Same Sex? That's Different!

In Minneapolis last week, I made a passing mention to a former Newton couple I was visiting about a woman I worked with and her wife. They were briefly amused and noted how odd it was that I could say that, being from Massachusetts instead of Minnesota.

My yellow Reebok's were plenty unusual for the heartland. One of their favorite, but gentle, derisions came out repeatedly. When the locals are shocked by the odd, in lieu of saying you're tasteless or creepy, they tend to say, "That's different."

Grunt. Different is bad there.

Down in the Ocean State, a different-thinking columnist, Bob Kerr, does a very funny take on the my-marriage-is-threatened ruse. In the Providence Journal, he writes that he has been watching carefully for the damage done to Rhode Island or Massachusetts different-sex marriages by three years of SSM here.

In fact, he solicits tales of woe, fear and harm from those whose fragile marriages have suffered. His criteria are simple:

• Have long-standing marriages between men and women lost some of their vitality in the last three years?
• Have husbands and wives found they talk to each other less than they did before gay marriage was made legal?
• Have small pleasures in heterosexual marriage been lost because gays can talk openly in a family way?
• ...a new snappishness perhaps or unsettling incidents of one spouse saying to another, “You were more fun before gay marriage.”

He notes that his Bay State neighbors seem to be as happy and huggy as ever. However:

Maybe it’s more subtle. Maybe the toll gay marriage has taken on Massachusetts is something difficult to point at and define. Maybe it’s just a nagging sense that once “they” got to exchange the vows, what “we” had wasn’t quite so special.

Or maybe it’s something that will forever be in the future, a cumulative cultural body blow that will take years, then more years, to completely understand.

By the bye, the odd thing about my coworker is not that she has a wife. Rather, both are named Jennifer.

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Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, same sex marriage, Bob Kerr, Providence Journal