金融時報:同性婚姻的真實影響

同性婚姻的真實影響

左翼人士認為同性婚姻不會對社會有什么影響，而右翼則認為它對社會有破壞性。在阿姆斯特丹舉辦的史上第一例同性婚禮至今已有12年，在荷蘭這個“試驗田”上，我們已經(jīng)可以看到一些影響。本文作者FT專欄作家西蒙·庫柏。

測試中可能遇到的詞匯和知識：

hetero['het(?)r??] n./adj.異性戀的，異性戀者；也稱straight；反義詞為bent

bourgeois style 小資情調(diào)的；

bourgeois['b???wɑ?] n.資產(chǎn)階級，中產(chǎn)階級

stolid ['st?l?d] adj.遲鈍的，冷漠的

burgher ['b??g?] n.市民

Christian Democrats 西歐等國的基督教民主黨，是社會議題上較保守的政黨 banal|陳腐的；平庸的

liberal['l?b(?)r(?)l] n./adj.一般翻譯成“自由派”，在社會議題上比較開放的（西方）左翼人士

euthanasia[,ju?θ?'ne?z??] n.安樂死

Open Society Foundations 開放社會基金會，喬治·索羅斯創(chuàng)建的基金會，得名于他的老師卡爾·波普爾的名作《開放社會及其敵人》

Gay marriage: telling it straight (839 words)

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 newlyweds 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 cafés, 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.

請根據(jù)你所讀到的文章內(nèi)容，完成以下自測題目：

1.Why does the writer specifically describe the gay weddings in Amsterdam on April 1, 2001?

A. The issue was quite unusual in countries like Holland.

B. Because the author grew up there.

C. Those weddings were the first gay weddings on earth.

D. To provide a depiction of bourgeois style.

答案(1)

2.Which of the following institution is not supportive of gay marriage?

A. The Obama administration.

B. US Supreme Court.

C. The British Parliament.

D. The French Parliament.

答案(2)

3.What does the writer imply by citing a story that someone shouted to her friend on a bus “To a man or a woman?”

A. Gay marriage is devaluing the institution.

B. Churches are losing the battle.

C. Gay marriage is becoming ordinary.

D. Gay marriage doesn’t affect national life.

答案(3)

4.Amsterdam’s gay scene – the cafés, nightclubs and bookshops – was “collapsing”.

This is not because?

A. Homosexuals often have uneasy relationships with their families.

B. The spread of internet access.

C. Gays are increasingly integrating with straights.

D. The society is accepting homosexuals.

答案(4)

* * *

(1) 答案：A.Those weddings were the first gay weddings on earth.

解釋：著墨講述這場集體婚禮，是因為這是世界上前無古人的事。作者說，荷蘭以sexual revolution和bourgeois style著稱。

(2) 答案：B.US Supreme Court.

解釋：作者在第二段中說，在2013年，半數(shù)西方國家會允許同性婚姻。目前已經(jīng)有1/5的美國人住在將其合法化的州里。 奧巴馬政府正在要求美國最高法院推翻此前的一項禁止同性婚姻的聯(lián)邦法案，而英法兩國在今年二月均投票通過了相關法案。

(3) 答案：C.Gay marriage is becoming ordinary.

解釋：Gay marriage has become so banal that...也就是說荷蘭人已經(jīng)不介意在公開場合討論這個問題了，他們已經(jīng)覺得習以為常了。 A是美國保守人士Stanley Kurtz的觀點。D是liberal人士的觀點，而作者表示這是錯誤的，一是教會在道德教化上不再重要，二是阿姆斯特丹這樣的城市會出現(xiàn)同性戀人士聚居區(qū)。

B正確但并未回答問題。

(4) 答案：A.Homosexuals often have uneasy relationships with their families.

解釋：這恰是gay scene誕生的原因，而BCD則是這種景觀慢慢消失的原因。