The Pink Trlongle Supplement,. Tuesdoy Morch 10,1992. Poge 5

Whot About the Fomil 2tHow often have you heard the argument

that gay men and lesbians threaten the het-erosexual nuclear family, that institution socherishedand adored inoursociety? Thanksto bigots like our pal Ernie over at the Leg-islafure, I'veheard thatargumentmore timesthan I care to remember; it's a homophobicclassic. Homophobes all seem to agree thatgays and lesbians pose a threat to the valuesand institutional structures that hold Cana-dian society together. However, there is noclassic "gay" response to this argument.There seem to be two responses, and theydon't seem terribly congruent when youfirst hear them.

One response to this pervasivehornopl-robic argument is that gays and les-bians, on the whole, want to be part of afamily as much as any straight person. Gaysand lesbians don't get married, becauseCanadian law refuses to recognize marriagesbetween same sex couples; if the law was tochange, hordes o' homos would rush to thechapel tomorrow. After all, gay and Iesbianrelationships are just Iike straight relation-ships; the only difference is the stigma at-tached to gay relationships. Moreover, manygays and lesbians want to adopt children,and many lesbians find ways, like artificialinsemination, to have their own childrenwithin their lesbian relationships. Basically,this response stresses the similarities be-tween gay life and straight life, asserting that

gays and lesbians don't threaten the family;they just diversify it. I'll call it the "gayfamily' response.

I'll call the other response the "feminist"response. People who like this responseview the heterosexual nuclear family as theprimary location of the patriarchal oppres-sion of women; consequently, they don't thinkthat threatening the family is such a badthing. This response likens the institution ofthe family to the institution of slavery.

Looking at the history of the institution ofthe family, it is not difficult to see the paral-Iels. In the past, when a man and a womangot married, her legal identity was mergedwith his. This was called "coverture", andthe origin of the idea can be found in theChristian creation myth in the book of Gen-esis. All her property became his, because, inthe eyes of the law, she no longer existed.Not that long ago, it was impossible for aman to be charged with raping his wife. Theidea that you couldn't rape your wife wasbased on the idea that wives had certainmarital duties. One such duty was their dutyto fulfil their husbands'sexual needs; it waspart of the marriage contract, Iegally andsocially. In effect, men owned their wives'sexuality. Throughout history, marriage hasbeen the ownership of wives by their hus-bands.

You might argue that the law has changed.Contemporary law recognizes women as in-

dividuals, separate from their husbands, andmen can now be charged with raping theirwives. This may be true, but what if thenuclear family itself cannot be salvaged?What if the ideas at the heart of those archaiclaws are neiessarily a part of any societywhich revolves around nuclear families?

Heterosexual relationships are necessarilybetween men and women, and, because ofthe imbalance of power between men andwomen in our culture, these relationshipsgenerally embody the domination and sub-ordination of women. Many believe that theheterosexual family actually maintains thepatriarchal oppression of women that is apart of our society. Gays and lesbians whobelieve this don't mind that homophobesportray homosexuality as a threat to thefamily; they think that's just fine. Many gaysand lesbians (particularly Iesbians) relish thefact that their same sex relationships lack thedomination/subordination dynamic that ispresent in heterosexual relationships.

The "gay family" response and the "femi-nist" response seem to be mutually exclusive.Are they? The latter response stresses thedifference between gay relationships andstraight relationships, while the former re-'sponse stresses their similarities. Each re-sponse has its own strengths. The stren{th ofthe 'tay family" response is that it points outthat gays and lesbians are just people. Theyhave the same emotional needs that hetero-

sexuals have, and most desire stable, long-term relationships, just like shaights. Thestrength of the "feminist" argument is itsrecognition of the oppressive character of theheterosexual family. Perhaps by putting aspin on these two approaches, we can putthem together and unite the fight againstpatriarchy with the fight against homophobiaat the same time.

By integrating these two approaches, wecan fashion a unified response to thehomophobicassertion that gays and lesbiansthreaten "Canadian family values". More-over, we can also provide a potential sourcefor solutions to the problem of women'soppression in our society (at Ieast withinheterosexual family structures). By incor-porating the "gay family" idea that gays andlesbians are just regular people into the"feminist" discourse which criticizes theoppressive nature of the patriarchal hetero-sexual family, we can set gay and lesbianrelationships up as examples of non-op-pressive "families" which embody thingslike love, commitment, and caring ratherthan domination, ownership, and duty.

However,reading this isonly thefirststep.It's not going to be easy to "integrate" twoapproaches that seem mutually exclusive, soif this approach is going to work, it will takea lot of work and discussion. But I think itwill be worth it.

-by Clay Mcleod

A lot of gay people do find ways to maketheir own families because the families theywere born into have so totally failed them.These are the harbingers of the newnorm forfamilies. .. people who live together becausethey love each other. A truly "new idea" ifever there was one.

To Birth or Not to Birth:A Lesbion'Ootio