"Queer Hetero-Matrimony" in Queen City?

GAY ADAM and DYKE EVE ?



To the San Francisco Bay Times:


Let's imagine a man and a woman who are best friends, yet each is maybe 90% homosexual.
Not bisexual, not pansexual, but mainly gay or lesbian. They create a pregnancy.
If this leads to a live birth, they hope to live together while co-parenting their child.
Perhaps this mother and this father won't ever engage in coitus with each other,
but that's irrelevant to the kid. Each adult will be not only the biological parent,
but also the social parent, of this shared child. Not just a sperm donor or an egg donor.
( Recently a San Francisco couple revealed similar plans. )


Probably this has happened repeatedly in the past, from ancient Rome thru Victorian England,
but secretly. Now such "Queer Hetero-Matrimony" can happen in broad daylight,
as openly as the couple may choose.


Such a family would become just one among many possible models for queer and semi-queer families, partnerships, child-rearing, households, communes, etc. From an open-minded point of view, all models are valid (if honest -- that is, so long as you don't try to deceive your co-parent). A few queer ideologues may denounce "QHM" as assimilationist, but I see it as a challenge to the totalitarian idea that only one
human possibility deserves respect.


Lesbians and gaymen who choose this path won't be doing so for theoretical or political reasons. However, like trans-racial couples, their personal choices may have social consequences.


For starters, "QHM" unbalances those fascists who attack same-sex marriage
by declaring that every child deserves to be raised by one man and one woman.
Must the rhetoricians now backtrack, and mumble,
"Ooops, we really meant one STRAIGHT man and one STRAIGHT woman.... "?


And what would they say of two celibate persons (possibly straight, but who knows?),
such as a priest and a nun, who wish to raise an adopted child together? This is more likely among religious Episcopalians or Buddhists, but not even Rome forbids a priest from adopting a child.
"Ooops," will they stammer, "we meant male and female parents who, um, er, like, fuck... "?



Such examples expose fundi rhetoric as a fig-leaf for bigotry.
If fundis and other Republicans really cared about kids, they could do much more to help children
who are living today in one-parent homes (or one-grandma homes), often in poverty.
They could do more to provide permanent foster parents.
They could do more to speed up adoptions.
Instead, fundis let kids suffer for the faults of absent or incompetent parents,
because religious ideology outweighs compassion.


Tortuga Bi Liberty,
San Francisco
Sunday, 9 April 2006


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