Search Results for: Marriage

Same-Sex Marriage, America, and You: A Reading List

Photo: Ted Eytan

The United States wasn’t built on pluralism, unless you consider “which extremist Protestant denomination are you?” and an oppressed native population pluralism. The Founding Fathers had some good ideas (democracy!) but diversity and inclusion—by our contemporary definitions—weren’t among them. I like to think we’re getting there, that one day, we’re going to be known as a place where superficial tolerance or outright hate aren’t the norm, but wholehearted acceptance and appreciation are. That we won’t use religion as an excuse for bigotry or stasis. That marginalized communities will have equity, not just equality. That’s what I choose to ponder on the Fourth of July. How far we’ve come, how far we have to go.

This year, unsurprisingly, I’m thinking about Obergefell v. Hodges, better known as the case resulting in the Supreme Court decision to institute the right to same-sex marriage in all 50 states. I’m thinking about the weight of marriage and its legal ramifications, about assimilation versus acceptance. I’m reading, a lot, about how marriage equality isn’t the endgame. At its best, it’s a step on the way to something, somewhere better. At worst, it’s a misstep or a distraction. In the following list, I share different perspectives about same-sex marriage (all written by members of the LGBTQ+ community), as well as Pride, religious opinions, family and stereotypes.

1. “The Supreme Court. The Law. And My Same-Sex Marriage.” (Leah Lax, Houston Chronicle, June 2015)

Leah Lax left Hasidic Judaism and found happiness and intimacy with another woman. She shares the technicalities of their journey—healthcare, tax benefits, marriage—and the beauty in the details of of waking up next to the person you love. Read more…

Meet the Gay Mormon Men (and Their Wives) Beseeching SCOTUS to Save ‘Traditional’ Marriage

Longreads Pick

Gardner travels to Utah to talk to Danny Caldwell—a gay Mormon married to a woman named Erin—to try to understand why they are part of an amicus brief contesting the constitutional legalization of gay marriage.

Published: Jun 17, 2015
Length: 13 minutes (3,293 words)

The Rewards of a Literary Marriage

Longreads Pick

A profile of the writers Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne from the New York Times magazine, circa 1987.

Published: Feb 8, 1987
Length: 25 minutes (6,450 words)

Falling: Love and Marriage in a Conservative Indian Family

Longreads Pick

A new Longreads Exclusive from River Teeth: Debie Thomas shares her story about growing up in a conservative Indian family and reconciling the idea of arranged marriages with the Western world’s version of falling in love.

Source: River Teeth
Published: Aug 1, 2013
Length: 16 minutes (4,194 words)

Falling: Love and Marriage in a Conservative Indian Family

Illustration by Laura McCabe

Debie Thomas | River Teeth | Summer 2013 | 17 minutes (4,194 words)

River TeethFor this week’s Longreads Member Pick, we are thrilled to share an essay from Ashland, Ohio’s narrative nonfiction journal River Teeth. Longreads readers can receive a 20 percent discount off of a River Teeth subscription by going here.
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The Arranged Marriage That Ended Happily Ever After: How My Parents Fell In Love, 30 Years Later

Longreads Pick

The writer on watching her parents fall in love three decades after their arranged marriage and what she learned from it:

I was 24, and deeply absorbed in my own dramas. I barely noticed how close my mother was sitting to my father at dinner at our favorite restaurant. They watched me with giddy smiles. Poor parents, I thought. So lonely when I’m not here. Then I saw them playing footsie under the table.

That night, after we’d all gone to sleep, I woke up to the sound of them laughing. “You!” my mother squealed. “No, you!” my father insisted. I’d never heard them speak that way to each other in my life. Were they . . . flirting? The next morning, just as I was beginning to think it had all been a strange dream, I walked into the kitchen, and my parents sprang to opposite corners, blushing.

Author: Mira Jacob
Source: Vogue
Published: Jun 26, 2014
Length: 9 minutes (2,401 words)

‘The Millionaire Couple Who Will End Divorce’ Says Three Things Will Keep Your Marriage Intact

Harville and Helen take turns talking and clicking through a PowerPoint that includes slides in both English and Spanish. Helen explains that half the people here tonight are the “draggers,” the other half are the “draggees,” and that it will actually be that second group that’s more excited by the end of the workshop. “See,” she says. “Your partner already decided that you’re the problem.”

Harville goes over what couples generally want from a relationship, which he boils down to: safety, a connected feeling, and joy. Helen explains that even if we forget everything else, they hope we remember three things. One idea: that childhood influences marriages. One skill: the ability to have safe conversations. One decision: a commitment to zero negativity.

We both bristle a bit at that last one.

-From 2014, writer Michael Mooney and his fiancée participate in couples counseling with Harville Hendrix and Helen Hunt, for D Magazine.

Read the story

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Photo: emdot, Flickr

A Pivotal Early Moment for the Cheney Family and Gay Marriage

cheney-book

“In 2004, Mary contemplated quitting her job on the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign because of the president’s support for the Federal Marriage Amendment, which proposed to ban same-sex marriage. As Mary recalls in her memoir, when she asked to discuss the matter with her father at the White House, Lynne and Liz joined them, and all three urged her to remain on the campaign—noting that they themselves disagreed with Bush on the issue. But they also told her they would understand and support her decision if she did resign. Mary chose to stay on and, later in that campaign, when Democratic nominee John Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards, each separately raised the issue of her sexuality during the debates, the Cheneys were furious. Lynne declared Kerry was ‘not a good man’ and denounced his ‘cheap and tawdry political trick.’ When Edwards debated their father, Liz and Lynne went so far as to stick their tongues out at him, while Mary glared at the Democrat and, borrowing one of her father’s famous expressions, silently mouthed the words ‘Go fuck yourself.’”

Jason Zengerle’s in-depth background on the Cheney family, for Politico Magazine. Read more on gay marriage.

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Marriage, Equality and Household Chores

“RG: Sometimes when people talk about women and the workforce, they say a woman cannot truly be equal to a man unless she has her own income. What do you think?

“Mom: Well. Equality. What a word. When we choose go outside in the world, when we come home, we’re still mommy. The second shift starts. Equality doesn’t exist, period, even when you share the chores. Some days it can be 70/30 and other days it is 30/70. I don’t think that’s what we should be fighting for.

“RG: What should we be fighting for?

“Mom: Men participating more in the home, but it’s petty to say 50/50, because life doesn’t allow that.”

Roxane Gay’s interview with her mother about equality in marriage in The Hairpin.

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Photo: nostri-imago, Flickr

The Real History of Love & Marriage

“Though the murky concept known as ‘love’ has been recorded for all of human history, it was almost never a justification for marriage. ‘Love was considered a reason not to get married,’ says Abbott. ‘It was seen as lust, as something that would dissipate. You could have love or lust for your mistress, if you’re a man, but if you’re a woman, you had to suppress it. It was condemned as a factor in marriage.’”

Collectors Weekly on the non-romantic origins of marriage. More in the Longreads Archive.

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Photo: Wikimedia Commons

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