【英语生活】同性婚姻的真实影响

A few seconds after midnight on April 1 2001, the first gay weddings on earth took place in Amsterdam town hall. Four couples were simultaneously married by the city's mayor, Job Cohen. I grew up in the Netherlands, and re-watching the scenes, I found them that typically Dutch thing: sexual revolution, bourgeois style. The newly-weds exchanged the traditional kisses while ageing fathers in suits and ties beamed from the town hall's benches. When the couples signed the register, they looked just like the stolid burghers of 17th-century Dutch paintings, except gay.

Nobody suspected then that by 2013, half the western world would be following them. Already one in five Americans lives in a state with gay marriage, and now Barack Obama's government is asking the US Supreme Court to overturn a federal law banning the practice. The British and French parliaments voted for gay marriage in February. Yet in these countries, gay marriage is often debated as a leap into the unknown. It isn't. As with so many social issues, the Netherlands is a laboratory. Twelve years on from Amsterdam town hall, we have a pretty good idea of how gay marriage changes a society.

The first thing to note: it doesn't change much. Almost as soon as gay marriage was introduced, it faded from Dutch political debate. The unprecedentedly angry political arguments in the Netherlands since September 11 2001 have been about Muslims, Brussels and social class. Even when the Christian Democrats re-entered government in 2002, they never tried to ban gay marriage. Only one in nine Dutch people now opposes the institution, says the state's Social and Cultural Planning Bureau.

Gay marriage has become so banal that Boris Dittrich, a politician who helped introduce it, reports hearing a woman on the bus tell a friend that she's just got married. The friend shouts across the packed bus: “To a man or a woman?”

Nor does gay marriage seem to affect heterosexual marriage. The conservative American pundit Stanley Kurtz has long claimed that Dutch and Scandinavian straights began abandoning marriage after gays “devalued” the institution. But this is plain wrong. Kurtz correctly notes that since gay civil partnerships and then marriage came in, the rate of Dutch out-of-wedlock births has soared. However, he fails to note that Dutch out-of-wedlock births have been soaring since the 1970s - long before anyone ever thought of gay marriage. In 1970, 124,000 Dutch couples married. By 1983 fewer than 80,000 did. Since 1983 the decline in Dutch marriages has been far more modest: 71,000 couples married in 2011. Most European countries have experienced similar trends, with gay marriage or without.

Kurtz seems to be operating on the familiar presumption that you can say what you like about the Netherlands because nobody knows what happens there anyway. In a similar vein, the US Republican Rick Santorum claimed last year that half of all cases of Dutch euthanasia were “involuntary“: old people were being massacred.

The liberal temptation, then, is to say that gay marriage doesn't affect national life. But that would be wrong. Mark Gevisser, an Open Society Foundations fellow researching “the new global struggle for the rights of sexual minorities”, has convinced me over large lunches in Paris that gay marriage makes two big changes. Firstly, it slaps the churches in the face. When a country introduces gay marriage, it's in effect telling its churches, “What you say about moral issues isn't that important any more.” That's partly why British and American churches have fought so hard against gay marriage. They're not just losing a battle. Their national relevance is in question.

The other impact of gay marriage is on gay life. Recently I visited Gert Hekma, historian of homosexuality, in his apartment overlooking Amsterdam's dinky city centre. This was long a classic gay habitat: the homosexual left his hometown, and his often uneasy relationship with his family, for Amsterdam's “gay scene”. He didn't have kids, and often drifted apart from heterosexual friends after they did. Gradually, many gays came to inhabit a mostly gay world.

But that is changing. Amsterdam's gay scene - the cafes, nightclubs and bookshops - was “collapsing”, said Hekma. That was partly because of the internet but also because gays were increasingly integrating with straights. Young gay men now hang out with their parents, or go clubbing with heterosexual friends, said Hekma. “Lots of straights come to a gay parade - sometimes too many.” Many gay teenagers are still persecuted at school, Hekma added. But gay marriage had improved integration by sending a clear message: “Society accepts homosexuals.” Nowadays, said Hekma, some parents nag their gay children to marry. “I think the wedding itself is a means of integration,” he mused. So far, relatively few Dutch homosexuals have had children. But as more do, and gay families retreat to suburbia, they will enter a hetero world of kids' playdates and freezing parents watching Saturday-morning hockey games. It's an unglamorous life. But as most straight parents will testify, that's what marriage does to you.

2001年4月1日午夜，当秒针刚刚走过12点，地球上第一场同性婚礼在阿姆斯特丹的市政厅内举行。该市市长约布?科恩(Job Cohen)为四对新人主持了集体婚礼。我在荷兰长大，再次观看当年的婚礼场景时，我发现了一些典型的荷兰元素：性解放以及布尔乔亚风格。新婚伴侣们按照传统互相亲吻，而身着西装领带、年事已高的父亲们则满面笑容地坐在市政厅的长椅上。当新人们在婚姻登记表上签字时，他们看起来和17世纪荷兰画作中神情淡漠的市民非常相似，唯一的区别就在于他们是同性恋者。

当时所有人都认为，到2013年，半个西方世界都将追随荷兰的脚步。现在每五个美国人中已有一人生活在允许同性结婚的州，而巴拉克?奥巴马(Barack Obama)政府目前也在请求美国最高法院(US Supreme Court)废除一项禁止同性婚姻的联邦法律。英国和法国议会今年二月就同性婚姻进行了表决。但在这些国家，允许同性婚姻常被视为可能引发不可知后果的举动，因而受到争议。这种看法其实不对。在同性婚姻和其他很多社会问题上，荷兰是一块试验田。现在距离阿姆斯特丹市政厅那历史性的一刻已有十二年，我们对同性婚姻如何改变一个社会已有了较为清晰的认识。

需要指出的第一点是，同性婚姻对社会的影响并不显著。几乎就在同性婚姻合法化的同时，这一议题迅速退出了荷兰的政治辩论舞台。自2001年9月11日以来，在荷兰受到前所未有热议的政治辩题一直围绕着穆斯林、布鲁塞尔方面以及社会阶层。即使在2002年基督教民主联盟(CDU)重新上台执政后，政府也从未试图禁止同性婚姻。荷兰社会文化规划局(Social and Cultural Planning Bureau)表示，目前每九个荷兰人中只有一人反对同性婚姻制度。

同性结婚已变得如此平淡无奇，以至于当初帮助其合法化的政治家鲍里斯?迪特里克(Boris Dittrich)声称，自己曾在电车上听到一名女子告诉友人自己刚刚结婚了。而那位朋友在拥挤的车厢里大声喊道：“跟男人还是跟女人？”

同性婚姻似乎也未影响异性婚姻。保守派美国评论家斯坦利?库尔茨(Stanley Kurtz)长期以来一直宣称，荷兰和斯堪的纳维亚地区的异性恋者已经开始放弃婚姻，因为同性婚姻“贬低”了婚姻制度的价值。但这种说法显然是错误的。诚然，库尔茨指出，随着同性同居现象的出现、以及同性婚姻随后的合法化，荷兰的非婚生子女人数猛增。但他未能指出的是，荷兰非婚生子女人数自上世纪70年代开始一直迅速增长，那时同性婚姻还是一个遥远的想法。1970年，荷兰共有124000对新人结婚，而在1983年，只有不到80000对新人结婚。自1983年开始，荷兰的结婚率下降速度已大为放缓：2011年共有71000对新人结婚。绝大多数欧洲国家都经历了类似的情况，无论这些国家是否已允许同性结婚。

库尔茨的观点似乎是基于一种似曾相识的假设——关于荷兰你想说什么都可以，因为反正没有人知道那里究竟发生了什么。基于类似的想法，美国共和党人里克?桑托勒姆(Rick Santorum)去年宣称，荷兰半数以上的安乐死都是“非自愿的”——老年人正在遭到屠杀。

自由主义者们则容易宣称，同性婚姻不会影响一个国家的生活。但这种说法是不正确的。开放社会基金会(Open Society Foundations)的研究员马克?盖维瑟(Mark Gevisser)主要研究“旨在维护性取向少数群体权益的全球新抗争”。在巴黎，我们一边享用丰盛的午餐，一边谈话。他在谈话过程中说服我相信，同性婚姻有两大影响。首先，同性婚姻合法化相当于是扇了教会一耳光。当一个国家允许同性结婚时，实际上是在告诉该国教会，“你在道德问题方面的那些说教已不再重要。”而这也正是促使英国和美国教会如此强烈反对同性婚姻合法化的部分原因——这场战争的输赢不仅关乎这个问题本身，还关乎教会在这个国家的地位。

同性婚姻合法化的另一个影响，体现在同性恋者的生活上。最近我拜访了研究同性恋问题的历史学家格特?赫克马(Gert Hekma)，从他的公寓中可以俯瞰阿姆斯特丹市中心精致的街景。这里早已成为经典的同性恋者聚居区。同性恋者与家人的关系通常较为紧张，他们离开家人、离开家乡，来到这里，成为阿姆斯特丹“同性恋景观”的一部分。他们没有孩子，而且通常也会逐渐疏远开始抚育子女的异性恋友人。渐渐地，很多同性恋者开始聚集到一个基本由性取向相同者组成的世界里。

但这种情况目前正在改变。赫克马表示，由同性恋经常出没的咖啡馆、夜总会以及书店组成的同性恋景观正在“消失”。这部分原因在于互联网的普及，另一个原因在于，同性恋者正越来越多地融入到异性恋者中。如今年轻的男同性恋者会和自己的父母一起外出，或和异性恋友人一起去俱乐部玩。赫克马说：“很多异性恋者都会参加同性恋游行，他们的人数有时多得过分。”他补充称，很多同性恋青少年在学校仍会被整。不过，同性婚姻合法化仍然促进了同性和异性恋者之间的融合，因为这释放出一个明确的信号：“社会接受同性恋者”。赫克马说，现在有些家长会催促自己的同性恋子女结婚。他调侃称：“我认为婚礼本身就是帮助同性恋者与异性恋者相融合的一种方式。”迄今为止，荷兰同性恋伴侣中拥有子女的比重仍然偏低。但随着越来越多同性家庭开始抚育子女并搬到郊区，他们将进入一个崭新的世界——陪孩子跟小玩伴玩，在周六的早晨冒着严寒观看孩子的冰球比赛。这种生活毫无浪漫色彩可言。但大多数异性恋婚姻中的家长们都会证明，这就是婚姻生活的本来面目。

译者/马拉