At least five couples have  had marriages that lasted 85 years.    The longest living couple are Herbert and Zelmyra Fisher in North Carolina.   This past August they celebrated their 85th anniversary.   What I like best about them is that they do not pretend to be sages.   They offer no advice as to how to make a marriage last and they have no explanation for their own longevity or successful marriage.   They go along happily, sometimes spending lots of time together, sometimes not.   Herb is a sports fan who watches lots of sports on TV and while he does this, Zelmyra busies herself with other things.    They sleep in the same room but in separate beds.    Herbert wakes frequently to make sure his bride is still sleeping soundly.

They enjoy sitting on their porch together, watching the world go by and they love having grandchildren and great-grandchildren come for visits.   They are church goers but Zelmyra attends the African Methodist Episcopal Church and Herbert prefers the Pilgrim Chapel Missionary Baptist Church.  Zelmyra, but not Herbert, reads the Bible daily.

Neither of the Fishers ever had boyfriends or girlfriends before marrying, and neither has regrets on that score.  They were downright poor but by doing what thousands of other poor people did, they managed to put all their children through college.

Given a chance to do something in their lives all over, they both say they would do nothing differently.

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However, make no mistake about it, many long lasting marriages are disasters from start to finish but I won’t rehearse the reasons for that.  Marriage may, at its best, enhance the love and solidity of a union but, given the astonishing growing divorce rate, it is beginning to seem to be a very unnatural state.  That is why I puzzle over the desire of some homosexuals to emulate the married.   Unfortunately, (or fortunately?), most homosexual unions do not last very long.  I haven’t the statistics but I would be surprised to learn few homosexual unions last 65 years.   This may not be anything to feel bad about. Long term relationships have their charms but, apparently, so do sexual encounters that come with such blinding speed they cannot be tracked.  In Marriage and same-sex unions: a debate, researchers Bell and Weinberg claim that 28% of white homosexual males have at least 1000 partners over the course of their lives and 550 different sexual partners is the average.

Many heterosexuals jump at those numbers as if it is all the proof they need that homosexuals are depraved but I suspect that many more heterosexual males read those numbers with incredible envy.   Of course, the numbers have some sort of sociological significance but it is very hard to know what lessons to draw from them.  We can be sure of one thing – that it is no sign that more gay couplings would be a threat to the much ballyhooed family unit as the foundation of The American Way.  There is no one pillar on which our society rests but, among the ones that are not cracking, is the nonhypocritcal recognition of diversity.    We don’t get that from our Head-Honcho-in-Chief who sometimes boasts that he believes that, because he is a Christian, marriage is a union between a man and woman.    This ridiculous boast reminds me of the person who rises from the audience, screaming “Mama loves shortbread” because he got a post-hypnotic suggestion from the guy on the stage to call that out on a signal from him.   A brainwashed president is nothing for us to cheer about.

So, yes, I celebrate the success of the Fishers but I don’t believe long-lasting marriage is “What it is all about” and I don’t even know what the “it” refers to.  I suppose a good long-lasting marriage is a wonderful thing but it is not the be-all and end-all of existence on planet Earth.