Talking about same-sex marriage

Guest poster Peterr at firedoglake:

The TheoCon view of marriage is built around power and gender roles. Their chief problem with same-sex marriage is that they can't figure out who wears the pants in the family. Someone's got to be in charge — and (by their theological lights) that's the job of the man of the house. This is why TheoCons (especially the male variety) are rightly threatened by same-sex marriage. If Larry and Barry can marry, then marriage isn't about preserving gender roles, with manly men providing for the family and meek women being the submissive nurturers at home, barefoot and pregnant. "Horrors!" thinks the TheoCon man. "What if my wife finds out about that? How will I keep her in line?" It gets even worse, if he thinks about himself: "What if they're right? What then is my role in a marriage?"

The greatest gift of the GLBT community to the straight community in this debate around same-sex marriage is the focus on partnership. The whole Genesis 2 story of creation, around which so many on the right build their odd view of marriage, is not at all about gender and gender roles. It's really about the difference between companions and partners. A dog is a companion. A cat is a companion. A giraffe is a companion. According to the story, God made all the animals, brought them all to the man to deal with his loneliness, but none of them sufficed. But another human being ... that's a partner!

Interestingly, the history of English translations of this story mirrors the TheoCon/Progressive debates here. Older translations like the King James Version of Genesis 2 says the woman is to be a "helper" (or some similar word) for the man; the New Revised Standard Version more properly translates the Hebrew of this passage as "partner."