The inequality of same-sex marriage (or any marriage at all)
When Judge Walker’s decision to overturn Proposition 8 was issued two weeks ago today most of my queer friends and supporters of equality everywhere where electrified by the historic decision. But I couldn’t share in the enthusiasm ; in fact I even felt depressed over the news. Why? People asked me a number of questions when I made my views known: I was a self-hating queer? Didn’t I want to get married? Why couldn’t I be happy for other people? Nowadays I usually avoid discussion of the issue because I’ll usually be shouted down for my unpopular opinion. Namely being that marriage is an obsolete patriarchal and inherently oppressive institution and should be abolished instead of expanded.
Marriage is oppressive because it gives state-sanctioned privileges and approval to some relationships at the legal and social expense of other relationships that may not fit the hetero-normative, nuclear family model that have has been held up as the ideal form of love, companionship and child-rearing for nearly a hundred years now. Marriage by its very nature is an exclusive practice, its purpose is to ennoble some relationships and by default render other relationships to be less meaningful and less worthy of legal and social recognition. Granting the right to marry to one minority group will do nothing to change this or make to the institution equal.
Given the temperament in the LGBTQ community today, it would be hard to imagine a day and age when the raison d’être of the gay rights movement wasn’t “equal” marriage. But just barely ten years ago there was a vigorous intra-community debate that had been ongoing since Stonewall era over the desirability over gaining the right to marriage. Early attempts to obtain marriage licenses in the wake of Stonewall were oftentimes accompanied with political statements pointing out how morally corrupt the institution is and were more political statements than genuine efforts to marry. The early queer liberation movement resisted the idea that the state has a right to regulate private relationships and was dedicated to challenging heterosexual ideals surrounding the purity of the institution.
This perception began to change around the time that the AIDS crisis of the 1980s receded from public view. Some of the more conservative LGBT public intellectuals like Andrew Sullivan, Gabriel Rotello and William Eskridge started writing articles and books extolling the benefits of seeking out the right to marry, selling a perception that it was a path to legal recognition and social legitimacy for same sex relationships. During this time major LGBT organizations stood on the sidelines, while working against Defense of Marriage Acts on the state and federal level it seemed that the day for same-sex marriage would be far in to the future. They were so disinterested in the issue that the case that resulted in Baehr v. Lewin, the groundbreaking ruling by the Supreme Court of Hawaii that established that denying gays and lesbians the right to marry was a form of discrimination, was litigated by the ACLU because the plaintiffs could not find a major LGBT rights organization to litigate it as a test case.
As the gay marriage movement picked steam with Civil Unions in Vermont, marriage in San Francisco and California, major gay rights organizations took up the cause and the proponents of pursuing marriage continued to sell the perception that gay marriage as a one-size-fits-all solution to the question of gay rights. Suddenly the robust debate around the desirability to access the right to marriage was dropped and critics of the strategy were pushed to the margins. But the community has been sold a false perception; it won’t help problems with school bullying, job discrimination, health care discrimination, addiction, youth homelessness or any of the rest of the discrimination and oppression that queer people face. To say that queers have always wanted the right to marry or that all queers want to marry today is a distortion of not only our history but a misrepresentation of our needs as a community. The LGBT movement has swallowed the spider to catch the fly when it comes down to the right to access marriage in that it will access a privilege at the expense of others. That is something I cannot support.
So if not marriage; what is the solution to seeking legal recognition for all relationships on an equal basis? To start, I would advocate abolishing marriage as a privilege granted by the state. People could have private commitments that they could call marriage if they wanted, but it wouldn’t come with a special set of rights and legal responsibilities. People in all committed relationships could be protected by some form of civil partnership, hopefully modeled after something like France’s Pacte Civil de Solidarite (PACS). PACS not only legally recognize romantic relationships, but also honor and protect other plutonic relationships such as care-taker relationships, families of choice and even siblings who own property together. Unfortunately French law still recognizes a tiered system of legal protections, with marriage being the most protected, concubinage the second most protected and PACS being the least. But with tweaking this could be a solution that does not involve legitimizing some relationships over the social and legal status of others and it would offer legal protections to many families which do not currently have any protection such as families of choice, caretaker relationships, or poly relationships.
This way all families can be honored without state enforcement of moral standards or through legally privileging some relationships over others. Same-sex marriage only further legitimizes an exclusionary system and will do nothing to legally protect or recognize other forms of relationship that are now also disenfranchised.
“But the community has been sold a false perception; it won’t help problems with school bullying, job discrimination, health care discrimination, addiction, youth homelessness or any of the rest of the discrimination and oppression that queer people face.”
I think there are certainly *some* benefits to marriage-like if you don’t have or lose your health insurance, it sure would be nice to be covered under your spouse’s health insurance. Or the stability that having someone bringing home the bacon can bring if you lose your job, so that you don’t have to go down the path of homelessness.
I suppose that goes back to what you were saying about society favouring marriage-of course you should be able to name anyone as a dependent regardless of marital status, but as a practical matter marriage equality is probably an easier goal to obtain than that.
Amanda in the South Bay
19 Aug 10 at 5:35 pm
Not to mention the leverage one gains when dealing with Hospitals, families and the like. Being one’s partner’s legal next of kin is a huge privilege that straight people take for granted.
Jessica
19 Aug 10 at 6:21 pm
in terms of Judge Walker’s decision, having read through the entire thing I find it hard to believe its impact would be restricted to marriage equality alone. there’s the massive factual record of discrimination against LGB people… the matter of being able to protect rights of a minority population against majority vote… the close examination of why exactly Prop 8 proponents (and other “family values” sorts) feel it’s important to exclude same-sex couples, and how those justifications are based in animus and fail any level of scrutiny. many of those were the same justifications that are used to exclude LGB people from many other aspects of social life and legal protection. in the courtroom at least, I see a lot of potential for what is written in this decision to influence many of the issues of discrimination and oppression you brought up in your post.
personally I do not feel that it’s necessary to abolish marriage for the goal of opening other avenues for recognition of relationships. I don’t feel your views should be shouted down or you should be told you’re self-hating or any of that. but I also don’t feel I should be cast as evil for disagreement, either.
finally, I do not support using “queer” as a stand-in for lgbTq people. many trans people do not identify as queer, and this alone should be enough to prove its harm as an umbrella term.
MHS
19 Aug 10 at 7:55 pm
I’m torn on this one. I’m wary about marriage myself, from a historical perspective especially. I shamelessly married someone for the legal rights, because I needed access to those legal rights and there wasn’t another way to get it.
But at the end of the day, I think that the choice to oppose marriage as the morally bankrupt, state-imposed anachronism that it is ought to be a choice, for everyone, not something that’s a choice for heterosexual couples but a pre-enforced status for homosexual couples. I don’t think that being born queer ought to oblige one to be radical about marriage, any more than being more straight ought to oblige one not to be; I think everyone should have the same leeway to explore the issue rationally.
Thene
19 Aug 10 at 8:47 pm
I tend to agree with many of the points you make, poisongirl. Being trans and out of work for 20 months, not to mention watching many trans (especially AMAB trans) people being murdered or assaulted or dying for lack of medical care just for *who we are*, I tend to think that my right to work, have a roof over my head, and be safe from violence are more important than my right to marry.
But where I somewhat part company is on the civil union issue – isn’t the effect of abolishing government recognition of marriage in favor of government recognition of civil union nothing more than replacing one term – marriage – with another – civil union? And even if we broaden civil union to include chosen families / poly families / siblings sharing households out of need, we will once again get into the argument of who is deserving of civil unions and who isn’t, and those who are judged as deserving will be privileged over those who aren’t.
The issue, in my mind, is dealing with poverty, racism, transphobia, and the other *isms and supremacisms that keep people down, and I don’t see how civil unions help that any more than marriage does.
If several people are forming a household because that’s the only way they collectively can afford to have a roof over their heads, maybe we ought to address the fucked up capitalist system that drives people to such desperation, rather than giving the household some meaningless stamp of approval called “civil union” that leaves them in the same crappy economic position.
GallingGalla
19 Aug 10 at 9:01 pm
@MHS, I totally agree with the wider applications of this decision.
I concede to many of the points of this piece, however I don’t see how same-sex marriage isn’t an entirely useful stepping stone for those who would eventually see the institution of marriage dismantled altogether.
This may be a politically dangerous thing to say, as it echoes the fundamentalist argument that “gay” marriage spells doom for the institution of marriage altogether. They have never been able to say WHY this is so, but they say it repeatedly and I think they are on to something. Fundies and traditionalists lack the critical tools to indict their own sexist, heterosexist and racist institutions, but I believe they are right on to be afraid for the future of their monolopy hold on “marriage,” “love” and “family.” If we can convince the courts to agree that gender is IRRELEVANT to the institution of marriage and the concept of the nuclear family, we can certainly move towards the sort of world poisongirl prefers, where the legal concept of marriage itself is relevant and family is no longer gauged against the nuclear model.
Ultimately I believe legal same sex marriage is GREAT news for people who oppose the marriage concept; it removes THE key component in a fundamentally heterosexist institution, that of the pre-enforced gender binary.
Look, not even the Berlin Wall came down all at once. It’s important to think in the ideal and strive for higher ground in all we do, but at the end of the day we can only work with what we’ve got. Calling out gender as irrelevant to marriage is NOTHING TO SNEEZE AT. Get to work!
Jane Laplain
19 Aug 10 at 9:20 pm
“we can certainly move towards the sort of world poisongirl prefers, where the legal concept of marriage itself is relevant and family is no longer gauged against the nuclear model.”
Oops! I meant to say “where the legal concept of marriage itself is NULL and family is no longer gauged against the nuclear model.”
Jane Laplain
19 Aug 10 at 9:42 pm
Fuck you, poisongirl.
When I first saw the girl I was to marry – I was in Love. Love. I’d spell it in capital fuckin’ letters, but that wouldn’t be “genteel”, aka “politically correct” enough for the likes of you.
Fuck you.
I love that girl. You dare challenge me on that? I’ll give my life for her – and don’t you even breathe doubt on that statement. I’ve lived it – you fuck around with abstract ideals.
You want to challenge me on my feelings to the only girl I’ve loved as much as I’ve love this lass? Do you?
Do You Feel Lucky, punk? Do you?
I married that girl because I wanted to make a commitment to her. I married her because I want to spend the rest of my life with her. What she thinks is none of your damn business. Suffice to say: she’s stood by met through thick and thin. Have you stood by someone walking through their personal hell? Have you had “that” phone call? Have you ever loved anyone enough to … You know what? You clearly don’t even know what I’m talking about.
Marriage is commitment. It’s not an odd abstraction, the emotions behind something – something you should tread carefully around. My wife and me didn’t get married because of abstract ideals – we got married because of an old fashioned idea: love. I love my wife, she loves me. That is not an abstraction – that’s a reality. And I’m glad of it!
You are poison, girl. You most certainly are.
Carolyn Ann
Carolyn Ann
20 Aug 10 at 12:49 am
My way of thinking, marriage is a convenient wedge to split discrimination out of the law. In many places it’s the last bastion of formally unequal treatment. Not in the USA, but there it’s a place where the discrimination is out in the open and legally weak, and the supreme court can be forced to recognize sexual orientation as a “suspect class”. If we get that, it will be a whole lot easier to tear down the other inequities.
You’ll note that the above is independent of any praise for the institution of marriage.
On marriage itself, I’ve found this book really interesting http://www.sexatdawn.com – amongst other things, the thesis is, when anthropologists have said “marriage is a human universal”, they’ve only been able to get away with this blatant lie by slapping the label “marriage” on a whole lot of things that have next to nothing in common with the US/European institution. Our present form of marriage has a whole lot to do with the economic necessities of controlling paternity in a society that hoards wealth across generations, and its relationship to romantic love has very much been bolted on retroactively.
But the point I’m making is, stripping discrimination out of the law and fixing a badly structured society, those are two separate goals. Doing the former doesn’t mean abandoning the latter.
Julian Morrison
20 Aug 10 at 2:41 am
I am also pretty much against the structure of marriage, though I’d tend to think it would still be preferable to have at least a marriage that is not only the domain of heterosexuality (I want to have the choice not to marry).
Anyway, I mostly wanted to comment about the PACS:
“PACS not only legally recognize romantic relationships, but also honor and protect other plutonic relationships such as care-taker relationships, families of choice and even siblings who own property together.”
It’s true, and I think it’s positive, but the fact is PACS is still limited to two people, and people who are not PACSed to other people, so concretely as it is used I still see it as recognizing couple only and not recognizing poly relationship (or, more than 2 adults living together).
What I find frustrating is that it seems to me equality for poly relationships is a revendication which is completely absent from nearly all LGBT groups…
Ellie
20 Aug 10 at 3:02 am
GG: the point is not that we need a system to stamp on relationships, but rather that there is a utility to many of the legal status effects that are currently bound up in the institution of marriage: many of which are only available through the institution of marriage at present. What I would like to see, and what it sounds like poison girl would like to see, is to take the legal aspects of marriage, discard many of them, break up the rest, and institute a system for flexibly making them available to whoever wants them.
I see what you’re saying about the danger that can still happen in such a system, but I don’t think that means that there’s no utility in making available some legal relationship recognition. Designating those people who should be able to visit you if you’re hospitalized, for instance, is very difficult right now without a marriage. That’s one thing that should be made freely available, and a need that I can’t see going away even with fixing society. Et cetera.
squirrel
20 Aug 10 at 5:38 am
Another thing I forgot to add is that we MUST consider the consequences of failure when it comes to gender neutral marriage. Honestly, the time for pondering whether or not civil marriage should be a major issue for american LGBT’s ended with DOMA. If this most recent Prop 8 decision had been decided in favor of its anti-gay supporters, that would have been one more nail in the coffin of our collective right to define family for ourselves. What if what if what if…
In case nobody has noticed, right wing backlash has been steering us towards a federal definition of Family, Marriage, and Gender itself for quite a while now. For decades now, the “fundies” have had an unambiguous definition of these institutions which they plot and plan to impose upon the rest of society. They would still be moving forward with this agenda whether or not we paid any attention to “Gay” Marriage as a worthy cause. We would be every bit as forked, civil rights-wise, if we ignored their legal agenda as we would if we had taken them to court and lost. We’ve certainly lost to them at the polls more often than we’ve won.
But we didn’t lose in the courts THIS TIME. Again, nothing to sneeze at here.
Gender neutral marriage is QUITE the paradigm shift for these folks. But the larger, scarier paradigm shift is gender neutrality itself, or rather the concept that biology does not equal gender does not equal phenotype does not equal destiny and so on, not just in marriage but in ALL the ways this could be applied in a cissexist, heterosexist and racist society,.
This scares the crap out of people on so many levels and not just fundies either. It’s what we’re up against. But its a battle we’ve GOT to fight if we wish to see significant social change for the less oppressive. Winning gender neutral marriage in the courts, to this end is perhaps one little babystep closer to that goal. LOSING gender neutral marriage on the other hand is a gargantuan setback for progress and we cannot afford to understimate the consequences of what that would mean.
Jane Laplain
20 Aug 10 at 6:06 am
“But the community has been sold a false perception; it won’t help problems with school bullying, job discrimination, health care discrimination, addiction, youth homelessness or any of the rest of the discrimination and oppression that queer people face.”
This is such a nasty rhetorical move–implying that those who might disagree with your position on the marriage issue are dupes or stupid, rather than people who are as thoughtful and intelligent as you but whom have merely reached different conclusions. Also, the statement implies that those who support same-sex marriage rights don’t care or aren’t simultaneously working on homelessness, joblessness, bullying, etc, which is assuredly true of some but by no means all.
Also, I wish that half the energy that’s been spent lecturing LGB people about why they shouldn’t want marriage was spent trying to convince those in OPPOSITE SEX MARRIAGES to give up their marriage rights. After all, there are far more of those kinds of marriages, aren’t there? Why are LGB people the ones constantly asked to fall on their swords for the cause of the Post-Marriage Utopia?
Just Some Trans Guy
20 Aug 10 at 6:47 am
Just want to weigh in in support of your post. The more that we can get statist involvement and privileging some private relationships against others the better.
z
20 Aug 10 at 7:39 am
Er, get statist involvement out of relationships…
z
20 Aug 10 at 7:41 am
Dear poisongirl,
You are rad.
Love,
Pony
Dear Carolyn Ann,
Oh please. Nobody is saying your love isn’t genuine, special, amazing, true, etc. What some of us are saying is why should your monogomous love that fits into the heteronormative and sexist marriage framework be valued over other forms of love? Why do you feel the need for your love to be formally recognised by the state? Surely you could make a commitment and spend the rest of your life with your love without it being a state sanctioned relationship.
In aprehension,
Pony
Mish Glitter Pony
20 Aug 10 at 8:27 am
I predict a time when the marriage contract is allowed to any 2 consenting adults, that the fundis will fight to force the government to rename those contracts as “civil unions”. They will then try to reclaim the term “marriage” as a strictly religious rite, and try to limit who is granted that privilege. Because after all, to them it’s all about appearances and control.
Kimberly
20 Aug 10 at 9:17 am
“… those in OPPOSITE SEX MARRIAGES to give up their marriage rights.”
Gah, this is such a shitty phrase, and I apologize for using it. I meant those in marriages perceived as “opposite sex.”
Just Some Trans Guy
20 Aug 10 at 9:17 am
@squirrel: Designating those people who should be able to visit you if you’re hospitalized, for instance, is very difficult right now without a marriage. That’s one thing that should be made freely available, and a need that I can’t see going away even with fixing society. Et cetera.
You’re actually making my point. I should be able to designate anybody I choose as being able to visit me in the hospital, act as healthcare power of attorney, etc. This is the kind of thing that should be between myself, those who I am in relationships with, and my / our doctor(s), without government interference.
If I am restricted to designating only those who are in civil union with me, what have I gained? I am still restricted by a government imprimatur or lack thereof. Who will decide what makes a valid civil union? Will poly relationships be valid? Will relationships involving power exchange (BDSM D/s or M/s relationships) be valid? And what third person, group of people, or government authority has the right to decide on that validity? And should my relationship(s) fall outside of that boundary drawn by somebody else, I’ll still be back at square one, denied rights that should be granted to everyone. It doesn’t matter whether we use the term “marriage”, “civil union”, or “relationship with a gold seal of approval”.
“Right to hospital visitation due to civil union” doesn’t get us very far. “Right to hospital visitation, period” is where we need to be.
GallingGalla
20 Aug 10 at 11:05 am
Carolyn Ann: Get over yourself.
If you need to have some government’s piece of paper in your hand to prove how committed you are to your partner, what’s that say about how committed you really are to each other? Is your commitment really that fragile, that you need a government stamp of approval or your relationship falls apart?
Also: The level of disrespect that you’re showing to poisongirl is absolutely appalling.
GallingGalla
20 Aug 10 at 11:08 am
I was quite the idiot, last night. I’m sorry.
I’ve been under an unbelievable strain, lately. And then, late last night, I came across something that – in my inebriated state – I perceived as a direct threat to my wife. I added two and two and came up with something, I’m not sure what, but it wasn’t four, or anything close to that!
Not having anyone to lash out at, I swung wildly; eventually I came across an this post about marriage – and I suddenly had a focus for my anger. I should have kept on beating, and berating, myself; eventually I would have run out steam, and headed to bed. Instead I unleashed an inarticulate torrent of anger on someone who didn’t deserve it. That would be you, poisongirl.
I’m sorry.
Carolyn Ann
Carolyn Ann
20 Aug 10 at 11:14 am
*puts on mod hat*
@Carolyn Ann Uhh what’s with the vitriol aimed at poisongirl? She’s a guest here, please respond with a modicum of respect (that goes for everyone btw).
As to the matter at hand, I like poisongirl’s post a lot. There’s no necessary reason to entangle legal rights (a bureaucratic State matter) with committed relationships, of any kind. A marriage is after all a particular specialised form of contract. Australia recognises defacto relationships (common law marriages, they call it in the States) as legally equal to marriage after an amount of time cohabiting, two years I think. I like that a lot, because coupled with the common Australian use of the word “partner” for all relationships it problematises any priority given to married heterosexual couples versus gay couples *and* het couples living together that haven’t, can’t or don’t want to get married. It doesn’t get at the issue of poly relationships, but it could be expanded relatively easily I think.
Having said that, part of the power of marriage *is* its symbolic dimension and the way that it traverses and collapses both legal and emotional dimensions into a performative act (a vow), it is precisely more powerful than it would be otherwise. That’s a packed moment, and we neglect symbol to our detriment. It’s why it so quickly became a galvanising movement, and why it has so quickly gathered support amongst het allies, above and beyond normativity.
I don’t think gay marriage should be a policy priority for LGBT groups (for the reasons mentioned about rights in the OP) but nevertheless I am in favour of it *as* a symbolic movement of equality.
Queen Emily
20 Aug 10 at 11:16 am
Posted before Carolyn Ann’s apology…
Queen Emily
20 Aug 10 at 11:18 am
GallingGala – it’s not the piece of paper that matters. It’s what it represents. If you’re not ready to make a binding commitment to someone, that piece of paper is meaningless. When you do make a commitment, when you *want* to make that commitment, when you pledge to share your life with your lover and friend – the symbols of marriage become very important. Because they actually do represent that commitment.
It’s easy to confuse the marriage symbols (the certificate, the ring(s), etc) with the actual commitment. Marriage is just so much more than that. I should know – I’ve been married a little over 20 years. I’ve taken my wedding ring off once (I was extracting an engine and gearbox from a truck, and my wife insisted I do that, because she was afraid I’d lose a finger – it was a very difficult engine to pull) I now simply tape the ring over; I was so upset at not wearing the ring she had chosen. It’s not the symbol, it’s what that symbol represents.
When my wife and I lived together, we were just as committed – but marriage requires a different sort of commitment. It’s not a private commitment, it’s a public statement of that commitment. That’s why it’s so important; it’s not greater, or lesser – it is different, and it is public.
I don’t “need” a piece of paper to indicate my abiding love for my wife. Heck, I don’t even know where that piece of paper is! What I do have is the knowledge of that love, and some symbols that proudly tell the world of my love, my commitment to that girl.
If you don’t need, or want, that public pledge of commitment, that’s fine. That’s your choice; it’s not for me to criticize, or even comment. Heck, it’s not for me to have an opinion on! It’s none of my business. What is my business is my marriage. I *like* the symbol of my wedding band. To me, it represents something intangible, and yet all too real.
I love her – and I want to tell the world I do. And I like the idea of being bound together in matrimony. It really is a statement of our love for one another.
Carolyn Ann
20 Aug 10 at 11:32 am
@Carolyn Ann
I have wanted to be married to the womon of my dreams for some time now. I live in a country where I legally can, which is wonderful… that said, to have the state privilege people who have found love is simply incentivizing marriages staying in existence longer than some of them ought…
I should receive no state sanction for my love, be it negative or positive.
Valerie Keefe
20 Aug 10 at 5:55 pm
Gah… this is what happens when I don’t read all the comments… the previous comment is @Drunk-And-Self-Loathing-Carolyn Ann
Also, I’ve been there. I tend to just put on sad music and cry.
Valerie Keefe
20 Aug 10 at 5:56 pm
Upon further reflection, while I agree with the sentiment that there are different kinds of relationships that should be recognized as equal to marriage (polyamory, for starters) I guess I’m more than a little uncomfortable with the anarchist sentiment that the state has no business regulating marriage ( and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong in identifying it as anarchism). It’s just being rather burnt out with the American political scene at the moment, such anti-statism seems very similar to American style libertarianism. I guess I don’t see it as being any more or less oppressive than… public education, garbage collection or public transit.
Amanda in the South Bay
21 Aug 10 at 8:49 am
Does this all help? For some of us, this will be the gospel to the choir. Down with the (genuinely) oppressive institutions in society! But one can also argue our civil rights as trans people have not been well served by idealism which puts off concrete gains — always and reflexively — in favor of the big win, someday. I agree completely that abolishing marriage makes sense. But if I had to pick between that happening someday, and marriage rights for couples where one partner is trying to immigrate, right now, papers in hand…meh. Our community is deeply split by this broad division — come the revolution vs small civil rights now — on so many levels that I don’t even know where to start.
jessl
21 Aug 10 at 10:37 am
@amanda: It’s just being rather burnt out with the American political scene at the moment, such anti-statism seems very similar to American style libertarianism.
I guess to me, the difference between the two revolves around how they each deal with privilege. American-style libertarianism seeks to be rid of government in order to make it easier for libertarians to protect their own privilege (given that libertarians are overwhelmingly white cis het men). Anarchism sees government as a primary (if not the primary) defender of privilege, therefor anarchists call for eliminating government as a means of dismantling privilege.
Now, that’s the ideal. I have, however, seen an awful lot of defense of privilege amongst self-identified anarchists. There’s a reason that the term “manarchist” came about; it doesn’t mean just “a male anarchist”.
GallingGalla
21 Aug 10 at 3:15 pm
I’ll also not that a lot of classic American-style libertarians seem to be happy with corporations walking all over people, whereas I think most anarchists see corporations as an extension of the state.
GallingGalla
21 Aug 10 at 3:17 pm
I have a very strong opinion on this issue, which is detailed in my post here: http://seburke.wordpress.com/2010/02/17/marriage-is-still-not-assimilation/
The two main ideas that I think poisongirl’s post fails to address are the legal precedent that would be set by a favorable marriage ruling at a high level and the social psychological effects of legally recognized equality on a high-profile issue.
Sara
21 Aug 10 at 7:22 pm
I am queer and so is my girlfriend.
We would like to be married.
I am disinterested in arguments explaining why I “should” or “should not” seek something important to me.
But I have nothing but hostility for anyone who might work to hinder me.
So you’re welcome to your pet radicalism in theory. But if this becomes a point of activism, then we are opposed.
cigfran
21 Aug 10 at 8:56 pm
Whatever my personal feelings on marriage, I am glad that radical queer people are critically engaging the institution itself. I would love to see more of the same.
Lisa Harney
21 Aug 10 at 10:27 pm
“To start, I would advocate abolishing marriage as a privilege granted by the state. People could have private commitments that they could call marriage if they wanted, but it wouldn’t come with a special set of rights and legal responsibilities.”
How is that an argument to not seek marriage?
z
22 Aug 10 at 12:08 am
Another argument in favour of a state-mandated form of relationships that hasn’t been mentioned yet is the equality of all parties involved. If relationship agreements were to be more free-form, I suspect we’d have a lot more unequal arrangements regarding, for example, child custody – and I’ve no doubt whatsoever that it’d be the weaker party who would be shafted in the possible event of dissolution of the contract. It’s bad enough already, with the current contract form (marriage, civil partnership, PACS, what-have-you) of technically equal partners, because the more privileged party can hire assistants to help hir case, and as you all probably know, privilege works without any hired assistance, too. So I’m strongly in favour of state-controlled forms of relationships. That guarantees at least some sort of minimum level of fairness to otherwise possibly very unequal and abusive forms of contract.
Carto
22 Aug 10 at 12:18 am
A point that is usually ignored by radical queer positions with regard to “gay marriage” – but that I think is well understood by the actual actors involved in the public conflict – is that “marriage” is only partly what’s at stake. What’s being fought over is the establishment of non-heteronormative people in this society, not as exemplars of alternative lifestyles, but as fully-vested *citizens*. Prop 8 supporters – and marriage equality opponents in general – correctly view the issue as a stalking horse for a broader dismantling of the systems that support and enforce their prejudice.
cigfran
22 Aug 10 at 6:34 am
What Carto said. And what cigfran said. Both of these points a thousand times over.
The solution in the OP (PACS for all chosen families) would be near-perfect. I would use the word “marriage” for any legal recognition of any romantic relationship(s) I had; others could choose not to use the word.
To me, talk about having no state-sanctioned relationships as the ideal sounds too much like theory-wanking, too similar to “and in Feminist Utopia, no-one would ever wear a dress!”, except, for the reason Carto gives, more damaging. So, yeah; I don’t mind complete marriage-abolitionists for now, but if any of the rhetoric enters the world where real actual people live, I am opposed.
Olli
22 Aug 10 at 7:01 am
One final point.
“If you need a piece of paper to validate your relationship then maybe you need to examine that relationship” is an offensive, worthless argument, employed to score trivial rhetorical points rather than advance any meaningful position.
Just quit it.
cigfran
22 Aug 10 at 11:09 am
“as you all probably know, privilege works without any hired assistance, too”
So true. I am baffled by the insinuation that “free form” relationships void of any government regulation whatsoever are intrinsically fairer and more egalitarian. Has nobody ever been in a fucked up informal relationship before? No such thing as an abusive non-marital lover? No situation ever existed where escape or survival for one party was made harder by the fact that the relationship had no legal standing?
This could only be true of a society where all actors begin on equal footing at all levels of society. Even the most radical of radicals understand that this is not so and could never be so by simply banishing government regulation.
As a Person of Color in the United States, I am well aware that state police agencies work in service of white supremacy and their job is constructed in such a way that I must regularly fear being targeted for abuse. I have all kinds of criticism of the police state itself. I would LOVE to see a lot more people engaged in active critique of our law enforcement institutions. But even if there were suddenly no law enforcement or laws to enforce, I am hard pressed to believe that I’d suddenly become exempt from white supremacist harassment. Those duties would merely be transferred into the hands of OTHER willing parties… and their abuse would be escalated by the complete lack of regulation or even of documentation.
If you say that marriage, just like ALL our institutions, is fundamentally inequal and designed to perpetuate that very inequality you’ll get few arguments from me. But in the wake of eradicating such institutions, you had better be proposing something that actually SOLVES rather than transfers or WORSENS these problems.
Jane Laplain
22 Aug 10 at 11:37 am
“…sounds too much like theory-wanking, too similar to “and in Feminist Utopia, no-one would ever wear a dress!””
Yes. It is directly related to the kind of ideological, prescriptive radical feminism to which this blog, and even its very title, was once a brave response.
cigfran
22 Aug 10 at 11:55 am
Thanks for that, Jane. I too am skeptical about the way that post-institutions are suggested to be necessarily less oppressive… To make a change to a very different kind of cultural organisation would absolutely bring new forms of domination and control, and even new forms of mystification that conceal that oppression. That doesn’t mean that change is useless, far from it, but that we can’t say that any given form of organisation is apriori less oppressive, I think…
@cigfran
Once? You cut me real deep *sniff ;)
We quite intentionally have been soliciting wider views that just the three of us to challenge our readers. I’ve disagreed with quite a lot, actually, but there can be a value in that. I think poisongirl’s raised some interesting points, and Carolyn Ann’s drunken ramblings aside, the conversation on this thread’s been interesting and thought-provoking. To me at least.
Queen Emily
22 Aug 10 at 12:39 pm
Ok, Emily. Fair enough.
I like to think of myself as not having triggers. Evidently it’s not true.
cigfran
22 Aug 10 at 1:16 pm
thanks for this post, poisongirl, and to commenters for keeping it relatively civil (if only more relationships could be that way, boom-tish!).
i’m also for the abolition of marriage as a (or the only or the major) state-recognised form of relationship. to me it seems extremely unfair that married couples are given a set of privileges and legal rights that people in other relationships are not (in various places this means next of kin, hospital visitation, taxation benefits, etc), and it saddens me that these things are knotted together so tightly that many people can’t see how they could (and in my opinion should) be separated – from each other and from marriage.
i also think that allowing more people to get married and thus access this legal recognition is not a really productive option. i for one do not ever want to get married, but i think that my partner and i ought to have the same rights and privileges as a married couple (which in australia, as we’ve been together for 8 years in a de facto relationship, we almost do). i also think that my friends who have lived together for over 30 years (but are not a couple in the traditional romantic/sexual sense) ought to be extended the same courtesy. and i would like to have my relationships with my chosen family legally recognised. and i’d like my poly friends to be able to have the option of legally supporting all their relationships.
so in that sense, because i don’t support the state privileging of marriage over other sorts of relationships, i don’t support the ridiculous amount of time, energy and money being put into same-sex marriage campaigns. on the other hand, i find it absurd that in many countries same-sex couples don’t have the option of getting married, and so (like emily says above) i can see the benefits of it as a symbolic move towards equality.
nix
22 Aug 10 at 3:20 pm
@cigfran Sorry, I’m not sure why you’re triggered? You made a slightly snide comment about the blog and I replied jokingly and made clear that I appreciated the work the guest poster had done.
Queen Emily
22 Aug 10 at 6:00 pm
This blog post appears to be written by someone who has completely missed the point of marriage from a legal standpoint. It’s basically getting a piece of paper that says that the government recognizes you’re a couple, and therefore any partner benefits a job provides or suchlike are valid for your partner. It’s harder to prove from a legal standpoint that you’ve been a couple if you’ve been together for years without something like filing taxes together, so in a sense it helps prevent abuse of spousal benefits like in fraud cases where someone might simply claim someone is a partner purely for the benefits. I’m not sure what’s with the ‘marriage is oppressive’ standpoint, since that certainly doesn’t apply if marriage is open to couples of all genders in love (setting aside things like polyamory for the moment, etc).
kuyk
22 Aug 10 at 9:24 pm
What if marriage rights were extended to any number of consenting adult persons, with adulthood and consent being the only limiting factors? Would the current problems with marriage as oppressive still be there? Is it more the state sanctioning aspect than the limited eligibility that is the problem?
I ask because opening marriage to any number of consenting adults seems to avoid many those problems as far as I can tell, but there might be things I’m missing.
Just Some Trans Guy
23 Aug 10 at 8:16 am
Just Some Trans Guy: personally, I would still has problem with linking some rights or privileges to marriage (whether it’s adoption, taxes, obtaining nationality, whatever).
Not only because it is unfair for people who don’t want to get married, but also because it causes people to get married even if they don’t want to in order to obtain those rights.
Ellie
23 Aug 10 at 3:11 pm
Ellie,
Thanks so much for answering!
“Not only because it is unfair for people who don’t want to get married, but also because it causes people to get married even if they don’t want to in order to obtain those rights.”
Is the unfairness because (or partly because) marriage is such an all-or-nothing thing? Like, maybe you would just want to be able to make medical decisions for another person, but in order to do so you’re forced into taking on everything else that marriage entails?
Just Some Trans Guy
23 Aug 10 at 8:02 pm
Just Some Trans Guy:
Something like that. For instance, my brother and I are good friends and may wind up living together. If we do, ideally I’d like him to have the same rental rights as a spouse would (so if one of us died, the other would stay on the lease) and hospital visitation rights, but I wouldn’t want him to get power of attorney. (And I don’t want to *marry* my brother!) Plus, if I do marry my brother so he can have some rights, but I already have a spouse who’s my romantic partner, is my brother also married to my partner? (Ideally not.)
Sky
23 Aug 10 at 10:19 pm
JSTG: there are also financial and legal incentives associated with legal marriage. They don’t always break down into lucky breaks for individual couples, but they were designed to protect married households, married people, and the children of married couples.
They exclude people whose foundational relationships can’t be crammed into those coupling constructs–say, someone who has set up house with her brother and is raising his stepchildren. Those people are a lot of us.
They’re also a form of straightforward discrimination against people whose romantic relationships aren’t heterosexual and cissexual (or interfaith, interracial, international and so on).
(There’s some overlap, too–there’s a direct relationship between marginalization and marginalized ways of support and survival: unacknowledged partnerships, communities, systems. Many non-het/cis people can’t call their AAB families family any more, but society does not respect the abiding love they’ve found elsewhere. Many non-het/cis people parent children; the law does not recognize them as parents.)
The marriage-equality people are focused on the second problem. The abolish-marriage people are rightly concerned with the first. Given that so many basic needs are privileges rather than rights in this country, I see their point. I also recognize that het-(and cis)-only marriage is discriminatory, even within that framework.
piny
23 Aug 10 at 10:37 pm
do folks here think of loving v. virginia (and perez v. sharp) any differently than they think of perry v. swarzenegger (<-the prop 8 decision being discussed)?
I mean this on all counts. do you feel exactly similar about abolishing all same-sex marriage as abolishing all interracial marriage. do you feel that overturning anti-miscegenation laws really had no effect whatsoever on the rest of the 1960's era Civil Rights movement? do you feel that people who are currently in interracial marriages (including same-sex spouses) were also "sold a false perception"?
separately, I kind of suspect that many couples (and children of such couples) would be hurt if their marriages were abolished, against their will, due to the success of the arguments offered. if that's true, what do you make of that? do they "deserve" such harm because they were enjoying a privilege denied to others? should it be written off as collateral damage caused by their false attachment of their love and commitment to a particular word/institution? what if they received death threats for marrying someone of a different race and/or the same sex, but married anyway, acting courageously in the face of hatred… would that make any difference?
MHS
24 Aug 10 at 5:55 am
I’m still confused as to where people are getting the idea that the post advocates forbidding or preventing people from marriage. If the state no longer recognizes marriage, that does not mean that the commitment sworn at the ceremony is no longer real or is suddenly null and void…
z
24 Aug 10 at 6:12 am
@Z
Good point. We detractors do seem to be lilting towards the idea that the RIGHTS of marriage will be abolished somehow. I think the post is criticizing the manner in which the rights of marriage are being HOARDED into one narrow model of family, at the expense of many other types of families who would also benefit from access to certain rights and privileges that currently only spouses enjoy.
A book my fiance and I started reading on this subject, thanks in large part to this discussion, makes a very pragmatic criticism of marriage as an institution. It’s called “Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage: Valuing All Families Under The Law” by Nancy D. Polikoff. I highly recommend it.
As for my personal stake in this discussion, I have been a victim of being excluded from marriage first hand. My first husband was cis. I was 19 when I met him and by 21 we married. I was even a virgin on my wedding night, the whole bit. He was 12 years older and much more wordly. By married, I mean we had a full fledged wedding ceremony and we introduced ourselves as husband and wife for the duration of our “marriage.” I was very naive at the time and didn’t really understand what was entailed legally in marriage, but I knew that I was on shaky ground because I had never signed any documents. However he claimed me on his taxes as his spouse and a dependent (I didn’t work during the relationship, I was pretty much a stay at home Mother of Zero). By the time I was 25 I knew the relationship was ending but I had no idea what my rights would be, if any. I tentatively tried to seek out legal counsel on the sly. When he got wind of this he flew into a rage, gave me three weeks to pack and find somehwere else to live; he let me know in no uncertain terms that I had no legal standing and if I tried to talking to an attorney again he would have me legally eviscerated and exposed as a male in court. (at the time I had only had orch) I was 25, he was 37. I had never worked or even held my own bank account before, and he made a six figure income. During our relationship I had gradually become “stealth,” so I was completely isolated from everyone but him and his friends, associates, etc. He had been my first everything, I wasn’t even his first wife. And I wasn’t even a legal wife at that.
After 6 years together and 4 years of “marriage” he put me out on the street with a few bags of clothes, a computer, and absolutely nowhere to live. I never saw or spoke to him again (I was determined not to). But because of my lack of rights and powerlessness in that relationship, I was forced into a period of homelessness that lasted just over a YEAR. So yeah, I take the marriage fight VERY personally.
That said, I never thought I’d even remotely consider marriage again until I met my current (and I believe final) boyfriend. What makes this relationship different, among other things, is that he is a TRANS man. Our relationship is theoretically LEGAL, altho it could be considered a same sex marriage too. We plan to use our original birth certificates with a copy of our name change orders and to see what happens. We’re almost kind of hoping they give us crap, as we would like to know on what grounds they could object.
Jane Laplain
24 Aug 10 at 7:13 am
Sky and piny,
Thanks much for laying it out. I’m trying to make sure I am aware of and understand all of the facets, so I can be really thoughtful about the issue.
I do still have concerns. Considering the U.S. legal tradition and culture, I don’t forsee the abolition of state-sanctioned marriage anytime soon–probably not much sooner than the abolition of gender. Also, in the cases where civil unions and domestic partnerships (some of which resemble poisongirl’s suggestion of something like France’s PACS system) have been implemented, it largely hasn’t resulted in establishing all relationships on an equal footing but, rather, to mark same-sex couples as a lesser entity than couples who can legally marry.
So, assuming one disagress with the current same-sex marriage movement(s) approach, would a good first step be to strengthen civil unions and domestic partnerships where they currently exist so as to closer approach the PACS system? Encourage het couples to get domestic partnerships so that it becomes culturally as well as legally established?
Jane Laplain,
“What makes this relationship different, among other things, is that he is a TRANS man. Our relationship is theoretically LEGAL, altho it could be considered a same sex marriage too. We plan to use our original birth certificates with a copy of our name change orders and to see what happens. We’re almost kind of hoping they give us crap, as we would like to know on what grounds they could object.”
My fiance is trans female spectrum, and we’ll be trying this too. Theoretically, due to our respective legal genders, we should be able to obtain a marriage certificate. We’re not entirely sure how many problems we’ll encounter, though, as we’re nigh universally read as a lesbian couple.
It’ll be … interesting.
Just Some Trans Guy
24 Aug 10 at 7:38 am
I like this discussion because I think it is more rigorous than most about same-sex marriage and marriage at all. I had been active in a supposedly progressive queer group but so much of what they do focuses on the narrow same sex marriage goal, and while I do believe there is discrimination there, it really is the privileged few getting the swarming masses to do the work–and once they get marriage, are they going to come back for us? (probably not.)
jayinchicago
24 Aug 10 at 12:40 pm
This is an oddly jarring debate, because here in the UK things stand very differently, and did so even before civil partnerships were introduced. I’m a woman partnered with a woman, but not ‘married’ to her. We have a joint tenancy, joint bank account, and have always had the right to hospital visitation- it’s illegal to discriminate against gay couples. If she’s ill I can get leave from work, she’s my next of kin on insurance and medical forms, and has always been listed as ‘spouse’ on my free company health insurance. We could foster or adopt children together, and if we had bio-kids we’d both be on the birth cert. Oddly enough society hasn’t collapsed and horses aren’t eating each other. Common-law couples have rights, regardless of their sex.
I knew we had it better than our USian counterparts, but not that their situation was that SS couples are not recognised at all. Do human rights only extend to white heterosexuals? Marriage should never be the only way to get rights.
JustABrit
25 Aug 10 at 7:58 am
This is an oddly jarring debate, because here in the UK things stand
very differently, and did so even before civil partnerships were
introduced. I’m a woman partnered with a woman, but not ‘married’ to
her. We have a joint tenancy, joint bank account, and have always had
the right to hospital visitation- it’s illegal to discriminate against
gay couples. If she’s ill I can get leave from work, she’s my next of
kin on insurance and medical forms, and has always been listed as
‘spouse’ on my free company health insurance. We could foster or
adopt children together, and if we had bio-kids we’d both be on the
birth cert. Oddly enough society hasn’t collapsed and horses aren’t
eating each other. Common-law couples have rights, regardless of
their sex.
I knew we had it better than our USian counterparts, but not that
their situation was that SS couples are not recognised at all. Do
human rights only extend to white heterosexuals? Marriage should
never be the only way to get rights.
JustABrit
25 Aug 10 at 8:53 am
I also find this debate a little bit odd, New Zealand has Common law also, which isn’t perfect, but allows an organized couple (regardless of gender) to access almost all of the rights of a cis, hetero, married couple, Some things are a bit trickier, such as insurance (private companies), but if a person documents their wishes they are generally respected by the law. So this debate doesn’t effect me to such a great extent as USian people, though we here still need to work towards equality for everyone.
But what I’m not getting about this conversation is the idea of abolishing marriage as a state institution or abolishing the rights and privileges associated there with. It’s pretty clear that straight, white, monogamous, *able, etc, societally-centered couples derive the greatest benefit from marriage as a state approved institution, and that these privileges and benefits are withheld to differing degrees, but mainly exclusively from ‘societally-decentered’ couples/partnerships. So I see the need to do something to level the playing field.
But I’ve never heard of a majority of privileged peoples actively voting (democratically) to remove their own privilege, so I’m wondering if this is in fact such an effective thing to campaign for.
It seems to me (and I’m admittedly naive wrt the interface between politics/law in the US) that it could be more effective to transfer the benefits to an alternative institution such as ‘civil union’ (which afaik most of the united states haven’t adopted) and keep marriage as a ‘cherry on top’ sort of thing for couples who choose it – this seems to be the way that some countries are headed, and while it’s certainly not perfect, it doesn’t exclusively favour straight cis romantic couples, thus leaving a greater chance of leveraging equal rights for marginalized peoples.
Em
25 Aug 10 at 4:11 pm
I agree with MHS’s comparison to Loving v Virginia. Even if we hypothesize that having the state stop recognizing marriage entirely would be a good idea, there is a separate question of whether it’s worth fighting for same-sex inclusion *given* the very clear fact that the state *does* recognize marriages right now and will continue to do so for a long time.
This is mainly directed at Nix’s statement that “allowing more people to get married and thus access this legal recognition is not a really productive option.” It’s bizarre to me to frame it as merely an issue of increasing the number of couples who are legally married, rather than changing the structure defining access to marriage so as to make it less discriminatory.
I’ve also heard the argument that DADT should not be overturned because the military is violent so queer folks shouldn’t want to be a part of it. The characteristics of the military itself, or of marriage itself, have nothing to do with the very simple fact that discrimination is wrong, period.
Sara
25 Aug 10 at 7:08 pm
Just so that everyone knows where I’m coming from: in Finland we’ve got registered partnerships (that’s civvies to you and me) for the gay, and marriage for the het. However, civvies are not completely on an equal footing to a het marriage – joint adoption and easy change of last name when civvieing/marrying are the two main points, and of course neither system is available for any relationship where there are more than two parties involved. Being in a lesbian, civvied relationship is simply not enough for me. Separate IMO is never equal. I want exactly the same rights under exactly the same system as everyone else, and I certainly think those rights should be extended to poly relationships as well. I also think it should be called marriage, if only to piss off the “family-values” conservatives who think marriage is something utterly “different” and “special” and not at all like all other intimate relatioships between people. When five people can be married to each other in some non-mononormative, non-heterosexual pattern, marriage won’t be left quite the same. “Getting married” won’t be able to convey heteronormativity, or mononormativity because marriage will no longer, in fact, be either. It’s mighty hard to argue with reality.
As far as the package-deal -nature of marriage (i.e. you get visitation rights, inheritance rights, parenthood is assigned with a certain set of rules and so on) is considered, I’m sorta in favour of it ‘cos it’s easy for the most, but it wouldn’t harm at all to have all those rights separately available for all and sundry, so if you want the package, go and have it, and should you want something else, go pick what you want.
Carto
25 Aug 10 at 11:10 pm
Civil unions as some intermediate common-law state would be a different thing. The ability to settle family status on your queer loved ones would be wonderful.
Vaughn Walker noted in his decision that homo-only civil unions are clearly discriminatory. The anti-8 side brought up a recent example: gay civil unitees received notice from the state that some minor tax laws would be changing; the letter suggested that the gay couples consider dissolving their legal partnership for the sake of convenience and savings. The anti-8 side argued, and Walker concurred, that no functionary would ever make the same proposal to a bunch of married people. Divorce is not seen as a means to a lower tax bracket.
The problem with civil unions is that they generally exist in legal frameworks that give marriage a special cachet. And they’re offered as a compromise by people who make their lack of respect for gay relationships explicit: “Here, have this arrangement we don’t honor. Just don’t call it marriage.” If a civil union is for people who want to make sure neither partner loses out, great. If they’re a way to make certain couplings formally meager–unloving, unromantic, impermanent–really, the hell with that.
piny
26 Aug 10 at 9:52 pm
I’d like to thank everyone who has commented here, I’ve been a little under the weather for the last week and haven’t been keeping up with all of your comments, and I apologize for that. I’m going to try to answer what I can tonight; it’s probably too much for one reply
@ Carol Anne: Apology accepted. I understand that gay relationships are under constant attack and it’s easy, especially in a altered state, to see a critique on gay marriage as an assault rather than a criticism of strategy and ends, which is what I intend.
The first couple of comments raised concerns about benefits and how abolishing marriage would affect that. I would offer that it’s wrong in the first place that marital status is linked to insurance coverage or that insurance is linked to employment in general. All things being fair, we’d have some kind of universal health coverage, but that’s beyond the point.
Things being as they are, it should like current domestic partnership schemes, where someone designated by the beneficiary would be covered, no matter the marital or relational status. If you have a close, stable and continuous living arrangement with a person, then it should be covered.
As I said, if benefits have to provided by employer then it could be as just as possible to offer them to people in a Domestic Partnership or PACS-like scheme just as it is when through marriage
Galling Galla said:
“I tend to agree with many of the points you make, poisongirl. Being trans and out of work for 20 months, not to mention watching many trans (especially AMAB trans) people being murdered or assaulted or dying for lack of medical care just for *who we are*, I tend to think that my right to work, have a roof over my head, and be safe from violence are more important than my right to marry.”
@Galling Galla
-I can see that argument and agree somewhat about it. Even given the limited resources we have as a LGBT community I don’t think that fight for all of these causes are all mutually exclusive. Clearly, we need to fight for the right to work, freedom from violence, housing, etc. But I think that honoring all relationships outside of a heterosexist marriage model would also go towards advancing those essential causes. And I know what you’re driving as another person who could be described as anti-capitalist myself, but personally I have come to the conclusion that we will not see the significant progress that we’d both like to see in that area in our lifetime.
So I feel that if we can make a little incremental progress on the ending stigma for relationships outside of the heterosexist norm and helping in those areas by building more cohesive communities with the ability to resist capitalist assault, then that would be a victory. Yes a band-aid solutio…but a victory for equality across the board.
@ Jane Laplain:
I don’t buy the argument that what people have called “queering marriage”, or essentially as you propose that SSM would somehow tear apart the heterosexist and binary oriented aims of marriage will be the true affect of SSM. Marriage is connected to a deeper issue that I wish I would have gone into but didn’t. But that’s of sexual shame or sexphobia. We live in a culture of deep, entrenched sexual shame and marriage enforces that shame by enforcing, through law, which relationships are “legitimate” and which are not. Of course as I did touch on in my post these social mores of legitimacy are enforced through the agency of the state through marriage laws.
But to see it through that kind of lens seems to only see marriage as only “legal recognition” as if marriage itself exists un-tethered from its long and torturous history of enforcing personal, property and sexual rights of person. But marriage does have this heavy cultural baggage that does come with its own set of standards, mores and rules of monogamy. It ignores the fact that marriage as an institution has regulatory as well as normative social consequences. It sees marriage as a “private choice”, when it is much more than a “private choice” as we have seen with the extensive legal as well as social consequences of marriage in discussions around the issue. If it weren’t a complex social institution with social consequences and rather a “personal choice”, then we would be battling over its “definition” in the first place.
As general statement, yes I could be loosely termed anarchist and my politics are informed by a radical critiques of gender and society. But please debate this on the merits of the points I present, not on some idea of what you think what a “radical” position is or what you may think I could believe. I want a dialogue on how to best create equal relationships for all people not the merits of radical politics or positions. I apologize that I may have offended some by referring to other people than myself as “queer”, I use the word so often in my daily life I didn’t think of it in that context.
More later, again sorry that I haven’t gotten to this sooner.
-Poisongirl
poisongirl
26 Aug 10 at 11:40 pm
Opps, those line breaks didn’t carry over from MS Word, sorry about that.
poisongirl
26 Aug 10 at 11:41 pm
This is an incredibly interesting discussion for me.
I currently find myself in a very interesting position right now in my life. For all of my adult life, I’ve been extremely critical of marriage as an institution. And up until some months ago, I never wanted to get married, though I have been in two long term committed relationships (one 13 years, one 7 years).
And I have been extremely critical of focus on marriage rights as some number-one most important issue for “gay rights” or whatever we want to call that.
All of that said: I’m getting married. Well, actually we are married for the most part in what that means to us; we just need to finalize it with a ring exchange. The state won’t recognize it since we’re both women. State recognition is not the point for us. But even so. Me? Getting married?
I’ve been having a conversation with a friend of mine who knew me as someone very critical of marriage as an institution. We were out of touch for a time and then when re recently got back in touch, it was like: HOLY SH**!! You’re getting MARRIED? Whaaaaat?
So we’ve been discussing it. Here’s part of what I wrote to her in the discussion:
————————
This is what I know: She [my wife] and I are connected. We have a connection at the underneath layers. It’s specific and real. It’s not in the system’s logics. It’s in the logics of an interconnected web.
Our connection is rooted and sourced in a landscape that is opposed to the system’s landscape.
And yet, as you’re pointing out, marriage is a term found in this system and its logics. And more generally, this system offers a strongly limited and I would say warped/twisted range of what relationships are. I agree with that too, even (maybe especially) now.
So If I take both of these things as true:
1. How I feel my connection with [my wife] and the resonance of marriage in that connection as coming from a different landscape and logics that make sense to me
AND
2. what I know of the system’s twisted approach to relationships,
then here’s what emerges in my understanding:
There is a kind of [committed and sexually monogamous] relationship between two people that exists in the underneath landscape, the landscape that makes sense to me organically. This is real.
And at the same time, the system has taken pieces of this kind of connection, tied it to some of its own logics and twisted/distorted it, and relentlessly promotes those configurations.
One of the things that this system does is mix truth and lies. If I’m understanding it right, this is one of the ways it does that.
So I would say I’m still opposed to the system’s versions of marriage and couple relationships. I still feel those versions as distorted and unpleasant.
So for example, I still feel like the movement for marriage rights is oriented toward the system’s twisted version of marriage and I still don’t feel drawn to supporting it.
In my discussions, I have found that the people in that movement generally fail to differentiate between logistical/survival things like honoring power of attorney etc etc, and the spiritual-emotional side of the relationship. They tend to identify strongly, at the emotional-spiritual level, with the system’s twisted version of relationships and want that for themselves and their partners. That’s part of where I’ve clashed with them. The other part is their really annoying sense of entitlement, which is also linked in — it’s like they expect the system to take care of them and are very upset that it doesn’t.
————————
So that’s part of what I wrote to my friend.
However. I’m also very critical of perspectives/perceptions that equate all marriage with a “heterosexist marriage model” (as poisongirl called it) or “monogamous love that fits into the heteronormative and sexist marriage framework” as Mish Glitter Pony named it.
Here’s another piece of what I wrote to my friend that I feel as related to that piece:
————————
“it seems to me that the system’s move of taking something real, twisting/distorting it, then relentlessly promoting that twistedness/distortion has at least a couple of functions.
First, it keys many people into the twisted-distorted versions of relationships — wanting that, seeking that, doing that.
And second, it repulses some of the ones who feel the wrongness of that distortion, and then links that repulsion to certain kinds of pair relationships.
Meaning: instead of being specifically repulsed by the system’s twisted version, the repulsion gets generalized to all pair relationships that look a certain way, because the system’s version appears as if that’s all there is.
(making its versions of things appear as if that’s all there is is another common move of the system).
This second thing, that associated repulsion, is the more subtle move. It’s a situation in which people who are repulsed by the system’s versions might give up attending to aspects of desire in themselves related to pair relationships that look like the system’s version … and possibly miss a pull toward such a pair connection at a deeper level if such a pull exists for them at any point.
And I’m now thinking — hmm. If the system can get people to turn away from that stream of desire, maybe it has broader effects. Like — these kinds of pair relationships aren’t the only kind of connection in the underneath logics.
Maybe being open to this kind of pair relationship at this deep level is simply part of being radically open to *anything* that might be there. So if the system can get people to shut off their attention to or respect for their desires at this level, through distrust of certain kinds of pair relationships, that could have a broader effect when it comes to following desire more broadly. I don’t know if that’s true, but it seems possible to me.
To be clear, I’m NOT saying that everyone has a marriage-like pair connection in this underneath landscape. But, based on my experiences, the quality of connection at that level is what matters. I found my wife through consciously honoring and following a very very deep desire in myself, desire that actually came up for me many years ago.
I’m thinking — if the system can either harness and distort this kind of desire, or make people distrust it if it leads in certain directions, then that could cut off various kinds of connections that are rooted or sourced in this underneath landscape.
————————
FWIW, or not…
Michelle
Michelle
27 Aug 10 at 11:48 pm
Sorry to be so late to return. Sara, I probably wasn’t as clear as I could have been. The bottom line for me is that people shouldn’t have to get married to get the ‘rights’ currently accorded marriage. I guess in some ways to me it doesn’t really matter how you change the structure of access to marriage, it’s still according rights to the institution of marriage, rather than allowing people to formalise their relationships in a way not tied to that institution.
However, I do find it almost unspeakably bizarre that same sex couples can’t get married in some countries/states. I guess living in Australia the debate also means something slightly different from living in the USA, since lots of heterosexual and same sex couples are recognised as living in defacto relationships without having to ‘get married’ in any official way.
nix
31 Aug 10 at 11:33 pm
[...] that marriage is an oppressive, patriarchal institution (an example of this position can be found here). Moreover, the experiences of the LGBT lobby in the USA demonstrate that equal marriage [...]
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