The jist I got, particularly from the first piece, a shorter one, was: Hey. Since everyone’s all thinking about gay relationships right now, hmm! Wonder if there’s anything about them that might be interesting to straight folks? Other than the fact that they may have fewer arguments about toilet seats being left up/down.

Lord knows there’s enough homophobic pseudoscience out there, waiting to be cited by the willing believers, “proving” that partner’s and my relationship is waaaaaaay, waaaaaaaaay worse than the ones we’d have if only we hooked up with those guys way back in seventh grade that had crushes on us. And so on. I haven’t yet seen an argument intimating that the quality of our relationships should have anything to do with access we ought to have to state protections. Most one liners on that topic are: “They want the right to complain about the laundry, etc. etc., ’til death do they part? Welcome to it!”

If you ever make it to the UK, then do visit the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway.

[later note, after waking up; above one made on the fly right before going to sleep]

The aspect of the NY Times articles under consideration here is: shared domestic labor and its impact on reported relationship satisfaction. Both articles cite studies. The fact that my partner leaves the cupboards open in the kitchen, and I never recycle the New Yorkers, is not in dispute. Neither is the fact that queer relationships succeed or fail for comparable reasons (at comparable rates?) as hetero ones. With the notable exceptions that, just as racism is corrosive to the lives of people of color in white supremacist cultures, and therefore must be factored into the strains on peoples’ lives including their relationships, so too homophobia/heterosexism has a corrosive effect on the lives of LGBT people, and therefore must be factored into the stresses on our lives and relationships.

Ulla, please read both articles and then re-think your remarks.

I consider innercitygarden’s note that queer people “have a head start on rejecting a family model” to be fairly modest words, by the way, neither pissy nor pissing contest-y. I also think it’s accurate, insofar as one is exposed to SOME potential for insight from any outsider position. It’s every outsider’s opportunity to glean that insight, and use it towards making their world, and the world around them, more filled with love and justice. The fact that many gay people have done that (and some have not), is the point here. I find reference to this as a “pissing contest” both demeaning and reductive.

I’ve been thinking about that NYT article too, and I wasn’t really impressed with the conclusion. Lesbian parents share stuff because “women are good at sharing” and “they’re the same gender so they have the same expectations on standards” type arguments are annoying. I’m inclined to think it’s more that, having come out, having formed a relationship and made the not inconsiderable descision to have children in difficult circumstances, lesbian and gay parents have been forced to a) challenge traditional gender roles and expectations and b) actually talk about the sort of roles and lifestyle they want before kids actually turn up.

Most hetero couples in my experience manage to drift from one life stage to the next doing what they assume is the right thing to do, muddling along doing what their parents did, assuming that their partner shares all the same goals. When hetero-lead families don’t work along 1950s type lines, it tends to be because the woman has engaged with feminism and taught her partner/pushed the discussion along within their relationship (so she has yet another ‘job’, but it’s worth it). Very very few straight men have sat down and thought seriously about gender roles and housework and childcare and the related industrial relations issues. They’ve never had to think about gender and social expectations. As a queer woman and a feminist I’ve spent lots of time thinking about gender and applying that analysis to my life, as a straight man my partner really hasn’t. He sees inequality, he understands that he is equally responsible, (hell his Mum even made him iron his own shirts!) but rejecting a lifetime of social conditioning (and finding new role models when you figure out that you can’t be the same sort of father your father was) takes a long time to incorporate into your everyday routine.

Maybe a better conclusion to that article would be “because GLBTIQ parents have dealt with a lifetime of discrimination growing up and when forming relationships, and are less likely to relate to traditional gender roles for either sex, they have a head start on rejecting a family model that doesn’t work for most hetero families either.”