Earlier this week, I posted about the lengthy article in the NY Times Sunday magazine that profiled young, married gay couples in Massachusetts. The couples were all white and wealthy, and I took author Benoit Denizet-Lewis to task over that – it would…

Socio-political issues aside, on a personal level, my reaction was [i]what are these idiots [u]thinking???[/u][/i].

I jumped into a committed relationship when I was just out of college. I was in love and I thought we were a perfect match. We were committed to one another and I thought we’d be together forever. I expected only sunshine and lollipops. Boy, was I wrong!

As people mentioned, gaydom is not universally fixated by trendy clothes, dinner parties, and appointing our homes and selves with the latest consumerist soma. Many of us live fairly frugal lives and are extremely content with the quietness and simplicity of that choice. Getting married, for many gay people, isn’t about magnifying the decadent-life nor is it about keeping the party alive merely in the context of a mutual commitment. It’s something more humanly universal and base.

For many contemporary gays the choice of a permanent union is probably more about taking a wild chance that you and someone else can make it together and, over time, successfully weather the various atrocities life undoubtedly deals us all.

No one knows what craziness the future will certainly bring but only that it shall. A union with someone else with whom you are in-love is a wise attempt at reigning in the onslaught of life’s horrors and possibly creating some beachhead when events get too unwieldy for any one individual alone. Marriage for gays, like straights, is probably more about carving out a little plot of sanctuary in the storminess of life — with someone you dearly love. And this says nothing about the desire of these two people to grow over time together ever closer.

By the end of the article i went back and looked at those overly sacrine photos and realized we all probably, even just a little, enter marriage with an eye towards the improbably ideal. Unfortunately, i think the author had trouble looking beyond the stereotypes presented before him and missed the common ideals that gays and straights alike seek when marrying.

Part of my problem with the article is that the tone and subjects he chose to profile all create the sense of an elitist upper-upper-middle-class point of view that I find fascinating (that’s also why I read the Sunday Vows features) but still have a hard time connecting to (even though they’re admittedly not too far removed from my own socio-economic circles).

There was also a really self-satisfied tone to what the couples had to say, or maybe with how it was presented in the article, that really turned me off. I know I’m occasionally guilty of the same thing (“Yes, we’ve been together SEVEN YEARS.”), but it still turns me off.

I’m not explaining this very well.

Great post, Jeff.

I was reading that lengthy article in the NY Times about young gay couples who are getting married, but at about page 6 I wanted to jump out the window so I could run around the street screaming, so I just stopped. It’s one of the most irritating thin…