This past Tuesday, we talked about concepts of marriage and homosexuality. This blog will cover my opinion on the question of “what’s the definition of marriage” and my opinion on the short story “The Bridegroom.”
We had a question given to us about marriage by Dr. McGrath and what marriage symbolizes. To me, the meaning of marriage is about finding someone you love and living a life with that person. Some people tend to get married for the sake of getting married, or get married to help them have better socioeconomic benefits. However, I think getting married means growing as a person and learning more about yourself through a person who you love and loves you back. When talking with my small group in class, I remember hearing that getting married is a milestone in life, like it’s expected. I do agree about that in our culture, where people in their twenties have a few important goals-graduating, getting a job, getting married. Marriage is kind of expected for our society, but that doesn’t mean to get married just for the label of husband or wife. Marriage should be about actually loving someone who can make you a better person and someone you actually care about.
We also discussed about The Bridegroom, which focused on homosexuality. Even though the story takes place in the near 1980s, there were many themes that in my opinion, seem to take place in our current society. First of all, the uncle and the factory workers believe that homosexuality is some type of disease. This made me think of the Stonewall Riots in the late 1960s, which helped start the gay liberation movement because homosexuality wasn’t common back then. The people in this story were shocked about how Baowen and his wife haven’t had a child yet after being married for almost a year. The uncle was confused and mad at Baowen for marrying his niece after finiding out that he wasn’t attractive to her. “Homosexuality isn’t a disease, it’s just like being left-handed…” is a great quote because people can’t control their sexual preference, it just happens. This means we as a society shouldn’t judge people on their sexual preference, just like we shouldn’t judge people on their gender, race, religion, political stance, etc. Second of all, reading about how people think electric shock therapy can help seems ridiculous to me. When talking about conversion therapy in class, I felt bad for people who might have had to go through something like that. People shouldn’t change who they are in order to not be looked down upon from people. It’s just sad that people can except others that are apparently “different” from them. It was sad to read that Baowen didn’t want his mother to know the truth or his coworkers to know because he knew he would be treated differently. Just let people be who they are supposed to be, then most of these stupid problems in this world would just go away. This story overall was just sad to read.