Dear Cory:

I am resistant to referring to a married gay man as a husband. What do you make of the growing legality of gay marriage?

Gay and Greying

Dear GAG:

You have certainly tossed some juicy meat into carnivorous Cory’s cage. How lushly he slavers at the prospect of replying, being such a champion producer of saliva that his dentist refers to his mouth as “Lake Cory”. Empathy must always precede advice and opinion, so allow Cory to say how readily he can see that assimilating gay men into the corral of wedlock and its terminology might cause you, gay or not, a degree of cognitive dissonance. If you are greying, GAG, you are possibly old enough to remember when being gay was as popular as having leprosy, a position it retains in many countries. The wrenching move from that status to the top of an impeccably tasteful wedding cake in a relatively short time might indeed cause your head to hurt.

Marriage in general is a way to grab ready cash, status, gifts, wealthy in-laws, a supposed guarantee of sexual activity, and the protection and accumulation of property and adherent rights. The latter is a serious issue (who can forget those days of AIDS when a surviving partner had his property and dignity confiscated by the homophobic family of the dead partner?) All are more or less business transactions. Cory will say more about love later.

Etymology can instruct when confusion strikes, GAG. “Husband” has Norse roots in the words meaning house, tiller of the soil, and later meanings of manager, head of the household. Therefore it is loaded with male domination and centrality. Of course you recoil (except for the tiller of the soil part; Cory has a very soft spot for farm boys). “Hubby” is a particularly loathsome abbreviation. Doesn’t that poor man have a name?

Oh, and weddings. Forgive a digression, if you will. They have been relentlessly transformed into a dystopian Disney nightmare by the marital-industrial complex. Brides Magazine, rental clothes, vast expense, wedding planners, all driven by ego display needs. The average couple spends an absurd $30,000 USD on the wedding. The more is spent, however, the less likely it is the marriage will survive (for both sexes, spending more than $20,000 on the wedding increases the odds of divorce by 3.5 times compared with couples who keep it between $5,000 and $10,000; couples with the best odds of marriage survival keep costs under $1,000). Explanation? To spend huge money on a wedding is insane, and marriages containing one or more insane people are as stable as hostage-takings. Cory has a clear and possibly illegal position on weddings. The entire wedding party — and, optionally, the guests — should be naked, and the wedding should be held outdoors. That would tend to simplify the process, keep egos under control, and force a more careful selection of the matron/maid of honour and best man. Magic mushrooms should be an option on the reception menu.

Apart from the business side of marriage, it is often an attempt at solidifying love, which resists the process. The married two are always changing: they become more this, and less that. Needs emerge. The hormonal rush of our built-in mating program, “falling in love”, is soon replaced by familiarity or less appealing things. Sexual excitement is famously friable. Aging happens. If a relationship is good, it needs no title.

Gay marriage has had one signal benefit, which is to demonstrate to the adolescent struggling with his sexuality that he might expect a degree of acceptance from the heterosexual world and that he doesn’t have to kill himself no matter how ghastly his family’s attitudes may be. After all, one day he will escape.

The downside of gay marriage is this: it has endangered the outrageous, delicious “otherness” of being gay with its lingo, codes, stealth, and wild venues, and replaced it with assimilation into the bland, self-satisfied, ever-breeding, planet-sucking Borg created by heterosexuals. Fran Lebowitz captured this gradual loss perfectly: “If you removed all of the homosexuals and homosexual influence … as American culture, you would pretty much be left with ‘Let’s Make a Deal.’” Gay culture is disappearing. Where, for instance, have all the bull dykes gone; whither their Harleys? Cory does not wish to live in “Let’s Make a Deal”.

Have you noticed a certain smugness often accompanying the use of the word “husband”, GAG? Subtext: “I have a HUSBAND and you don’t”. If in any way you feel diminished by not having a husband at those times, consider for a moment if you would wish to be in the marriage before you. It is astonishing how many marriages are utterly unenviable. Two men in a love relationship should refer to each other by name and not bolster or explain the status of their relationship to anyone. Cory supports you in saying, exasperatedly, “Oh, please stop using the word ‘husband’ in my presence”.