Stop the Wedding!
Why Gay Marriage Isn’t Radical Enough
by Judith Levine
July 23 - 29, 2003
First, two gay men known to their friends as “the Michaels” sealed their marriage with two rings and a champagne toast in Toronto. Then American queers broke out the bubbly when the U.S. Supreme Court declared the constitutional right to gay sex in the privacy of the bedroom, clearing the way to same-sex marriage here. If the Massachusetts Supremes rule in favor of seven same-sex couples challenging that state’s marriage statute (that decision is expected imminently), Provincetown could see a run on champagne flutes.
It’s not hard to understand why America’s Michaels (and Michaelas) want the right to marry. With the nuptials comes a truckload of rights of marriage, including the secure habitation of your joint home, custody of your kids, tax-free inheritance of your partner’s property, and citizenship in her country. And that’s not to mention the nongovernmental goodies, from health insurance to joint gym memberships to Le Creuset casseroles showered on the wedded pair along with the rice. For all that, marriage is a bargain. In New York City, licenses go for $30.
But many gay marriage advocates want more than legal freedom and equality. Understandably, they want what the state confers on their straight friends’ relationships: sentimental and moral validation. Vermont’s Freedom to Marry Task Force pronounced civil unions a “bitter compromise”—and not just because the law won’t affect Social Security or federal taxes. To win fence-sitters’ votes, the bill’s authors retained all of marriage’s rights but silenced its religious resonance. For instance, where a marriage is
solemnized (the church organ swells), a CU is
certified (a bureaucrat’s stamp thuds). This dispassion seemed to add insult to the substantial injury of exclusion from the privileged institution. As Beth Robinson, co-counsel to the plaintiffs in Baker, put it, “Nobody writes songs about registered partnerships.”
Still, in seeking to replicate marriage clause for clause and sacrament for sacrament, reformers may stall the achievement of real sexual freedom and social equality for everyone. For that, we need new songs.
Gay marriage, say proponents, subverts religion’s hegemony over the institution, with its assumption of heterosexual reproductive pairing. It makes homosexuality more visible and therefore more acceptable, not just for judges or ER doctors but for the lesbian bride’s formerly homophobic cousin. Because gay marriage renders queerness “normal,” notes Yale legal scholar William Eskridge, it is both radical and conservative.
Instead of conceiving of these associations as “marriage lite,” think of them as
personal partnerships and the body of law regulating them as analogous to that for commercial partnerships. A housing co-op has different concerns than a medical practice, a mom-and-pop enterprise differs from a publicly traded corporation—and so do the statutes that limn them. The point is to limit the law to issues germane to the relationships it oversees. For instance, if kids are involved, they and their parents need legal protections, especially in the event of a split-up. Adultery, on the other hand, is not the state’s affair.
Such instruments exist in other democracies. While only the Netherlands, Belgium, and Canada permit same-sex marriage, governments offer extensive nonmarital partnership rights for gay and straight citizens throughout Scandinavia, and less comprehensive ones in much of Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. Some require what is essentially a legal divorce to break up; others, like the French Pacte Civil de Solidarité (PaCS), can be ended after one partner notifies the court. **Because American marriage is inextricable from Christianity, it admits participants as Noah let animals onto the ark. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In 1972 the National Coalition of Gay Organizations demanded the “repeal of all legislative provisions that restrict the sex or number of persons entering into a marriage unit; and the extension of legal benefits to all persons who cohabit regardless of sex or numbers.” Would polygamy invite abuse of child brides, as feminists in Muslim countries and prosecutors in Mormon Utah charge? No. Group marriage could comprise any combination of genders. Guarantees of women’s and children’s rights and economic well-being would be more productive than outlawing multiple marriage. **
Village Voice article
While this article describes the ‘expansion’ of the definition of marriage, it appears to me as if some are merely looking to destroy it…
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