To the Editor:
I did not attend [Notre Dame] Professor Bradley's lecture against same-sex marriage, but I was appalled to read, in the November 23rd issue of The Dartmouth, that he asserted, "a same sex relationship is shorter than a heterosexual relationship." This is a fact that many of my gay and lesbian friends, in relationships for dozens of years, would find surprising.
The first question we must ask is where on earth Professor Bradley would get the data to support such a conclusion. Has he spent years observing and gathering data on the length of gay relationships? Unless has done so, we must conclude that his opinion is based on some pretty tired, albeit widely held, old stereotypes. Of course we have no idea how long the average gay or lesbian marriage would last, our culture has never given us an opportunity to find out! I find it appalling that Professor Bradley, speaking from his position of elite, heterosexual privilege, would cast aspersions on those who have not benefited from all the social support he and his wife have enjoyed.
I suspect that Professor Bradley has never had to fight with employers to get his wife covered under his health insurance. He has never had his children removed from his home because he is heterosexual. He has never been denied access to his wife's hospital room because he is "not a relative." He has never had to contend with immigration regulations intent on keeping his wife out of the country. He has never had to struggle with power of attorney forms to ensure basic property inheritance rights. These are just a few of the hundreds of rights that Professor Bradley enjoys, that homosexual couples do not. These are the very rights that help to support and sustain Professor Bradley's marriage, but are not available to me and my life partner.
Now that gay marriage is suddenly a real possibility, many straight people are falling all over themselves to voice uninformed opinions on gay relationships. I am sick of heterosexist bigots perpetuating the social impediments to gay relationships and then blithely speculating that they may be "shorter in duration." That kind of intellectual dishonesty should be abandoned with the old millennium.
