The German word for marriage
is Ehe. Two syllables. Drops right off the tongue. Can be said without even a serious intake of
breath. Pronounced “ay-eh” – “a” (as in
a-b-c) plus “eh,” the vowel sound in “pet.”
The h is silent.
Then there is “Eingetragene Lebenspartnershaft” – ten
syllables to the two of “Ehe” – the word for “registered partnership,” the
German legal way of forming what we call civil unions or domestic partnerships.
Two different words.
One smooth and mellow. The other
drawn out, as clumsy as it sounds.
It wasn’t that long ago I was having heated debates with friends
about the once wild-ass notion of legal recognition and support for gay
partnerships. I came early on to the
conviction gays should be allowed to marry.
Many gay activists I know, including some in leadership roles who led
the good fight for gay liberation for years, were worried we were moving too
fast with marriage demands. Better take
this one step at a time, or we’ll blow it, they insisted.
What I would have given to be able to fast forward at the
time of those debates to Ireland in 2015.
Ireland, and the evidence that the time, at long last, had come.
I’ve been following the impact of the Irish referendum in
places like Australia and Italy, and the hold-out states of the U.S. And, perhaps especially in Germany, a
socially progressive country still holding back while its neighbors in Holland and
Belgium and Scandinavia and Britain – and now Ireland – bring their populations
into the modern era of full rights for LGBT people. Today, the Bundesrat, Germany’s Senate, or
Upper House, voted in favor of a
resolution calling for full marriage and adoption rights for same-sex couples.
That’s only half the story, alas. Germany parallels the United States in the
way their lower house is controlled by religious conservative hold-outs.
Parallel too are the nonsense arguments. Conservative folk once urged stoning while
progressives urged tolerance. The
progressives won out and now it’s the conservatives urging tolerance while the
progressives urge acceptance. “We don’t
hate gay people,” say the conservatives.
(But you used to, Jack. You used
to!) We just don’t think we should
change our institutions. We’re only
thinking of the children and how they deserve a mother and a father.
If you don’t have a dog in this race, the debate can be fun
to watch. If you have had to carry the
burden of religious authorities’ claims you are “inherently disordered,” it’s
more challenging not to pop your cork.
But Jews have to watch Nazis parade through their towns. I suppose gay people can be forced a while
longer to listen to people who say, “I thought people like that killed
themselves!” Still, today, in 2015.
It’s hard to be patient.
Hard to have to listen to the claims that your desire for dignity will
open the door to incest and polygamy and people demanding to marry their dogs. To the messed up logic that it’s about
protecting children, or that the only reason for sex and marriage is
procreation.
You wait. And you pay
attention. And you celebrate the forward movement, one inch at a time. Change is coming.
OK, so the Bundestag, the German Lower House, is not ready
to follow the Bundesrat just yet.
Maybe tomorrow.
Or the next day.
Or the one after that.
Ehe für alle - jetzt. - Marriage for everybody. Now!
photo source: DPA
No comments:
Post a Comment