Grace & Peace!
You may wish to moderate your initial assertion here, InSearch–the articles you reference appear to deal with male homosexuals, not same-sex couples generally.
Moreover, your assertion reads to me as analogous to a statement like: “High school freshmen learning Spanish aren’t excited about literature because they can’t read
Don Quixote,” or, “a child who’s just taken her first steps must not be very excited about walking because she doesn’t do it very well or for very long.”
The generation of folks who largely came to define “gay identity” in the seventies and eighties were coming out of a situation in which their sexuality was seen as a source of shame or cause of repression–they came to understand sex (as well as public demonstrations of identity) as an expression of freedom or liberation from that shame and repression. Is such an understanding of sex and freedom problematic? Of course it is, for many reasons. But the point is: what it means to be gay has for a long time been colored by the experiences of these first generations after Stonewall. I.e., it has remained intimately tied to concepts of shame and repression (these things remain constantly in the background as things to be overcome
even in situations in which they are not actually present), with sex being tied to concepts of liberation.
All that is very simplistic and a mere outline for a more detailed and complex discussion that we’re unlikely to have in these forums. But here’s the point: a generation of same-sex attracted people is growing up
now which has relatively no personal experience of their sexuality as something shameful or an object of repression. Consequently, the link between sex and liberation or freedom is much more tenuous for them (as tenuous for them as it is for their opposite-sex attracted peers, at any rate)–from what are they seeking to demonstrate their freedom? With the advent of same-sex marriage, an institutional model of stable relationship (which was unavailable to previous generations) becomes available to them in a way analogous to, if not completely identical with, the marriage model available to their opposite-sex peers–a stable relationship actually looks like something tangible, achievable and desirable. These are radical changes in how being same-sex attracted is imagined and experienced. They are also, perhaps ironically (both for right-leaning types and for the architects of “gay identity”), conservative changes.
Sure, we hear about claims like "a gay couple down the street have been together for 30 years … " always anecdotal, usually from a poster who argues for SS “M.” I do not doubt that such relationships exist, but how prevalent is monogamy among partnered gays is the question. Or, I am a former lesbian, and I can vouch most of my partnered gay and lesbian friends were faithful …
,
I wonder if you’re asking this question regarding monogamy in sincerity or merely cynically. Would you honestly be heartened by an upswing in monogamy among same-sex attracted relationships, or would it be the case that the
fact of the relationships would remain repugnant to you…so repugnant that whether or not a same-sex attracted person is faithful to their partner is a rhetorical distinction that has no real moral value to you? Just curious.
Under the Mercy,
Mark
All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!
