Yi-Fu Tuan Dear Colleague

October 25, 2004

Dear Colleague,

I first saw Walt Disney' s Fantasia in 1944 in Australia. In that film, Beethoven' s Pastoral Symphony was illustrated by winged horses and centaurs in an idealized landscape. A disturbing scene-disturbing to me even as a child, for, as a child I had a strong sense of justice-showed a lovely young woman with the body of a horse (for she was a centaur) having her long tail combed by a picaninny kneeling at her feet. That scene was excised in later showings of the film. In the classic American folksong Oh Susannah there is a verse that runs as follows: "I jumped aboard de telegrah/ And trabbled down de ribber/ De 'lectric fluid magnified/ And killed five hundred nigger." This deeply offensive verse is now left out; the song is never sung in its entirety. (See David Lowenthal, " Memory and Oblivion, " Museum Management and Curatorship, 1993, 12, p. 174).

When I feel depressed about society, I think of the horrors of the past. Racism still exists, but blatant racism is no longer countenanced. Miscegenation was regarded as unnatural and a crime in many states of the United States until mid-twentieth century. Now, marriage between black and white is commonplace. As recently as the 1970s, homosexuals were firmly closeted. Now, most are out without ostensible penalty. But there are limits to tolerance. Gay marriage still arouses indignation among at least half of the American population. It is seen as a threat to heterosexual marriage. In a New Yorker cartoon, a woman stands next to the door, with a suitcase at her feet, saying to her husband buried in the sports pages of a newspaper, " Well, I guess gay marriage is the last straw. " I see George and Laura in the White House, holding hands and sipping tea, feeling their marriage threatened because two men got married in Massachusetts. To prevent that from happening, George is ready to amend our sacred Constitution. I am told that almost all amendments to the Constitution moved in the direction of greater inclusiveness. The one George proposes is meant to be exclusive. I am surprised that in this day and age, a president in a State of the Union speech can advocate treating a whole segment of the population as second-class citizens and have his message received with the drunken roar of approval.

I don' t know about the sacredness of marriage. Neither Jesus or Paul has much to say about it, other than that it is of secondary importance compared with caritas in the kingdom to come. Society does have a stake in marriage, for society is always in favor of institutions that promote stability and cohesion. But gay marriage is a yearning for stability-for devotion of two individuals to each other "in sickness and in health" -and to have that devotion recognized by friends, acquaintances, and even strangers. What's so threatening about that? As for the family, we are all for it, except perhaps the early Christians. Do Christian fundamentalists realize that a battle cry raised by the Romans against Christians was that they were anti-family, that they did not recognize the sanctity of marriage as the Romans understood it?

As for the idea that gay marriage is a slippery path to polygamy, well, I don' t buy it. Why? Because even in the best of possible worlds, total intimacy and devotion in equality can only occur between two adult individuals, and not between one man and several women, or one woman and several men. After all, God himself provided only one Eve, not a bevy of Eves, as companion to Adam.

Best wishes,

Yi-Fu