THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

I had been in a number of sexual relationships with women from my grade school days onward. It wasn't until I worked with a woman who was part owner of a lesbian bar in Calumet City that I became aware there was anything like a marriage open to me. Stevie and Hilda had a nice home in Dolton where they raised Hilda's child from a straight marriage. They had relatives and friends coming and going to family functions like any of the heterosexual couples I knew. So at 21, in 1960, I diligently courted a shy young woman from South Dakota and took my first shot at domestic bliss. In the eight years that we were together we would construct a relationship without the benefit of court or clergy based on our needs and abilities. Incomes, domestic chores, and even sex were shared/apportioned after much discussion; in effect, a contract was enacted between us without benefit of a ritual celebration or social sanction. I think that this kind of domestic arrangement reflected that of my peers.

In 1971, when I was out and about in the gay subculture in Chicago, I joined the Gay Task Force of the American Library Association. The Task Force had a cause that year. The University of Minnesota had reneged on a contract/offer made to librarian Mike McConnell, because of the publicity engendered when he applied for a marriage license with his gay lover, Jack Baker. Their application was denied. McConnell took his case to court challenging the Constitutionality of the state statute, and then sued the University for breach of contract. Baker, President of the student body sued in a relate case. They lost both cases. By this time I was involved in a relationship with my 19-year-old secretary at a law-publishing firm while having a little something on the side with a botany student at the University of Chicago and a charming young woman who rode a motorcycle. I consider this the period of my belated adolescence. If gay marriage statutes had been in effect, I probably could have faced multiple suits for breach of promise. I set up housekeeping again with another (straight until then) woman from work. During the four years of this relationship my activism increased, my income plummeted. Neither of these pleased my new partner who consoled herself with the (male) coach of her school's girls' basketball team. When we split she got the furniture and the goodies and I ended up in a room behind a vacant storefront. Nothing in writing, ergo no property settlements as it were. In 1978, I became involved with a woman who called about a class I offered in Lesbian Literature through the Lavender University. We were on-again, off-again for the next few years, punctuated by a four-month stay I had in San Francisco during the critical winter of 1978-?. (The Milk-Moscone murders.) She worked for an airline and deadheaded to visit me first in Frisco and later Tucson; but there were no partner benefits in those days. She experimented with a few other lesbians before settling into a heterosexual marriage.

Other couplings followed: a few years with a gal who played the organ at church on Sundays and was smarter than I. That one ended badly and I vowed to stay single. But I succumbed to the courtship of a medic who had an Irish temper to match her red hair. I was never able to avail myself of her hospital's family options. We lasted about five years until she began moving in cats and dogs without discussion and finally brought home a female Army reservist. They decamped to Arizona.

I am now about 14 years into what I consider to be my first mature relationship. Some years ago we had a lawyer draw up our wills and healthcare and durable powers of attorney. We set up a joint checking account for household expenses and are residual trustees for our other financial paperwork. Neither of us have a helluva lot so marriage tax benefits (if any will still be around when gay marriage becomes law) would be negligible. We live in a village that offers domestic-partnership registry, but since it grants no rights or benefits, we demurred. One less list to be on in case of backlash. We don't have children and don't plan on having any. Children, it would seem to me, would be the overriding factor in a pro-marriage decision. Otherwise, it just doesn't seem worth it to have any laws (local, federal or canonical) diddling in our private affairs. I wonder though, how those other women from my younger days, would have handled our break ups. Would I have sued their new loves for alienation of affection, loss of conjugal rights, alimony? I might have enjoyed keeping all the stuff we bought—enough to furnish five houses. Perhaps I could be spending my retirement flying around for free on my ex's airline or luxuriating in the goodies I would have won had I sued to be kept in the manner to which I had become accustomed.

All those who are against same-sex unions seem to forget that "marriages" are actually private commitments that only sometimes, in some societies, have fallen under the purview of church or state. There are times, even today, when the State is in flux or clergy non-existent; but people still "marry" each other without the sanction of either. Those that argue for the sanctity of marriage seem to forget its abuses. At the Lyric the other night we heard Mozart's Marriage of Figaro. The opera was built around the medieval concept of "droit du seigneur," the right of the lord to spend the wedding night with his vassal's bride. That custom was revoked. It wasn't until the mid-1800s that U.S. married women were granted the right to own their own property by the State. In China the State determines the number of children in a marriage. I watch subtitled Korean TV-dramas: in the Age of Warriors and the Three Kingdoms, Korea and other oriental countries allowed multiple wives and assigned each her place and rights in the family. Polyandry and polygamy have had economic and social reasons for support by many cultures including Mormons in the U.S. Some cultures even allowed for same-sex marriage, the women of Dahomey in West Africa—one being the legal father of any subsequent or previous children. Marriage, with or without the social trappings of a wedding, has historically been a fluid thing. The Roman Catholic Church didn't get involved canonically until the 9th century. Economic reality and property rights have been factors for change. Why not social climate? The writers of religious holy books could not have imagined a time when same-sex couples would be able to have children genetically linked to one or both parents. Our Constitution is constantly being reinterpreted by courts to cover possibilities that couldn't have existed in the framers' minds, or concepts that were alien to their society (like universal sufferage). It may well be time for such revisiting of the idea of marriage.

But for a lesbian of my age and inclination, a contract between two persons and the State has less weight than our private contract, "terminable at will" by either party.

Copyright 2003 by Marie J. Kuda. e-mail: kudoschgo@aol.com ---------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------