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[ Couldn't post this last night, when it was written, for technical reasons. ]
I have nothing to say about the ballgame. (As opposed to not having anything to say. If that makes sense.) I have gotten no work done for days, so I don't have wordcount to post. Thus, I continue on with the activism thing, and ramble.
I'm doing pretty well on the appropriate music for these.
"We Are Real"
There are files out there that list out the thousand-odd legal benefits that come of marriage in the United States. Inheritance benefits, next-of-kin, health care, child care, a huge number of benefits ranging from the profound to the trivial.
I'm not going to write about that. There are so many people writing about that, from private individuals up to organisations like the Alternatives to Marriage Project, that it almost seems redundant. Not when there are the things that fall between the cracks between those documented legal rights, those things down on paper in a thousand different places. The things that aren't down on paper, but still exist and wear holes in human beings by their lack.
When I got married, I noticed that people treated my relationship with my husband differently. Not a major difference, not something world-shattering, earth-shaking, or even cow-tipping, but a difference: I had been through that rite of passage, that social contract, performed the rituals that made that partnership something that other folks considered themselves obligated to recognise. It's a subtle thing, almost insidious, hardly there unless one's looking for it, aside from the fact that my mother-in-law decided that it was acceptable for us to share a room after we had that little piece of paper filed in City Hall. She didn't even have to be invited to the wedding, just having the formalities fulfilled according to the law was enough to satisfy her that we were holding up our end of the bargain.
There's a catch-22 in there somewhere. My husband and I went through that little ritual of having a Justice of the Peace sign a little piece of paper after we had our blood tested for syphilis, and all of a sudden, there we are with our thousand rights and permission to share a bedroom at the mother-in-law's house and all the little subtle weirdnesses of being part of a family unit that gets acknowledged automatically, invisibly, without thought. The catch-22 in that is subtle, is tricky, and is terribly nasty: partnerships that can't sign the paper get treated as less real. Not everywhere, but persistently, quietly, insidiously. Why? Because what makes a partnership count as socially real, the rite of passage for this particular form of social connection, is getting the piece of paper.
And the people who could marry, could get the piece of paper, even if they don't, they've got something more real than the people with partnerships that can't. Just because they could, if they wanted to.
A number don't, out of protest. Or because they think the game is rigged. Or for other reasons. And their societies evolve new ways of recognising partnerships as real, because that's one of the things that societies do - recognise the landmarks in their members' lives.
Marriages make families. That's one of the things they're for. And non-traditional families have a lot of things to worry about, sitting as they are in a place where they can't get consistent recognition as real things. Real partnerships. Real families.
And here's where I go back on what I started with, and talk a little about the law and those thousand rights. I've seen what happens when this goes wrong, when it goes horribly wrong; I worked as a paralegal for a while and I saw what I consider the worst-case scenario. Maybe someday I will feel clean again; this is part of my atonement.
Your nontraditional families have to make wills, well before they expect to die, because if something happens and they don't have a will, their partners are out in the cold. Intestate inheritance of unmarried persons goes, most places, to the parents, siblings, and children of the decedent; intestate inheritance of married folks goes to spouse and children. In some places, a will that doesn't give a certain amount of property to the spouse can be challenged and the inheritance adjusted until it makes that minimum. And sometimes, the blood relatives will challenge the will of someone in a non-traditional family and try to have the bequests overturned no matter what the documents say, but at least the documents are making the attempt.
Best to be on good terms with the blood relatives . . . if that's possible. Some blood relatives can't be on good terms with a child who's in something other than a straight, monogamous relationship system in the first place.
Children are a major point of difficulty. If the non-traditional family is receiving support from blood relatives, they're probably at the greatest risk for some sort of challenge that succeeds. But then there are other sources of problem, risks to having the children taken away -- people making anonymous calls to the child protection folks, trying to cause trouble for the weirdos. Some stay closeted to try to protect themselves from this; some hope that being out will help them, so that when folks in uniforms come around to ask questions of the school administrators, the daycare, or whatever, those administrators can say, "Yes, little Heather has two mommies, this is their schedule of pickups and school involvement, is there a problem?"
In some parts of the United States, being gay is sufficient to disqualify one from being able to adopt. Not even having a partner is required. And adopting one's partner's children so as to be able to have parental rights and responsibilities and retain custody if something happens to the bio-parent? Fat chance.
Those are some of the costs of having a family that doesn't get broadly recognised as real. Those are the costs of the restriction on the rite of social bonding that heterosexual monogamous sorts have, beyond the merely economic, the mere right to decide on the arrangement of one's partner's funeral, guaranteed access to them in the hospital, the ability to marry through immigration, or the ability to change one's name at marriage without going through paperwork and fees.
Societies will do this: societies will have their rites of passage, those qualifications for real support and real recognition. This is part of the nature of societies, that there will be bonds made between their members and the society, each a recognition of the reality of the other. When the rites break down, the society is weakened; real things go unrecognised, and people no longer enter into those contracts. This is schism: between those who would maintain the rites as they are, and those who wish the rites to reflect what is real, real relationships, real families.
Every so often I run into someone who's convinced that my relationship with my mate isn't as real or as important to me as my relationship with my husband. Because one has the piece of paper, which makes it into something different - different in the status of social acknowledgement it gets. Sometimes these people are even poly-aware, but still convinced that the marriage gets some sort of accent-mark, a bit of superiority over everything else. I come out of those conversations feeling a little queasy, knowing that I may never be able to get the basic recognition, the most basic of human things: the acknowledgement that We Are Real.
I have nothing to say about the ballgame. (As opposed to not having anything to say. If that makes sense.) I have gotten no work done for days, so I don't have wordcount to post. Thus, I continue on with the activism thing, and ramble.
I'm doing pretty well on the appropriate music for these.
"We Are Real"
There are files out there that list out the thousand-odd legal benefits that come of marriage in the United States. Inheritance benefits, next-of-kin, health care, child care, a huge number of benefits ranging from the profound to the trivial.
I'm not going to write about that. There are so many people writing about that, from private individuals up to organisations like the Alternatives to Marriage Project, that it almost seems redundant. Not when there are the things that fall between the cracks between those documented legal rights, those things down on paper in a thousand different places. The things that aren't down on paper, but still exist and wear holes in human beings by their lack.
When I got married, I noticed that people treated my relationship with my husband differently. Not a major difference, not something world-shattering, earth-shaking, or even cow-tipping, but a difference: I had been through that rite of passage, that social contract, performed the rituals that made that partnership something that other folks considered themselves obligated to recognise. It's a subtle thing, almost insidious, hardly there unless one's looking for it, aside from the fact that my mother-in-law decided that it was acceptable for us to share a room after we had that little piece of paper filed in City Hall. She didn't even have to be invited to the wedding, just having the formalities fulfilled according to the law was enough to satisfy her that we were holding up our end of the bargain.
There's a catch-22 in there somewhere. My husband and I went through that little ritual of having a Justice of the Peace sign a little piece of paper after we had our blood tested for syphilis, and all of a sudden, there we are with our thousand rights and permission to share a bedroom at the mother-in-law's house and all the little subtle weirdnesses of being part of a family unit that gets acknowledged automatically, invisibly, without thought. The catch-22 in that is subtle, is tricky, and is terribly nasty: partnerships that can't sign the paper get treated as less real. Not everywhere, but persistently, quietly, insidiously. Why? Because what makes a partnership count as socially real, the rite of passage for this particular form of social connection, is getting the piece of paper.
And the people who could marry, could get the piece of paper, even if they don't, they've got something more real than the people with partnerships that can't. Just because they could, if they wanted to.
A number don't, out of protest. Or because they think the game is rigged. Or for other reasons. And their societies evolve new ways of recognising partnerships as real, because that's one of the things that societies do - recognise the landmarks in their members' lives.
Marriages make families. That's one of the things they're for. And non-traditional families have a lot of things to worry about, sitting as they are in a place where they can't get consistent recognition as real things. Real partnerships. Real families.
And here's where I go back on what I started with, and talk a little about the law and those thousand rights. I've seen what happens when this goes wrong, when it goes horribly wrong; I worked as a paralegal for a while and I saw what I consider the worst-case scenario. Maybe someday I will feel clean again; this is part of my atonement.
Your nontraditional families have to make wills, well before they expect to die, because if something happens and they don't have a will, their partners are out in the cold. Intestate inheritance of unmarried persons goes, most places, to the parents, siblings, and children of the decedent; intestate inheritance of married folks goes to spouse and children. In some places, a will that doesn't give a certain amount of property to the spouse can be challenged and the inheritance adjusted until it makes that minimum. And sometimes, the blood relatives will challenge the will of someone in a non-traditional family and try to have the bequests overturned no matter what the documents say, but at least the documents are making the attempt.
Best to be on good terms with the blood relatives . . . if that's possible. Some blood relatives can't be on good terms with a child who's in something other than a straight, monogamous relationship system in the first place.
Children are a major point of difficulty. If the non-traditional family is receiving support from blood relatives, they're probably at the greatest risk for some sort of challenge that succeeds. But then there are other sources of problem, risks to having the children taken away -- people making anonymous calls to the child protection folks, trying to cause trouble for the weirdos. Some stay closeted to try to protect themselves from this; some hope that being out will help them, so that when folks in uniforms come around to ask questions of the school administrators, the daycare, or whatever, those administrators can say, "Yes, little Heather has two mommies, this is their schedule of pickups and school involvement, is there a problem?"
In some parts of the United States, being gay is sufficient to disqualify one from being able to adopt. Not even having a partner is required. And adopting one's partner's children so as to be able to have parental rights and responsibilities and retain custody if something happens to the bio-parent? Fat chance.
Those are some of the costs of having a family that doesn't get broadly recognised as real. Those are the costs of the restriction on the rite of social bonding that heterosexual monogamous sorts have, beyond the merely economic, the mere right to decide on the arrangement of one's partner's funeral, guaranteed access to them in the hospital, the ability to marry through immigration, or the ability to change one's name at marriage without going through paperwork and fees.
Societies will do this: societies will have their rites of passage, those qualifications for real support and real recognition. This is part of the nature of societies, that there will be bonds made between their members and the society, each a recognition of the reality of the other. When the rites break down, the society is weakened; real things go unrecognised, and people no longer enter into those contracts. This is schism: between those who would maintain the rites as they are, and those who wish the rites to reflect what is real, real relationships, real families.
Every so often I run into someone who's convinced that my relationship with my mate isn't as real or as important to me as my relationship with my husband. Because one has the piece of paper, which makes it into something different - different in the status of social acknowledgement it gets. Sometimes these people are even poly-aware, but still convinced that the marriage gets some sort of accent-mark, a bit of superiority over everything else. I come out of those conversations feeling a little queasy, knowing that I may never be able to get the basic recognition, the most basic of human things: the acknowledgement that We Are Real.
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