by Dave White

A Christian Science Monitor article ("When Just Friends Is Just Wrong," 10/29/2003) suggests that close friendship can be "infidelity" even if it is completely non-sexual. How will you know if your friendship is too close? Well, according to some therapists, you and your friend should be comfortable if your partner saw a videotape of your meetings. For social conservatives, gays and lesbians are not the only people who pose a "threat" to the "traditional family." You do too if you are a heterosexual who prefers a marriage with a greater degree of personal privacy and independence, or who chooses to marry late.

Historically, fear of friendship seems closely related to a fear of the breakdown of stereotypical gender roles. A hundred years ago, when women and men typically lived in separate spheres and women, in general, did not threaten patriarchal interests, it was common for same sex friends to kiss, hold hands, and place a great emphasis on loyalty. In the Freudian era, however, coinciding with the rise of women's suffrage, psychologists began to stigmatize same sex friendships as a form of "latent homosexuality" and a particular "problem" among feminists.

In recent years, due to an increase in shared work and family experiences between the sexes, friendships between men and women have become more common. Rather than celebrating this new source of positive relating, marriage-promoting therapists, such as those cited in the Christian Science Monitor article noted above, insist on seeing these different sex friendships as competition for marriage, lamenting them as "non-sexual affairs." Meanwhile, mainstream movies such as When Harry Met Sally suggest that men and women can't remain nonsexual friends for very long, and indeed, are better off marrying each other if they're single.

When Ethan Waters' Urban Tribes came out recently, about young Americans who live with "tribes of friends," some members of the marriage movement lambasted the trend the book described. The problem? "These friendship groups are a rationale for not marrying."

One could argue that a high rate of friendships ending, like a high rate of divorce, is a sign that our society needs to value loyalty more, but that would require a rethinking of traditional values To marriage promoters, friendship is inherently a transient relationship. An unnamed study showing that the average friendship "lasts 7 years" has been touted as proof of friendship's instability to place a higher priority on personal loyalty than on the institution of marriage.

What would happen if progressives embraced the power of same and different sex friendships which conservatives now fear? I submit that loyal friendship, taken seriously, could be competition for traditionally gendered family values and laissez-faire economics, opening the door for creative caretaking and compassionate activism.

Families formed around friendships might teach children that love, caring and commitment are not synonymous with stereotypical gender and sex roles. If large numbers of heterosexuals chose to stay with their "urban tribes" in addition to--or instead of---marriage, this could help solve the "work/family balance" issues that are holding back feminism. Affection between straight heterosexual same-sex friends would make it harder for gay-bashers to target gay people. Workers who were intensely loyal to their friends as well as their partners might be less willing to abandon their communities to find work, and more willing to organize against economically powerful interests.

As Lisa Duggan ("Holy Matrimony, The Nation, March 15 2004) points out in her analysis of conservative writer Stanley Kurtz's argument against same sex marriage, the potential for "friends . . . to start contracting same-sex marriages of convenience" may be a conservative's nightmare, but it is also a progressive's utopia.

Luckily for traditionalists, discussions of family diversity tend to focus on allegedly innate "sexual identities." But if we made the majority of the people aware that they could choose to build families based on friendships, freedom in family formation would no longer be a minority issue. Instead, progressives of all sexual orientations might embrace the valuing of friendship as the next great leap towards a genuinely non-sexist society.


Dave White is the author of the website www.celebratefriendship.org, which provides information about the history of nonsexual love in cultures around the world, as well as commentary and an interactive online forum.

Opinions expressed are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Alternatives to Marriage Project.