Gay humorist David Sedaris, who became famous for his “Crumpet the Elf’ Christmas-bashing on NPR and then his contributions to the NPR show This American Life, has a new essay in The New Yorker that ably illustrates the gay-lefty ambivalence about marriage: they want “gay marriage” at the same time they have contempt for it as unfashionably conventional.
First, Sedaris wrote they wanted “in” on marriage because “We were the ones who toiled behind the scenes while straight people got married: the photographers and bakers and florists, working like Negro porters settling spoiled passengers into the whites-only section of the train.”
But favoring marriage was really about sticking it to the fundamentalists:
The battle for gay marriage was, in essence, the fight to be as square as straight people, to say things like “My husband tells me that the new Spicy Chipotle Burger they’ve got at Bennigan’s is awesome,” and “Here it is, Valentine’s Day less than a week behind us, and already my wife is flying our Easter flag!”
That said, I was all for the struggle, mainly because it so irritated the fundamentalists. I wanted gay people to get the right to marry, and then I wanted none of us to act on it. I wanted it to be ours to spit on. Instead, much to my disappointment, we seem to be all over it.
Nevertheless, Sedaris was predictably overjoyed at home in Sussex, England, when the news of the Supreme Court mandate broke this summer:
I finally got a signal at the post office in the neighboring village. I’d gone to mail a set of keys to a friend and, afterward, I went out front and pulled out my iPad. The touch of a finger and there it was, the headline story on the Times site: “SUPREME COURT RULING MAKES SAME-SEX MARRIAGE A RIGHT NATIONWIDE.”
I read it, and, probably like every American gay person, I was overcome with emotion. Standing on the sidewalk, dressed in rags with a litter picker pinioned between my legs, I felt my eyes tear up, and as my vision blurred I thought of all the people who had fought against this, and thought, Take that, assholes.
The Supreme Court ruling tells every gay fifteen-year-old living out in the middle of nowhere that he or she is as good as any other dope who wants to get married. To me it was a slightly mixed message, like saying we’re all equally entitled to wear Dockers to the Olive Garden.
Sedaris then dragged the apparent humor into it, that his partner Hugh wanted nothing to do with marriage, not even for the financial benefits.
I swore to him that I was not being romantic about it: “There’ll be no rings, no ceremony, no celebration of any kind. We won’t tell anyone but the accountant. Think of it as a financial contract, nothing more.”
“No.”
“God damn it,” I said. “You are going to marry me whether you like it or not.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Oh, yes you are.”
After two weeks of this, he slammed his fork on the table, saying, “I’ll do anything just to shut you up.” This is, I’m pretty sure, the closest I’m likely to get to a yes.
I took another ear of corn. “Fine, then. It’s settled.”
But it didn’t happen. Sedaris concluded: “It occurred to me while standing there, cars whizzing by, that the day I marry is the day I’ll get hit and killed, probably by some driver who’s texting, or, likelier still, sexting. ‘He is survived by his husband, Hugh Hamrick,’ the obituary will read, and before I’m even in my grave I’ll be rolling over in it.”
