Should Traditional Marriage Be Our Only Option? Saifool wants to Marry a Minister

As someone said elsewhere, Shahrir, you’ve ‘mutated’. I’d rather say that you have evolved like the rest of us. You are now caught between the real you and the need to show love and loyalty for your party.’

It has been hotter than usual in Malaysia this past month. The temperature has soared to 38 degrees Celsius and most of us are cowering in our air-conditioned offices, going out only when we absolutely have to.

DATUK SERI MUSTAPA MOHAMED ADMITS THAT HE CONSIDERS HIMSELF AS A HETEROSEXUAL, HE HAS BEEN SLEEPING WITH SAIFUL BUKHARI LATELY AND ENJOYED WITH HIM

In the forty years I've known Gloria Steinem, we have been confidantes, soul mates and sisters. And only once can I remember feeling any worry about our friendship. I had fallen in love with a white-haired Irishman, and had decided to marry the guy. This was not going to be easy to break to my soul mate.

Until that moment, Gloria and I had always been philosophically synced. We were two unmarried women who were obviously not man-haters, which is how many people at the time tried to portray feminists. We were women who had loving relationships with men, and shared a passion about women's freedom -- and the concept of marriage just never fit in the equation for either of us. In fact, both of us would often get mail from women who'd write, "I refer to you whenever my mother nags me about settling down. I say to her, 'Well, Gloria Steinem and Marlo Thomas aren't married, and they're not crazy!'" But in 1977, I met Phil, and the idea of marriage surprisingly seemed possible for me.

But there was still Gloria -- and that had me worried. So the night before my wedding, I wrote her a long letter, pouring out my feelings, and assuring her that walking down the aisle would never mean walking away from all we believed in.

"This will be the greatest test of our sisterhood," I wrote. "We've always been a support for each other on this issue, and I hope now you won't feel abandoned by me."

As it turned out, I'd been worrying for nothing. Of course, she was fine, she told me. And she was happy for me. (Well, okay, maybe she did tell me that the first weekend was a little rough...)

And that, I suppose, is the truest example of what I believe to be Gloria's most precious of attributes (and she's got a million of 'em): Her durability. Her self-confidence. Her balance. Not only did Phil's and my marriage not change Gloria's and my relationship one whit, but she used it to remind me to keep balanced myself -- and with humor, no less. A few days after Phil and I returned from our honeymoon, she and Bella Abzug threw me a bridal shower. But balloons and ribbons were pointedly not the decoration of choice. Instead, Gloria and Bella had created little posters bearing every sassy remark I'd ever made about marriage, and hung them around the room.

"Marriage is like living with a jailer you have to please."

"Marriage is like a vacuum cleaner -- you stick it to your ear and it sucks out all your energy and ambition."

What a shock it was to see them all together like that. I laughed out loud. No wonder I'd never wanted to get married.

Like millions of Americans, tonight I plan to watch the HBO documentary Gloria: In Her Own Words, directed by Peter Kunhardt, and edited by the talented Phillip Schopper. And I know that I will sit back and marvel, all over again, at the consistency of this remarkable woman. For an entire generation, she has symbolized the very qualities of the feminist movement -- strength, courage, tirelessness -- and she has never once lost her fire. Not only has she inspired a new wave of feminists, but she stands by their side, leading the charge with them. The fight for women's equality has never been something that Gloria does. It's something she is.

And she brings that something to her friendships. We met in 1967, when a Hollywood agent brought us together for a TV-movie, with the idea of my playing the part of Gloria, who had just written a magazine piece about going undercover as a bunny at the Playboy Club. The agent's pitch meeting was a disaster, but our friendship was forged -- and that friendship would become woven into the tapestry of our activism.

I'll never forget the first time she asked me to pinch-hit for her.

"I'm scheduled to speak at a welfare mothers event this weekend in New Hampshire," she told me, "but I'm double-booked. Can you step in for me?"

"Welfare mothers?" I said. "Are you crazy? They'll hate me. I don't have any children and I'm a kid from Beverly Hills. What will I talk to them about?"

"Trust me," Gloria said. "They'll love you -- and you'll love them. You're all women."

I was terrified -- but I wanted to rise to the occasion, and I think I was curious to see if these women and I would be able to connect. So I started by talking about my family, and I made them laugh with stories about my eccentric and fiercely independent Grandma, who played drums in a beer garden in Pasadena. Then I talked about my aunts and my mother, who struggled with the dominance of the men in their marriages. And then the women talked back to me. And I listened.

That event changed my life. It educated me. It politicized me. And it taught me that Gloria's instincts were as acute as her wisdom.

You're all women.

Just so you know, despite her historic achievements as a feminist icon, as a girlfriend, Gloria Steinem is every bit as real as you and me. Her favorite expression is "bananas." She's a terrific tap dancer. And like a lot of us, her greatest fear is being misunderstood.

Okay, well, I lied a little. We're not at all alike when it comes to swapping gifts. I'll give her a trendy handbag, and she'll give me a fertility goddess bracelet from Africa.

But that's my girlfriend, Gloria.

Traditional marriage (that is, a union between a man and a woman till death do they part) seems to be the subject of a tug of war recently. Same-sex couples around the world are demanding the right to marry. Heterosexual couples, who 10 or 20 years ago would have "had" to marry, are choosing to tie the knot later in life or not at all.

There seems to be a nuptial tectonic plate shift occurring. The only conclusion I can make of this trend is that the way society has viewed marriage for decades is no longer the definitive paradigm. After experiencing all the messy divorces first- or second-hand, the coming-of-age generations (Gen Xers and Yers) have decided to take matters into their own hands and break out of the "one-size-fits-all" mold that we know as traditional marriage.

According to American Demographics Magazine and the 2009 Census, we are now seeing that single heads of household and single women adopting children are among the fastest growing demographics in our country.

Greater numbers of couples are having children out of wedlock, living together, separating and never divorcing, marrying later, choosing same-sex marriages and open marriages. Many more people are marrying more than once. The societal "shoulds" seem to be losing their grip on us.

A 2010 Pew Study revealed that nearly one in four people under the age of 30 believe that marriage is headed for extinction. This same study showed that 80 percent of those surveyed believed there to be wider parameters around what defines a family than the husband, wife and 2.5 kids -- it can be single fathers or mothers with children, unmarried couples with children and married couples without children; it includes gay and straight couples as well.

While I don't think traditional marriage will (or should) go away completely, I do believe we need to take a serious look at adding other options that fit more with the lifestyles we have evolved into.

In 2002, Pamela Paul wrote a groundbreaking book that presented the novel idea of having what she called, a "starter marriage." This legal union would be a first marriage for couples in their 20s or early 30s who know they would not have children and who did not necessarily expect the nuptials to last a lifetime. Much like a learner's permit for driving, a starter marriage would be a way for young people to "play house" without risking their entire lives.

The book did not make much of an impact in our social norms. Nearly a decade later, most people have never heard of a starter marriage. More mainstream terms include domestic partnership, common law marriage and civil unions.

Many states in the U.S. have implemented some type of civil union to accommodate same-sex couples, but the federal government does not recognize these as legitimate marriages. Additionally, under the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, other states are not required to recognize the informal unions.

Vermont was the first to enact a law recognizing civil unions in 2000. Then Massachusetts and Connecticut. New Jersey followed suit a few years later, then New Hampshire in 2007 and Illinois in 2010.

California, Washington, Oregon, Maine and Washington, D.C. provide straight and gay couples with domestic partnership rights. This all appears to be movement in the right direction.

But let's take a look at what occurred in France when they decided to add a less formal option of marriage. In 1999, marital laws were amended to include a legal civil union (called PACS -- pacte civil de solidarité) as an alternative to traditional marriage. Like the others that states in the U.S. named earlier, PACS was created to accommodate gays who were fighting for equal marriage rights throughout the country.

Just over a decade later, France has surprising statistics: For every three marriages among straight couples, there are two civil unions. More and more French couples are opting for this less restrictive option -- this includes those who are not sure they are ready for a lifelong commitment, those who have already been married and don't want to go down that road again and there are those who are younger and don't believe in the ideology of traditional marriage (many of these young people have parents who are divorced).

Unlike conventional marriage with long, drawn out divorce proceedings, all it takes to end a civil union is a registered letter.

In 2010, a couple in Austria made headlines by demanding the right to a civil union that had previously been available only to same-sex couples. Helga Ratzenboeck and Martin Seydl stated that they didn't want a traditional marriage and insisted that the law allowing gays to have a "registered partnership" should apply to them as well and be blind to gender and sexuality.

Believe it or not, this option is actually similar to the way couples married and divorced in Greco-Roman times. The Greeks and Romans had several levels of marriage ranging from the very informal (a couple who cohabited for a year and a day was considered married) to the very formal (requiring witnesses and a vow-exchanging ceremony).

If we added a less formal civil union as a viable alternative to anyone wanting to be legally recognized as family, I believe it would actually strengthen the institution of marriage and that it would reduce the numbers of divorces in this country.

With traditional marriage as the only existing legal option for couples to enjoy financial benefits such as tax breaks and insurance coverage, people who are not be motivated by the lifelong commitment may opt to marry knowing they can divorce if or when the marriage stops being viable.

While I realize there is no quick fix or any alternative solution that wouldn't then cause a new set of problems, I think it's worth exploring the possibilities.