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One of the most significant cultural developments of recent decades has been the normalization of sexual love between women. This is but one of many cultural revolutions since the 1960s, but it’s an especially profound one. Divorce, promiscuity and male homosexuality were much less common, but they were still familiar. The phenomenon of “lesbianism” was virtually unknown 100 years ago. Women might have intense romantic friendships, but the idea of females making love, shacking up together and forming a permanent lifelong bond had almost no public circulation. 

What were once secretive and shameful relationships have been transformed with astounding rapidity into an entire subculture with its own travel agencies, vacation resorts, neighborhoods and popular artists. This subculture has established roots seemingly overnight. It is the direct and inevitable outgrowth of a world view that conceives of male and female as purely anatomical realities and denies spiritual complementarity between the sexes. It reflects the devolution of courtship and married love between men and women. It stems also from something vitally healthy and normal: the craving for intimacy amid the dehumanizing anonymity of modern life.

But, is this subculture as unshakable as it now appears? It is not. The normalization of lesbianism cannot proceed, and indeed could collapse altogether, without one thing: marriage.  Women want families.  It is lesbians most of all who are behind the push for same-sex marriage. Yesterday’s passage of a referendum that repeals Maine’s same-sex marriage law is a significant development. The losses have mounted. In all 31 states that have put this issue before the voters, same-sex marriage has been rejected. I’m not suggesting that homosexual activists are about to give up, but the odor of defeat is in the air.

No one can deny that homosexual activists have had their say. The electorate has listened to their side of the story. It has listened patiently and acted with especial kindness and tolerance toward lesbians. As they have moved into neighborhoods and set up their unconventional households, they have not experienced widespread hostility, evictions, or ostracism. They represent a revolution that puzzles many people, but the average person would just as soon not think about it. They don’t seem to be hurting anyone so why object?

But the public has its limits. It does not want lesbians to marry.

[Many comments have been added to this entry. See below.]

                                                                        — Comments —

 Ingrid writes:

I am writing from Europe, and just started reading your blog recently, and I find the posts very interesting.

I wanted to comment on your recent post, “Lesbian Nation.” My sister is a lesbian, or considers herself to be one, at least. She has always been a shy, rather closed person and doesn’t really connect with or make friends with people easily. We all know that, due to the breakdown of Western/European/Euro-American culture, a lot of peoplefeel that they have no identity, no heritage, no sense of belonging anywhere, no purpose in life. Family and social ties are weak.

This may sound strange, but I sometimes wonder if the idea of belonging to the “gay and lesbian community” fulfils the needs for a sense of belonging, even subconsciously. After all, gay pride parades, university and community gay and lesbian groups, various “gay days” provide some semblance of belonging to a group, to a culture, and to having a social circle. Campaigning for gay marriage and other issues can give people a feeling of purpose and that their lives are not useless. After all, the Mexican in the US, the Pakistani in the UK, the Moroccan in Italy all have, if nothing else, the sense of belonging to a group, to a language, to a culture and a religion. They usually have stronger family ties and friendships, both in their countries and their destinations. Meanwhile, we are told that our native European cultures don’t really exist, or that we don’t have a right to identify with them for whatever reason, and we are taught nothing about history and our ancestors.

Laura writes:

Your observation about the sense of community that lesbianism offers is 100 percent correct. This community often attracts sensitive women who may have a hard time fitting in elsewhere or who find the whole loose and undefined process of engaging with men today cold and repellent. 

This is the tragedy of lesbianism. These women find a false community and do not form real family ties or fulfill their destiny as mothers. This is why I get angry when people act as if they are being sensitive to lesbians by approving marriage for them or by being open and tolerant. They are only encouraging the self-destruction of these women.

 Rita writes:

You’ve probably seen this about Alice Walker’s daughter about being the daughter of a feminist/lesbian.

Laura writes:

Yes, I have read Rebecca Walker’s account of her childhood. The woman who made so much out of her own supposed oppression was brutal to her own daughter. It is not surprising at all. Classic feminist selfishness.

Mrs. Elliot writes:

Perhaps you know the story of Rosie O’Donnell’s “family” ship cruise to the Bahamas for lesbians. They were met at the dock by protesting families who said they were not welcome there, and apparently they didn’t even get off the boat. On “The View,” Rosie made some remarks about how ignorant those people were and how they must have been programmed by the right-wing here in the U.S. She didn’t even know that traditionally many of those small islands are very religious and very very modest.  She just “couldn’t believe” that anyone would object to a cruise “for the children.”

They always say it is “for the children” when they want your approval. Lesbians today are adopting children and claiming they are giving homes and a family life to orphans. I happen to know that many of the adoptive children of lesbians were vied for by heterosexual couples who were beat out by lesbians because it is an inside job: They get their paperwork filled out and filed first, and the normal prospective parents do not know it is being done behind their backs. They lose out on the children they want to adopt, because the agencies are tipping off the lesbians when a child becomes adoptable.

Laura writes:

The insensitivity of the lesbian “community” to children is one of the greatest affronts to maternal instincts in the history of humankind. A child who has been conceived by a father who shot his seed into a bag is deliberately and callously orphaned by his own parents.

Karen writes:

In countries where preservation of tradition and culture is paramount and takes precedence over personal feelings and desires, women and men with homosexual tendencies are forced to sublimate their desires and enter traditional marriages. This is usually the best solution for them. The responsibility for raising children and upholding their culture, suppresses their pathological instincts and allows them to escape the physical and psychological disorders created by the homosexual lifestyle as well as the high suicide rates. In this way, their deviance does not have free reign to destroy tradition and culture and themselves.

Rose, a lesbian, writes:

Hmm, lesbianism in mainstream pre-modern culture (besides Milton’s Eve)? Well, just off the top of my head, there is this lovely poem by John Donne. In Coleridge’s Christobel the evil vampiress Geraldine seduces the naive waif of the title in a parody of a wedding night. There is Balzac’s The Girl with the Golden Eyes: it’s a long story, but said Girl has an affair with both a Spanish Marquise and her half-brother. The Marquise murders her and then joins a convent. Ovid’s Metamorphosis tells the story of how the nymph Callisto was seduced by Zeus who appeared to her in the form of her mistress Diana. This provided respectable painters with an excuse to create steamy lesbian pornography such as this.

Of course, throughout history, gay subcultures have existed in cities of any size but indeed they were sub: underneath, hidden and for the most part content to remain that way. I’ve always thought that this was the optimal arrangement for all parties.

Laura writes:

Lesbian entanglements are as old as the human race. But, lesbian culture as we see it throughout Western society today is unprecedented in the size of its followers and its open, unrestrained way of life.

An anonymous reader writes:

I’m sure a large portion of human beings have been tempted by sexual sins but I believe, in the past, one would give up a lot in terms of family relationships, to openly pursue a deviant lifestyle. In our current culture though, who will really care? And does anyone really care what their family thinks anymore? Even those that care about the child that is going astray have been shut up because they don’t want to seem intolerant. And anyway, gay people are born that way, dontcha know?

It’s queer to me (pun intended) that my very religious mother is so openly accepting of my cousin’s lesbian lifestyle. They have been very close friends as well as relatives and my mother has never spoken up once about the situation. There’s some kind of disconnect.

Laura writes:

If your mother had been saturated with the idea that cocaine addiction was normal and healthy, she might say nothing if your cousin was a drug addict. The notion that homosexuality is a fixed, congenital inclination is constantly repeated today. The nature of homosexual desires has been wildly distorted, and as Rose put it here, “whether a desire is inborn or not has nothing to do with the moral status of its expression.” 

It’s uncomfortable to approach a woman relative and say, “Are you serious? Do you really have a girlfriend? What the hell is going on in your life?” Many people slip into casual acceptance out of laziness. But, at the end of the day, this kind of non-judgmentalism is wrong. It shows a lack of love.

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