Rachel’s Musings

The recent California Supreme Court decision in the Benitez case, shows who will be missing out with the focus on the right to marriage in the GLBT movement: Unmarried and single people.

The doctors for Lupita Benitez refused to provide fertility treatment to her because she was a lesbian, oh, and because she was not married. The doctor claimed that her religious views would prevent her from doing her job.      Continue reading this post » » »

As Bella DePaulo has pointed out in a recent blog post, there are several new documentaries on singles out. I wonder if I just watched the third one she mentioned (unfortunately, the spam filter at PT seems to reject any comment that contains the word “single,” so I can’t ask Bella…): “Single: A Documentary,” which shows DePaulo briefly but, unfortunately, not every time someone voiced a singlist or matrimanical opinion. I suppose that would’ve ended up being a documentary about singlism featuring DePaulo because she’d been all over the place! Unless they’re doing a complete 360 in the part that I missed, the message of the documentary is clear: If you’re single, you are selfish, suffer from ADD, too lazy to be in a relationship, and will live unhappily ever after. That people could choose to be single was completely not mentioned… That marriage is an institution that might need some serious questioning didn’t seem to occur to the film makers (although some of the people interviewed started down that path).

I am very disappointed because the documentary has a cast, which includes - aside from DePaulo - Stephanie Coontz. The trailer, though, already indicates the direction of the whole documentary: Despite doing lip-service to the idea that being single isn’t a problem, the goal in life should still be to get (and stay) married. So, I should’ve known that despite DePaulo, this wasn’t a documentary that would shatter myths. And if I had paid better attention, I would have noticed that Barbara DaFoe Whitehead, one of the cast members, is the author of “Dan Quale was Right,” an article published in 1993 that Nancy Polikoff sees as part of a rhetorical shift that “traced all social problems to the decline of marriage and invoked at the solution restoring lifelong marriage to its proper place” (67-68). Sigh. Well, don’t make my mistake and save your money or buy a book. Unless you’re interested in being depressed about being single or dating, you can skip this documentary…

Bella DePaulo blogged about a recent BBC report on a presentation of findings from a Finish study on Alzheimer’s disease. The headline everywhere seems to be: to prevent Alzheimer’s, we should marry! Digging into the study some more - which has not yet been published in a peer reviewed journal - the first thing that struck me: Alzheimer’s is not very prevalent. Out of 1,432 study participants,

139 were diagnosed with some form of cognitive impairment, including 82 with mild cognitive impairment — which may represent a transitional phase between normal age-related memory decline and Alzheimer’s disease — and 48 with Alzheimer’s.

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When challenging the preferential status of marriage, I am often countered with “but marriage is natural!” No, it is not. Reading about the history of marriage in general and in the US in particular, it is clear that marriage is an institution created with specific civic purposes, which changed over time but were always there. In the US, it is steeped in the Christian tradition of monogamy, which the founding fathers imposed on the new nation.

Of course, this is avoiding the real question: Is coupling natural?      Continue reading this post » » »

An interesting commentary at AlterNet made me realize how destructive the influence of the Religious Right really is (hereafter I call them the Wrong - they might be on the right-side of the political spectrum but they are dead wrong in their positions). The topics where their influence plays a role are ever expanding in my awareness. Here are some of them:

• Evolution: This is the most obvious one. Their attempts to derail science and teaching nonsense range from creationism, via creation “science,” to intelligent design.
• Global climate change: Here they try to cast doubt on the fact that we humans are influencing the weather patterns for the worse and are the major culprits behind climate change.
• Marriage: Not only are they opposing gay marriage but by imposing their standards of the heterosexual marriage as the only healthy family, they are attacking family diversity.
• Child rearing: Through ignoring research, they were able to perpetuate the myth that marriage is necessary for healthy child development.

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True Majority asks activists to sign a letter to the governors that calls for marriage equality. The call is framed as marriage equality being bigger than all other issues: “Marriage equality comes down to human rights.” I took issue with that and wrote them the following:

Thank you for your actions regarding marriage equality. As a single by choice, I take issue, though, with your framing marriage equality as a human rights issue: what human rights are we exactly defending by asking for marriage equality? The right to discriminate against other forms of relationships? Marriage is an institution; not a human right. People have human rights simply by being human, not by their relationship status. By expanding who can marry, we are perpetuating the inherent discriminatory policies that are endowed on people because they “tie the knot.” As a single by choice, I find it frustrating that people ignore that many of the 1,100+ benefits have nothing to do with human rights or protecting anybody. They simply privilege those who are in a state-sanctioned relationship, aka marriage. This discriminates against all of us who are in relationships other than marriages.

While I think that everybody who wants to marry should have the right to do so, I do not appreciate that this private commitment comes with a huge package of rights and benefits that are not available outside of marriage. I would love to see True Majority fight against singlism (the discrimination of singles) and marital status discrimination in all forms. We should fight for human rights for all people, regardless of their marital status, relationship style, sexual orientation, race, or gender.

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