. My guess is they care more than homosexual men, though I'm not sure why. I can see why they wouldn't want their partners to stray with men (e.g. fear of losing them to the other side or fear they would be impregnated and love the new baby more than the old partner), but I wonder how they feel about their partners straying with other women.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
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  2. "Do we have a gay superhero yet?"

    Freddie Mercury?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous5:07 PM

    "Do we have a gay superhero yet?"
    -All the ones with capes?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous12:11 PM

    "Well, it makes sense for a homosexual man to have a nonchalant attitude to straying."

    Yes, but those who establish emotional relationships with each other do get jealous, just as do heteros, and they argue, fight, break up, go back together, etc.

    The basic problem for homosexual men in establishing a lasting relationship is that they have to fight not one, but two basic truisms:

    1). Males are naturally prone to desiring (if not actually seeking) sexual variety. For hetero men, traditional marriage and children have had a domesticating influence that has, at least in the past when it was respected and encouraged, managed to curb the acting out of such desires. A loving wife, children who love and admire them, strong family ties, society's respect for a strong and loving husband who is a good provider and protector have, in the past at least, been the pay-off for not straying.

    There is no such pay-off for gay couples.

    2.) The other truism--jealousy. Doesn't matter if gay males strike a bargain about an "open marriage" that heteros wouldn't even consider. Men, both gay and straight, do have a different attitude about sex than most women do, but human beings are human beings, and jealousy rears its head in all things eventually. It's rare that both men in a gay relationship will be able to keep that green devil from destroying even the most mutual and open of relationships. I have seen it time and time again in the gay male couples I know.

    For most of these guys, legal marriage seems an especially risky and silly proposition. Maybe for really old couples it makes some sense.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous12:19 PM

    (Con't)

    Speaking of which--A friend of mine, an older gay man, a guy I worked with for years, married his long-time partner last year during the window during which gay marriage was legal in CA. They're not kids, for one thing, both over 70. They've been together for at least 25 years, and I honestly don't know if they've had an open relationship or not. My gut says "no" since they are both quiet types, not the life of the party sorts....yet I know enough to know from the younger gays I've been around that maybe when my friends are among "the family" their behavior might be different, or that maybe in the past, when they were a younger couple, they were not monogamous. (I realize, of course, that just because heteros are quiet sorts doesn't mean they don't screw around.)

    I'd say, though, that my friend and his new husband have had a relationship that has been successful and healthy for the two of them although, quite frankly, I am opposed to gay marriage, although that's OT.

    Another OT point, about that pic---
    My friends have never been the sort to be openly physically affectionate with one another, even in their own home. It's hard for me to know if they modify their behavior in front of us straights or not. So, when we attended their marriage, I know that I had a visceral reaction of "ugh" when they kissed after taking vows. I wasn't really prepared for my own reaction, thinking, I suppose, that because they were my friends, I'd feel less repulsed by it than when I see gay males who are strangers to me touching and kissing. Turns out it didn't matter, friends or not. I felt the same way I felt years ago when I saw scores of lesbian couples turn out for a Lily Tomlin performance. The performance was held outside on a hot summer night. They were all butch and making sure to flaunt their butchness and their portrayal of "feminism." It's funny that at the time, as a youngster with what I thought of as a liberal attitude, I didn't appreciate the silliness and downright inaccuracy of their application of that term to what they represented. In shorts and tank tops, which they wore purposely to reveal they were braless and unshaven under their arms, clinging to one another and kissing, then looking around to see if we were all watching them (of course we were), I felt for the first time the same revulsion I felt when my two male friends embraced and kissed after their vows.

    At first my reaction to my friends' kissing prompted me to think myself uncivilized, square, bigoted. Since then, I have thought a lot about my reaction, and realize it was quite civilized, quite natural, quite the result of my species' evolution.

    So, that pic? Ugh. Same reaction I'd have were I to see a cat trying to mount a frog--something went awry, yet we are being told "it's natural."

    That's a word game--it's natural in that it occurs in nature, in the same way it occurs in nature that people are born deaf or blind or with unformed limbs, etc. and of course there is no reason to mistreat those who are gay, but there is also no reason to play a pc game that denies that something mal-developed.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous12:20 PM

    (Con't)

    Speaking of which--A friend of mine, an older gay man, a guy I worked with for years, married his long-time partner last year during the window during which gay marriage was legal in CA. They're not kids, for one thing, both over 70. They've been together for at least 25 years, and I honestly don't know if they've had an open relationship or not. My gut says "no" since they are both quiet types, not the life of the party sorts....yet I know enough to know from the younger gays I've been around that maybe when my friends are among "the family" their behavior might be different, or that maybe in the past, when they were a younger couple, they were not monogamous. (I realize, of course, that just because heteros are quiet sorts doesn't mean they don't screw around.)

    I'd say, though, that my friend and his new husband have had a relationship that has been successful and healthy for the two of them although, quite frankly, I am opposed to gay marriage, although that's OT.

    Another OT point, about that pic---
    My friends have never been the sort to be openly physically affectionate with one another, even in their own home. It's hard for me to know if they modify their behavior in front of us straights or not. So, when we attended their marriage, I know that I had a visceral reaction of "ugh" when they kissed after taking vows. I wasn't really prepared for my own reaction, thinking, I suppose, that because they were my friends, I'd feel less repulsed by it than when I see gay males who are strangers to me touching and kissing. Turns out it didn't matter, friends or not. I felt the same way I felt years ago when I saw scores of lesbian couples turn out for a Lily Tomlin performance. The performance was held outside on a hot summer night. They were all butch and making sure to flaunt their butchness and their portrayal of "feminism." It's funny that at the time, as a youngster with what I thought of as a liberal attitude, I didn't appreciate the silliness and downright inaccuracy of their application of that term to what they represented. In shorts and tank tops, which they wore purposely to reveal they were braless and unshaven under their arms, clinging to one another and kissing, then looking around to see if we were all watching them (of course we were), I felt for the first time the same revulsion I felt when my two male friends embraced and kissed after their vows.

    At first my reaction to my friends' kissing prompted me to think myself uncivilized, square, bigoted. Since then, I have thought a lot about my reaction, and realize it was quite civilized, quite natural, quite the result of my species' evolution.

    So, that pic? Ugh. Same reaction I'd have were I to see a cat trying to mount a frog--something went awry, yet we are being told "it's natural."

    That's a word game--it's natural in that it occurs in nature, in the same way it occurs in nature that people are born deaf or blind or with unformed limbs, etc. and of course there is no reason to mistreat those who are gay, but there is also no reason to play a pc game that denies that something mal-developed.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous12:33 PM

    Last point, about the pic--

    Doesn't the guy in front bear a strong rememblance to a young Doc Severinson, the band leader well-known to Johnny Carson viewers?

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous12:42 AM

    And Mickey Rooney married nine times and Elizabeth Taylor six times. And here we see older gay couple together for 40 - 60 years without a breakup. And then that divorce rate! Tell me, is it better to set up rules that make your marriage indestructible if you play out side of it, or is it better for the house to collapse when the husband has a one-time fling? If you look at the divorce rate and can grasp the devastation it causes, I'd say installing a little flexibility looks pretty good.

    ReplyDelete

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