Straight talk

May 1997

Straight talk

Do hets need to be paid to stay married?
by Michael Bronski

Gays and straights alike have long accepted as a given that heterosexuality is the institution around which our culture is organized. Heterosexuality functions as the presumed norm, the standard against which almost all other practices are judged. From mandating acceptable gender dress and behavior to determining who has access to jobs, who gets promoted, and who takes care of the kids, heterosexuality has shaped our society's decisions about who does what, when, where, and to whom. But how secure is it as a cultural force?
Apparently, not very. In the late 1990s, traditional heterosexuality has found itself in a position like that of Communism in the mid '80s: a once-powerful institution reduced to sustaining itself through bullying, defensive moves that merely make it look silly. The only rational explanation for the Defense of Marriage Act, for example, is that heterosexuals suspect traditional marriage could never hold its own in a free-market sexual economy.
And think about the financial benefits that heterosexual marriage bestows upon its participants. It begins with piles of bridal-shower and wedding presents, continues with tax write-offs for having children, and ends with easy access to pension and retirement benefits. In researching the possible budgetary effects of DOMA, the US General Accounting Office determined that there are more than 1049 fiscal benefits granted to heterosexuals who marry. Sure, everyone likes getting presents, but these benefits amount to a corrupt system of heterosexual welfare entitlements.
The whole scam suggests that even heterosexuals think you actually have to pay people to be, or remain, straight. While sexual desire for the opposite gender is not about to go away, heterosexuality as an institution simply isn't working anymore.
It hasn't worked for straight women for centuries: despite (or perhaps because of) their access to traditional marriage, heterosexual women have routinely been discriminated against in the workplace and in the private sphere. Thanks to feminism, many women who've known that traditional heterosexuality doesn't work for them have been able to live their lives outside of it -- by refusing to marry and supporting themselves independently.
More recently, many straight men have found that heterosexuality doesn't work for them either. Many men don't want to be the breadwinner, the sole source of support for wife and children, the strong, silent stud with no apparent inner life. And the feminist movement has shown them that they don't have to. Even Sly Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Willis -- those emblems of hetero manhood -- have lately been showing their kinder, gentler side on the silver screen. Butch don't play the way it used to.
The bottom line is that people have been fleeing traditional heterosexuality for centuries, and especially over the past hundred years. In the past 25 years, this flight has turned into a stampede for the exit.
And where are homosexuals in all of this? Well, we have quietly (and not so quietly) been presenting alternatives to the withering institution of heterosexuality. That's the primary reason queers and queer culture have been under attack since the Stonewall riots. Not only have queers generated new ideas about gender roles and sexual experimentation, but gay people have invented new ways to structure relationships, families, and communities -- new ways to decide how to dress, who does the housework and the cooking, and who runs the family business. Most significant, we have offered a view of sexuality that is driven purely by sexual pleasure and not by reproduction.
Meanwhile, traditional heterosexuality has clung to rigid gender roles, insular nuclear families, and a tightly controlled sexuality that depends on reproduction to justify itself. Is it any wonder that straight people are looking for new and more satisfying ways to live their lives? In this season of Pride, they would do well to take a look at us for useful models. And the supporters of DOMA would do well to stay on their guard.

Michael Bronski is the editor of the recently released Taking Liberties: Gay Men's Essays on Politics, Culture, and Sex (Richard Kasak Books). He can be reached at mabronski@aol.com.

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Straight talk

Do hets need to be paid to stay married?