The short- and long-term affects of redefining the value of gender in society as well as the constitution of family are all in play here.
and this is really the issue here.
all the time i thought you were unconsciously homophobic. really, you're unconsciously sexist.
and, ultimately, homophobia is sexism in disguise. that's why straight men have such issues with it. gay men do upend "traditional" gender roles. they do subvert paradigms that put men on top and women on the bottom, and talking about treasuring and loving and cherishing your wife and all her wifely attributes sounds to me like she's less a person and more a role player in an idealistic construct that doesn't bear much reality to anyone's lived-in experience.
i know it's uncomfortable for some straight men. i know that, despite the advances of women, they like to think of themselves as having an irreducible worth on the basis of their gender alone, and that there are god-given manly roles in society and in families that they must fulfill. the whole point of the past 50 years has been to free people from precisely these gender roles. it's not that gender doesn't *matter* and that we're all androgynous, but that gender isn't a determinant of one's place in the world. the individual is. it's a simple as saying that if a woman wants to be an astronaut, she can be an astronaut. if she doesn't want to get married, there's nothing wrong with her.
gay people upset the apple cart. because they don't easily fall into such traditional, god-ordained roles. it starts with sex, of course, since a gay man can so easily be "the woman" as well as "the man" in intercourse. so perhaps this
NYT article gets at the heart of it all:
Notably, same-sex relationships, whether between men or women, were far more egalitarian than heterosexual ones. In heterosexual couples, women did far more of the housework; men were more likely to have the financial responsibility; and men were more likely to initiate sex, while women were more likely to refuse it or to start a conversation about problems in the relationship. With same-sex couples, of course, none of these dichotomies were possible, and the partners tended to share the burdens far more equally.
While the gay and lesbian couples had about the same rate of conflict as the heterosexual ones, they appeared to have more relationship satisfaction, suggesting that the inequality of opposite-sex relationships can take a toll.
my guess is that as same-sex couples become more visible, that's going to mean that opposite-sexed couples are going to have to become more egalitarian, and notions of specific duties assigned on the basis of gender -- whether doing the ironing or having to be the disciplinarian parent -- are going to disappear. soon, it could be just as likely to hear, "just WAIT until your mother gets home!"
the notion that mother is soft and father is hard, that mother is emotional and father is practical, that mother dotes and father disciplines ... all this is subverted by gay marriage and gay adoption. however, it's quite likely that most gay relationships will have one partner that is more emotional than practical, or more doting than disciplinarian. but that role will be determined on a far more egalitarian principle than gender.
so, yes, i can see how this is upsetting to some.