My name is David Edleson, and I am the Dean of Cook Commons, one of the small neighborhoods of students here at Middlebury. I live in Lincoln, Vermont, with my lover of 18 years, Tim. My academic training is in religion, particularly Hebrew literature, and I am an ordained rabbi in the Reform movement. But I’m here today because I am also queer, gay, even homosexual. I know, it’s clinical, but at least it dares to include the word ’sex.” It’s about putting the sex back in homosexual.

I want to make sure to let everyone know that I applaud the efforts of those on this panel and in Vermont who have worked bravely and tirelessly to challenge the courts. For reasons I will explain in just a moment, I have been vocally and actively opposed to the “gay marriage” movement as a worthwhile focus of the queer community, but I deeply admire the courage of all those who have fought this and prevailed. Though we may not agree about agenda, I certainly admire the time, emotional drain, and strength it has required, and I have nothing but respect for that effort.

I also want to be clear that despite what I’m about to say, I wholeheartedly support legislative equality. I believe that the legislature MUST make sure that all people in Vermont have exactly the same laws regarding the legal ramifications of living together, whether that is marriage for all or as I prefer, domestic partnership for all. Not a two-tiered, separate but equal, approach.

Enough preamble. I am here tonight to express what I think is a point of view that is being swallowed up in the rush to marriage, and though I know my opinions will not have much impact on the outcome of the legislative debate, I do know that many gay men and lesbians - and for that matter, many straight couples - share my beliefs. And so I hope to give them a voice so they are part of the wider discussion of the issues.

As an educator, I often find myself in the position of challenging assumptions. So tonight I want to ask some different questions. Instead of asking whether gays and lesbians should have access to legal marriage, I want to ask, why is the government involved in marriage at all? Why is it that the government is involved in how - or whether - people choose to couple and create families?

And instead of the question what would gay marriage do to traditional marriage, I want to ask - why marriage at all? What is this institution that we are all clamoring to get into? Famous gay authors talk about getting a place at the table, and frankly I’m not sure I like the table. I think I might want my own table.

I’ll start my arguments with the literary, namely with a poem from Shelley who did not share the high opinion of marriage that I’ve heard lately bantered about the Statehouse in Montpelier:

I never was attached to that great sect
Whose doctrine is, that each one should select
Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend,
And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend
To cold oblivion, though it is in the code
Of modern morals, and the beaten road
Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread,
Who travel to their home among the dead
By the broad highway of the world, and so
With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe,
The dreariest and the longest journey go.

I believe that the government has absolutely no business being involved in how or whether people choose to couple and create families. It was once argued, and I guess still is in some circles, that since the heterosexual monogamous couple is the stable unit that holds the key to social stability, the government has a vested interest in supporting it. This idea that only a two-person family can produce good citizens has been disproved by countless single parent families, communal homes, or from all those single people who vote, pay taxes, and work on behalf of their communities.

Much of what I hear argued boils down to this: nostalgia. Nostalgia for that “father knows best” mythical time when everything was normal. Nostalgia for the good old Norman Rockwell days of America. History has shown me as a Jew, and as a gay man, that nostalgia can be a dangerous thing when it begins to dominate politics. So I want to ask - Why is it important, queer or otherwise, that the State legitimize our private intimate relationships?

Of course, there is the ’sky is falling” argument that if they allow this, society as we know it will crumble - that if the state says gay people can marry, then children might think that it is OK to be gay, and then everyone will be gay.

First of all, is straight sex that bad that there is such fear? I mean, I’m sitting there listening to the threat of everyone turning gay being a bad thing, and I’m thinking, WOW! Maybe I am for gay marriage after all. But I think it’s pretty obvious that this sort of argument, which is made over and over again, is based on a rather exaggerated sense of the power of gay sex. And we know that whenever that sort of power is projected upon a people, it is a way to dehumanize us, out of fear. It is a profoundly homophobic argument.

So then, why should two-person couples be the only normal state-sanctioned form of family? Why shouldn’t people form households in the way they wish, if they are willing to take on the rights and responsibilities of that commitment?

I also am curious about why we as queer folk are suddenly so intent on getting into the very institutions that have been part and parcel of our oppression. I mean, what is so great about marriage? Isn’t it in serious trouble as an institution anyway? Marriage, as we know it, is a primary creation of the patriarchy, and I fear that the motive of many gay folks is simply assimilation into the very culture of our oppression.

It’s been argued at the Statehouse by those opposed to gay marriage that marriage between a man and a woman is “natural law.” This is an argument that screams, “I don’t know much about nature.” Certainly, marriage is not rooted in biology. It has no precedent among our closest relatives. Rather, marriage is a social construction of the patriarchal order. I am deeply concerned that what drives so many queers is the desire to assimilate into the dominant culture rather than explore our own cultural forms - to see what might blossom if we are left to our own devices.

At the Statehouse recently, arguments for and against gay marriage seem to orbit around one main point: marriage is the proper and ultimate way humans form intimate relationships. Opponents of gay marriage say, “Ergo, we must exclude gays because that’s the way it’s always been.” The leaders of the fight for gay marriage say, “Ergo, we want in.” But I believe that the basic assumption is false. Marriage is not our “natural state,” anymore than heterosexuality is the natural state. Those who say that marriage is the way it has always been have a very short view of history.

Marriage as we know it arose with the patriarchy. Not to go Marxist, but it arose largely out of desire to control the ‘means of reproduction.” It built its foundation on the repression of sexuality as dangerous and feminine. We see this in the myths of Adam and Eve. We see it in the murder of uncounted women during the Inquisition. We see it today in the continuing practice of female genital mutilation.

Now, let me be clear, I am not trying to equate the pain of marriage with the pain of those other tortures, but I believe that are all rooted in the same need to control women’s bodies and sex drives. The ancient king’s right to sleep with a bride before her husband could was clearly meant to show the control the patriarch had over reproduction. This same control of women’s sex drive leads inexorably to a desire to control queer sex as well. Queer sex undermines the established order. We still see this in the ridiculous ‘don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in our military.

Click to read what the  presidential candidates  say about marriage

One of my students brought me an excellent quote from Lynne Lavner that pretty much sums up marriage as an institution designed to keep our sex drives under control. She reminds us that ‘the Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 to heterosexuals. That doesn’t mean that God doesn’t love heterosexuals; it’s just that they need more supervision.”

So the institution of Marriage, designed to control sexuality, is part and parcel of the same impetus that drove homophobia in patriarchal cultures, and now we want into this Institution?

Now, I must be clear that marriage has changed over the past few decades, and for many of us, it is not the “ball and chain” it once was - that marriages now are based much more on mutual respect and support than hierarchy and sexism. Still, I believe it is still very much rooted in the notion of ownership of another’s body, in the kind of ‘that’s mine - don’t touch it” mentality of modern capitalism. I mean, didn’t we all learn to share in kindergarten?

Another argument I’ve heard at the Statehouse is the “GAY SEX IS NOT NATURAL” argument, or the “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” mentality. It shocks me that some people still feel that is a clever slogan. Clever or not, this line of argument shows an appalling ignorance of modern biology. I worked on a dairy on a kibbutz, and part of my job was to list which cows were jumping on the backs of other cows. These were all female cows. It was lesbo-fest at the dairy. Many species, including some of our closest relatives, show that homosexual sex is as much as part of nature as anything else. In fact, the Bonobos resolve conflicts through sex, in every variety imaginable.

Even in human tribal cultures, though there is a pervasive heterosexual theme, there is also a tremendous variety of accepted sexual norms, many including homosexual. It is possible that it is indeed the support of the tribe that reduces the need in these cultures for so-called “nuclear families.” Perhaps marriage is in itself a reaction to the dissolution of our “natural” tribal structure.

Even Nobel laureate scientists such as Barbara McClintock recognized that nature engenders diversity, and that the human mind will always find humility in the face of nature’s diversity. As she said, “Anything you can think of you will find.” When she looked at biology, she recognized that “Trying to make everything fit into a set dogma won’t work. There’s no such thing as a central dogma into which everything will fit.” Though she was not speaking directly of sexuality, she held a profound belief and respect for natural difference, and that nature holds multiplicity as an end in itself. Furthermore, we know that the most diverse systems are the most resilient, the least likely to be destroyed.

I can speak personally in saying that for me, there are few things that feel more unnatural and against my instincts as having sex with a person of the opposite sex. I don’t need anyone to tell me that this is my natural state, and I sure am not interested in hearing from people who have no first hand experience that they speak for Mother Nature. Sex is good, healthy and not only in the context of matrimony. Sex is Good. Healthy. And not only in context of matrimony. Sex, as part of nature, engenders diversity and multiplicity.

So then, what sources do these newfound experts in biology use to support their claims of “natural law?” The Bible. Well, I’m a rabbi, and I’ve studied the Bible quite a bit, and one thing is very clear to me. The Bible is a document of the patriarchal order. It is not a biology text.

The patriarchy teaches us that if left to our own devices, humans are wanton uncontrollable sex fiends. I don’t know about you, but I’m too damn tired and overstressed to be a sex fiend. Indeed, it seems that this compulsive sex drive held up by the social order to justify sex control is really a result of the oppression itself. We see sex as taboo, as the very symbol of patriarchal order, and so it becomes forbidden, delicious, tempting. The compulsive power of sex is commensurate with the level of repression, of course combined with a variable for adolescent hormone levels. If left to our own devices, we are fine.

So though I argue against opponents of marriage, it does not mean I argue for gay marriage. We do not need the state to protect us from ourselves. We have been taught this so long that we end up accepting the assumption that people are practically wild, and that wild is somehow bad.

Now from my own past, I must confess that I completely understand this drive to marry. I myself have just recently been rereading some old love letters to a boyfriend and every other letter babbled on about us “getting married.” I made myself queezy.

I have always been partnered. My lover, Tim, and I have been living together for 18 years. We met in the 9th Grade, in Ms. Coulette’s Compulsory Heterosexuality Class, which had been cleverly titled “Health Science.” When we first got together, I was devoted to that picture of Monogamy. I was well indoctrinated to the idea that our natural state is to cling with all our claws and talons to another person. We exchanged rings, and have always called ourselves “husband,” but in a campy way.

I know as well as any that queer folks are an oppressed minority, and I understand the need of any oppressed group for acceptance. But I also know that the price for acceptance is often cultural death. As James Baldwin warned us, when a minority group attempts to assimilate, it always does so totally on the terms of the dominant culture.

The desire to overcome oppression is noble. It is this drive to be “just like everybody else” that worries me. I believe that the slogan “celebrate diversity” means just that. We have been damaged enough by the patriarchy. We should be very careful and thoughtful before we rush to join the very structures that have created our oppression. One of my favorite quotes is from Emerson - “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” I don’t want to have a little mind. I don’t want to “keep it simple” when I’ve spent my entire life becoming complex. In order to come out, we have to learn to ignore that what we are taught is natural and listen to our inner voices. So we, of all people, should have a healthy cynicism about these institutions.

I believe we are different, and diversity means strength through difference, not sameness, not a foolish consistency. Though I recognize that creating social arguments from nature is very dangerous, it does seem that nature engenders diversity.

If we all allow ourselves to think outside the box, to reexamine, redefine what and how to create families in this new millenium, society will not fall apart. Society will be greatly enhanced. So it is a betrayal of our gift of being queer - outside - to rush to marriage. So though I agree that in terms of civil rights we should have the right if heterosexuals do, on a larger conceptual plane, I believe the state should get out of the business of marriage entirely, and leave how people create families to themselves and their spiritual or religious communities.

Marriage is a venerable institution, but I for one, DO NOT WISH TO BE INSTITUTIONALIZED. Which brings me to my closing poem by another awfully queer fella, Walt Whitman, “I Hear It Was Charged Against Me” from Calamus.

I hear it was charged against me that I sought to destroy institutions,
But really I am neither for nor against institutions,
(What indeed have I in common with them? Or what with the destruction of them?)
Only I will establish in the Mannahatta and in every city of these States inland and seaboard,
And in the fields and woods, and above every keel little or large that dents the water,
Without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument,
The institution of the dear love of comrades.

Sites Mentioned
Vermont Supreme Court decision

Elsewhere on the Web
State of the Union: Why "civil union" isn’t marriage by Andrew Sullivan
‘Separate but equal’ was a failed and pernicious policy with regard to race; it will be a failed and pernicious policy with regard to sexual orientation.
Can Government Rescue Marriages?
Center for Marital and Family Studies at the University of Denver
Trying to prevent marital distress is hardly controversial. The controversy is whether or not governments should force it on a broad scale.
What is Marriage For? 
an interview with E.J. Graff, author of What is Marriage For