Freedom and Restraint

Yesterday David Brooks wrote a bizarre column about gay marriage claiming that gays were a group of people willing to buck the trend toward unbridled freedom to accept the fetters of matrimony, restraining their individual freedom.  To begin with most gay persons I know want marriage so they can get the financial benefits that the institution guarantees, or access to hospital rooms, or some other freedom from whatever other restraint not imposed upon straight married people.  i know my partner of almost twenty years and I marched down the aisle so we would not have to pay an inheritance penalty meted out to unmarried inheritors of a partner’s estate.  I believe the Supreme Court is right now considering a suit brought by a woman who had to pay an immense inheritance tax on her partner/wife’s estate because the federal government did not recognize her rights as a spouse.  Brooks has an odd notion of social restraints in any case.  I think history shows that most persons with libidinous gumption will enter into adulterous relationships, marriage be damned, but they try to adhere to the maxim of the great Edwardian actress, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, who famously advised: "Does it really matter what these affectionate people do, so long as they don't do it on the street and frighten the horses?"
Brook decries “the contemporary lack of restraint in a reckless pursuit of freedom.”  Decline in marriage.  More children raised in unsteady homes.  Higher debt levels as people spend to satisfy their cravings.  How about decrying the financial institutions of this country, the health industry, and the real estate industry and their reckless pursuit of profit which puts so many families at risk, breaks up the integrity of a marriage under the burden of debt?  How about government spending on infant day care as a way to ensure that toddlers have a healthy start in life?  How about a vast increase in the money spent on education from kindergarten to low or no college tuition  as it was before it became yet another financial burden from which young people are only released in their middle age?
Marriage, Brooks claims, is one of those institutions--along with religion and military service--that restricts freedom.  Well, if you go A.W.O.L. you eventually end up in prison, while, on the other hand, if you misbehave with a youngster, you are sent to another parish, not quite the same thing. Other than that, it's finally between you and your god what you do and what are the consequences.  No, gay persons want to get married in order to have a public, socially approved statement about the validity of their union.  And from that will flow the inherent decency and right for the teenaged adolescent to date a member of the same sex, drink one soda at the drugstore with two straws and go to the prom together with another gay person. It seems to me that young gay males are so promiscuous because society gives them no recognition, their relationships no social approval or sanctity, and they simply follow their biological instincts. I know that was true of me. What a day  it will be when two persons of the same sex can demonstrate public affection for one another without fear.  That will only flow from the ubiquity of socially approved marriages.  As it is, now the only reason I can feel comfortable walking down the street in Florida holding my husband’s hand is I am so old that passersby assume I cannot maneuver alone.