David in Giovanni's Room is constantly torn between his girlfriend and his gay tendencies. He is told by multiple people to settle down, get a girl, have a family. But his heart tells him differently, he is attracted to men and wonders about life as an openly gay man. He doesn't think he can do it and spends most of the book oscillating between experimentation and guilt.
All of this tension between choosing the family life and love life made me think of the modern debate concerning gay marriage. Why has society still not allowed the two concepts to fuse? I am writing a paper in Sociology right now about the gay marriage debate and I find the topic very interesting. It seems like if one wants, one can be gay and raise a family at the same time. The family would look different, but the values would be the same: a support system, connectedness, learning environment. But as we can see through numerous measures in almost all states, people don't like the idea of official gay marriage and vote against it. They want marriage to be a sacred thing between one man and one woman. David can represent a victim of this societal outlook. Obviously he can see no way to have the best of both worlds or he wouldn't spend so much time feeling guilty and attempting to make up for his lack of manliness.
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1 comment:
I nominate this as POW. Alex does a great job integrating our society today and it's common issue with gay marriage (our inability to accept it as a function which CAN exist in the household) to the ideas and fusion into society that David struggles with. I believe the best posts are the ones which help us remember ideas in the works by tying them to messages and themes we are all very familiar with from our everyday life.
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