Separate instead of divorcing, that will drive everybody nuts. Depending on your local laws, you don’t even need to move apart!
This.
And I love the whole ‘fuckmate’ response =)
Born-again Christian here, trying to overcome my (very un-Jesus-like) prejudices. I still have to take a beat and go “Oh, it’s HER wife. Okay, I get it. Not what I’m used to, but equally valid… Ohmigod, she’s not noticing this inner dialogue, is she? Have I moved in the last ten seconds? Say something normal, quick!”
AMEN! And I don’t know why the entire country isn’t waking up and saying “Wait, we have a major political party that is against same-sex marriage? In fact, AGAINST “those people” being in love?
WHAT?
We need to vote all of them out right now!”
There’s a Yakov Smirnoff “In Soviet Russia…” joke in here somewhere, I’m sure of it.
In Soviet Russia, gender has you…
This is totally incomprehensible to me. Based on the definition of the term, my husband is my husband, period. We have never, ever, referred to each other as our “spouse,” and why should we? Does that make us assholes? I’m totally baffled by this post.
Does a Black person have to refer to himself as “colored,” to avoid offending racists? Does use of the word “Black” mean the person is an asshole? This is just stupid.
Well couldnt a gay couple where one man kind of takes the role of a female in the relationship and acts more feminine while the other is more masculine, couldnt the feminine one call himself the “wife”?
It gets easier after the first time.
Half my friends are gay, and I know lots of men’s husband’s and women’s wives. But I guess I’m old and inflexible, and I’m still slightly surprised every time I first hear a man I didn’t know was married refer to his husband.
It doesn’t bother me. I think it’s the correct term, and I’m delighted it’s legal. But I’m still just a little surprised.
Wow, there’s a lot to unpack, here.
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What definition of husband do you think is correct, and what is your source for this definition?
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You say that you think “husband” and “wife” being used for both members of a SSM has “caught on” because it tweaked social conservatives, and then compare that to the overall struggle for gay marriage. Do you think the push for SSM rights, itself, was done just to tweak conservatives?
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Are you aware that the majority of voters in the US support SSM? It hasn’t been the minority political position in this country for going on a decade, now.
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Do you really think it’s the words used to describe SSM that makes people oppose it? Do you think that opposition to SSM would have disappeared if we’d called it something else?
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Are you aware that we did, in fact, attempt to get marriage rights under a different name, and that was still opposed by conservatives? To the extent that many red-leaning states explicitly outlawed civil unions?
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Do you think there was a principled, non-bigoted opposition to gay marriage? Who do you think was representative of this principled, non-bigoted opposition, and how was it distinguishable from bigoted opposition?
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Do you see any contradiction at all between, “Thinks gays should be totally equal,” and “Gays shouldn’t get to use the same words as straight people?”
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If you introduce me and my (hypothetical) husband as, “Miller and his spouse,” and I say, “He’s not my spouse, he’s my husband,” how do you react to that? How would you introduce us going forward?
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Do you really think that lecturing gay people about manners when they’re fighting for their civil rights is a good way to get people to not think of you as an asshole?
The question was not what folks choose to call themselves, the question was whether other straight people were uncomfortable with the terms.
:dubious:
What is “the role of the female in he relationship”?
He never answers the good questions.
Hey, I’m not the only one who is slightly awkward about same-sex “husbands”. I was sitting next to a guy at a class recently, and he talked in non-gendered terms about the person he was married to. I wanted to ask him something where the natural word to use would be “husband” or “wife”, and I took a guess and asked about his “husband”. (The odds were in my favor. I was at a class at a gay event and I suspect that if he’d been talking about a wife he would have mentioned her gender.) He replied something along the lines of “oh good, I remembered to call him my husband, and not just my spouse”. And I had to say, “no, I guessed”.
I described this thread at dinner, and our house guest mentioned a cartoon she saw. There’s a fork and knife sitting next to two chopsticks. And the knife asks the chopsticks, “so, which of you is the fork?”
I know, I’ve read the thread. There’s a reason why I didn’t ask that question of any of the people who said, “It weirds me out, but I can deal with it,” and did ask it of the person who said, “It’s the wrong term, and I don’t use it.”
It doesn’t weird me out. I thought it was strange at first though.
Oh yeah, you’re probably referring to the guy who likes to get fucked and sucks cock, does the dishes, gets his hair done plus a pedicure, gets all dolled up and has his hubby’s dinner ready when he gets home, and prances around all day with limp wrists. And his husband’s the one who fucks and gets his dick sucked, watches football on tv, plays poker with the guys, never lifts a finger around the house, and who brings home the bacon.
They can call themselves whatever they damn well want to.
I think you don’t understand gay relationships. Two gay men are still two men. You are misled by stereotyping.