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Gay Marriage and the Quest for a Cootie Vacine
Opinion by Els (wife and personal goddess of Dr. Omed)
Pardon me for what I get wrong here, but it seems like the gay marriage/civil unions issue breaks down in some very interesting and revealing ways. Let’s call it the “cootie factor.” If you’re going to come with me down this road, we’re all going to have to agree to a metaphor and cooties are as close as I can get.
Cooties are born in ambiguity, the desire to touch/not touch. Most of us got them one time or another, generally on the play ground at a point when it is difficult to cross the great gender divide. Cooties are all about knowing what the prevailing culture expects and acting against those expectations, the personification of the adrenaline rush that comes with small cultural crimes and misdemeanors. In kids, cooties are the escape valve that allows changes in attitude and behavior.
Cooties are actually rather useful and liberating to an 11-year-old. They encourage exploration because they are generally painless and highly ritualistic to the recipient. To brave cooties is to steal power, and as long as the originator of the cooties shares the frisson of excitement, cooties are an aid to growth. On the other hand, cootie originators tend, at some point or another, to move beyond the metaphor. And when that happens, they just get mad, and rightly so. Boys that don’t grow out of the idea of cooties tend to hit their girlfriends. Societies that don’t grow out of the idea of cooties veil their women and lynch people. Cooties, instead of a means toward liberation devolve into fetish, become institutionalized instead of fluid, retreat completely from reason and become mired in emotion. The adrenaline they evoke becomes read as panic rather than euphoria. Rational people don’t get cooties, but people are not always rational.
So, what, you ask does that have to do with gay marriage? Gay people have cooties, just like girls (work with me here). We even have a show about it, “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” where five gay boys, one of whom might be the reincarnation of my very dearest late friend, give gay cooties to some bohunk from Brooklyn and he likes it. (Cooties are equal opportunity for lesbians, but Ellen doesn’t have a new hit show).
When an otherwise rational person hears the words gay marriage and starts turning purple, they have just gotten cooties. (Hey, in grade school you could catch them from a sibling who was “just looking at you”). It goes like this: marriage equals sex; sex is powerful and addictive; in order to control my feelings about sex I have created rules and restrictions; when sexual rules are broken, I feel overwhelmed; therefore you must not break the rules. Whatever the rules are, gay people are breaking them, because the first rule our society teaches about relationships is boy+girl=okay. Why does this work out to be so crucial? Look at a couple of rewordings of the equation: boy=okay-girl. So, a boy without a girl isn’t quite okay. And what happens if you substitute boy for girl? boy=okay-boy….which leads to 0=okay, nothing is okay. When nothing is okay, well, people pass laws. But, and this is really important, they find all sorts of really good and substantial reasons for going a bit wack.
Carol Mosley-Braun got asked about her position on gay marriage at a presidential forum in Oklahoma earlier this year. She thanked the moderator for the question, and proceeded to explain that as far as she was concerned it was a civil rights issue. Moseley-Baun’s aunt got married in the 1950’s to a white man, and there were states where they could not travel. She noted that the language used now to decry gay marriage is the same as that used to defend anti-miscegenation laws. It wasn’t until 1967 that the Supreme Court got up on its hind legs and swatted down that one. The Supremes just got around to deciding that boy on boy sex may be icky but it shouldn’t be illegal (Scalia aside, who has a terminal case of cooties).
Logic, science and fairness don’t matter when people are afraid of cooties and people who have outgrown certain kinds of cooties forget how powerful they are. (People who think they are immune to all cooties haven’t signed up for Fear Factor and been asked to eat bugs). The reason the debate is now about the right words to use is that gay marriage produces cooties (boy + boy! = okay), where as no one as long term associations with the rather astringent term civil union. Where there are no expectations there are no cooties and rational thought may possibly ensue.
So, what lessons can we learn from the playground? First, cultural scripts are powerful. Second, it may be “their problem” and “all in their head” and they may “not be right” or “fair,” but you can still give “them” cooties just by existing. Third, it is both completely fair and absolutely necessary to redefine terms to short circuit the cootie factor. Anyone remember going steady? Words are powerful, you just may have to make up new ones to give people the opportunity to listen to you. Think of it as creating a cootie vaccine. And sometimes, when the bullies get too rough, it is perfectly alright to get in their face and tell them to grow the fuck up.
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