There's an article in the NYTImes sunday magazine about young gay guys getting married. I'd link to it, but I think its shitty, so I won't, lest anyone mistake the link as a recommendation to read.

The writer starts out by saying that he was intrigued that many young (i think he says under 26 years old) gay men are getting married in Mass. and he wanted to figure out why. He talks to a few gay couples who are married or getting married and comes to the scintillating conclusion that they got married because they felt like it. Much like young straight people who get married, these young guys feel like they really love each other, want to stay together forever, enjoy validating their relationship in the eyes of their family and seem to think it'll be fun to be married. I don't see why that's newsworthy.

There are some allusions to a more complex context within which these marriages work - for example the view of monogamy taken by these young gay couples vs. older gay male couples. That was slightly interesting. Or what happens when young gay marriages don't work and you're a 26 year old divorced homo. Ok, maybe that's sort of a topic.

And maybe this is typical of me, but I found the author's blithe dismissal of any discussion of gay female marriages really irksome. The author states that yes, young lesbians seemed to be marrying at a rate 2x that of young gay men, but he didn't want to look into that cause its known that women like to get married and settle down. I don't know, the whole thing just seems really bullshitty. I can't deny that lesbians are are on the whole more likely to become committed faster, to have kids, to move in and all of that...but dismissing a clearly relevant trend cause all girls dream of growing up and being a bride, seems lazy. The author might have gotten a lot more mileage out of comparing young gay vs. young lesbian marriages. Where there different reasons for the male vs. female choice to pursue marriage? different socioeconomic status? Different ways of celebrating, or rules for conduct within the union. Or even, expanding on the sentence about a different view of monogamy to delve deeper into the differences between young gay men vs. older gay men getting married. Just SOMETHING.

As it is, the article doesn't really go anywhere. I actually do see why this might be an interesting topic, young gay men so eager for committment, but without any historical discussion of gay male relationships, its totally useless. Its like the author thought "wow, its SO WEIRD that my friends are getting married" and then wrote an article about how weird it was.