By Sarah Murnane
An article was published in The New York Times back in December 2024 that documented the wedding of Jacob Martin Hoff and Samantha Wynn Greenstone. The couple were married in November 2024, and their wedding garnered significant attention online because Hoff is a gay man. Prior to his relationship with Greenstone, he has exclusively dated and been attracted to cisgender men. Since the article and it’s scrutiny, Hoff has since declared that his connection to Greenstone was one that ‘transcended sexuality’ and while he still considers himself a gay man, he is devoted to Greenstone. She is the person that he plans to spend the rest of his life with.
If you are even half as cynical as I am, you will be asking yourself the question: “Why does a gay man want to be married to a woman?” You dear reader, are correct. It does make no sense. If you were not asking this question, there is probably something wrong with you. The answer is, who cares? People should be able to live their lives in any way they see fit. If this couple are happy together, whatever the arrangement may be, I absolutely wish them well. You should too. However, there is a far more captivating question to be asked from this tale. The real discussion to be had is: why get married at all? Why did these two people feel the need to marry in the first place, why not just spend your time together?
In the western world these days, getting hitched for reasons other than love and sex has gone out of fashion. People of course do get married for other reasons, but there is a charade where everyone has to pretend that they got married for love. This is realistically an extremely recent idea. In many other parts of the world, especially in South-East Asia, the decision to get married encompasses a whole range of other considerations. You have to think about class, age, background, money, race and ethnicity. In many cases your parents still have a dramatic influence on whom you will marry and arranged marriages are common. Finding accurate and reliable data on this is tricky, the majority of online articles use untrustworthy and inconsistent sources. What we do know is that culturally these practises were old and common, and there is still overlap today.
Marriage is in many ways not related to love or connection at all. It is about who will be the best partner for you in your life. I am not arguing that this is a better way of constructing society, merely that marriage does not always have to be founded on romance.
The internet was perpetually shocked by these rich Americans decision to effectively marry for convenience. I say we should bring this ideology back; to a degree. You may be in love with that 6’0 alcoholic who plays guitar and went to Trinity, but do you really believe that he will be a good husband? Or would you rather marry your gay best friend and be able to share clothes and bottles of white wine? Sure, you both may have to look the other way every now and then, but is that not a small price to pay? My point is, people make choices for all different kinds of reasons. This couple is clearly happy, and while it is unconventional to a degree, marriage is a strange institution around the world regardless. I think we could all learn a thing or two from their situation.