There are two questions here:
Should straight people feel obligated to refrain from getting married until the homos can do it, too?
and
Can well-meaning straight people turn their straight marriage under straights-only marriage laws into queer-marriage activism?
The same debate occurs in other spheres of the queer revolution–whether it’s good or bad to have the inner fringe act as spokespeople for the outer. The normative option in that case are other queers, but more palatable to the mainstream. It’s a dilemma. They are unarguably better at being liked. On the other hand, they often narrow the debate to the least contentious issues. Finally, they have their own interests and cannot always be relied upon to defend any others.
My answer to the first question, as someone who might or might not have this privilege, is no. That has nothing to do with the potential for a straight marriage as a revolutionary act. I think it’s unduly burdensome, in part because homophobia is not the only problem with the benefits attached to marriage in this country. If marriage becomes an option for me, I almost certainly will choose it. This is because it will be good for me and my life, and the lives of my spouse and our children, not because it might work to the benefit of any other person.
However, I think that participating in straight-only marriage means lending some legitimacy to straight-only marriage laws, and I don’t think a marriage license makes straight married people better spokespeople for gay marriage. Myca made this argument in the other thread:
If I am able to argue in favor of marriage equality as a married straight, I believe that it lends my words more weight than using the same argument as an unmarried straight.
This is because so many of the arguments about SSM are predicated on how SSM harms straight marriages, so to be able to speak about that from the perspective of someone in a straight marriage means that I’m speaking from personal experience, rather than speaking about theoretical equality for one group of people and theoretical harms to another.
As a married straight person, I would be able to say clearly that the lack of equality for my LGBT brothers and sisters clearly diminishes my marriage.
I believe that therefore, based solely on political effectiveness, getting married would be more useful to the cause.
I do not accept it, even setting aside the fact that none of this is hypothetical. First of all, marriage is not only a matter of a legal contract. Gay couples make this argument all the time:
Hi! We love each other more than words could express. We’ve been together for five or ten or fifty years. We have built a household together, and raised children together. To the extent that we’ve been able, we’ve combined our fortunes and woven around ourselves a network of careful mutual support. Hopefully, it’ll sustain us into a shared old age. How is this not a marriage, Britney?
A straight guy might not be able to make the argument Myca would like to make. A straight couple with a similar story, however, wed in everyone’s eyes but the courts, might. Say they had a relationship indistinguishable from the one they would have if they were legally married. Say they were partnered for life. Say they insisted on sticking with the queers. Say they insisted that it was not the gay that might diminish their marriage, but recognition under the terms of that unjust and unequal law. That would be a powerful argument, wouldn’t it?
It’s also really naive to say that the hypothetical married straight people are more palatable activists because of personal experience. If that matters, it doesn’t matter very much. This is not a rational debate, but a struggle over ingrained hatred. If their value as speakers increases, it’ll be because they have sidestepped bigotry by crossing the line in a culture war. They’re adults, not adolescents. They’re married, not shacking up. They’re coupled, not slutting around. They’re good straight people, and they are not like queers. Queer people and queer relationships are categorically denied any of that legitimacy. Queers are by definition not mature, not faithful, not serious. The personal stake would not only be in marriage–regardless of the politics of the couple, it’d extend to the homophobic archetype of marriage. So it would be an attempt to use heteronormativity to legitimize a moral stance against it. Like Myca says here:
Or the difference between a peacenick hippie like me speaking out about the issue of gays in the military and a decorated military officer.
People, right or wrong, will listen more closely to the words of the military man.
Why “peacenik hippie,” exactly? Why not, I dunno, “taxpaying citizen?” Why did Myca use for his analogy the kind of person who is often stereotyped as antisocial, immature, flaky, or downright nuts–particularly by reactionaries? Not to mention effeminate? It’s because marriage is a badge of approval. That’s precisely why the gays can’t have it.
Third, feh. Has a straight man or woman ever gone down on one knee to their sugarbuns and said, “Sweetie darling, will you be my co-educator? Will you help me fight the system from the inside? Let’s do it for the gays!” People get married because they’re planning to spend their lives together and they don’t want that partnership to be more difficult than it has to be. So all of this is academic. This is why this is so obnoxious:
So I’m confused, would it be better if the straights just gave up trying to be supportive?
Yeah, the homo hivemind will get back to you by the end of the next business day. Support is always welcome, but I would appreciate it if certain people would stop being so defensive. Please feel free to get married. But don’t get shirty when people dispute the political utility of that marriage, or discuss an explicit legislative inequality in terms of privilege. Straight people get to get married. Gay people get to complain.
I don’t think it’s obnoxious to point out that turning your guns on your allies is a little obnoxious in and of itself.
Actually, you asked if straight people should even bother supporting equality. That’s different. What guns? It’s a discussion about whether or not you have privilege, are making use of it, and may make use of it in a way that undercuts it.
Well, no, I used as my analogy someone who’s avoiding a system on principle. I avoid serving in the military in principle, because I believe that military service lends legitimacy to a violent, oppressive system.
However, this does mean that when I criticize a part of that system, it’s likely that my words will be taken less seriously, because I’m also a strong critic of the overall system, whereas the words of someone who believes in the system as a whole and just wants it to be more inclusive are likely to be taken more seriously.
Think of it this way. If I don’t plan on getting married, and I don’t give much of a shit whether marriage is destroyed by Teh Gays or not, when I say “no, it’s cool. SSM isn’t a threat,” people will realize that I’ve got no personal stake or experience there.
I certainly never intended to say that people ought to get married in order to fight for marriage equality, any more than I think folks ought to join the military in order to fight against DADT. My point is that if you’re inclined to marry or join the military otherwise, it doesn’t have to support the status quo, and if you choose to speak out, it’s likely others will value your words more strongly.
The argument is over which makes the more effective proponent: The person on the inside, or the person choosing to stay on the outside. This is ridiculous, because it essentially becomes a form of ad hominem defense – I make a better critic, because of who I am as a person. Ad hominem arguments do not gain legitimacy simply because they’re used by the hominem instead of against him.
Remember, they don’t hate you and your message. They hate you because of your message.
K
That comment came after an exchange wherein the motivations of straight people who are married and actively supported same-sex marriage were disputed as inauthentic, half-assed, whatever, mine in particular.
So if my attempts to show support are interpreted as silencing, the takehome message is that my support isn’t worth all that much at all, hence the obnoxious question.
There are real people with real lives behind politics. My fiance had two serious medical scares in the last two years and since we couldn’t get married (for financial reasons), he didn’t have health insurance. The fact that we can get hitched now and share in glorious health benefits isn’t some “I’ve got mine, so long suckas!” move and once I get cake mashed into my face I’m going to join CWA — if nothing else my experience has made me more sensitive to the problems faced by the lgbt community on the matter of marriage equality, because now I feel very acutely what it’s like to be in that sort of situation, and there are people for whom there is no out. And I’ve been doing what I can to educate others on the subject. But I shouldn’t have to qualify myself in this way. A straight person shouldn’t have to throw their future with the person they love on the sacrificial altar of equality. I don’t pretend that this isn’t a priv. that I’m partaking in, but it’s not like there’s a finite amount of marriage to go around and by getting hitched I’ve somehow stolen that license from a gay couple waiting to get legal. In fact, unlike most inequality debates, this is one of the few instances where the privs of the majority are not required to be sacrificed in order to extend rights to a minority (no matter what the right wing says). This isn’t like redistribution of wealth/reparations etc where the people in power can tangibly count how their lifestyle will be taken away from them and thusly object.
If pointing this out is silencing, again — maybe straight people should just back out and stop being bulls in the china shop.
I was totally with zuzu on the “don’t refrain from getting married just to support your queer friends” argument, but the commenters who took it to “get married in order to support your queer friends” went too far. I married for me, and for my husband. Any activism, donations, argumentation I do is outside of that, stands on its own merits separate from my marriage.
The only thing I can say about my marriage and it’s influence on my stance towards queer marriage is that I’ve enjoyed marriage so much, and received so many benefits from it, that I’m even more motivated to fight for the rights of others to share in the privilege. But even if I didn’t like marriage, I would believe in same-sex marriage. It’s similar to the argument that women (or out queers for that matter) should be able to be in the military: I don’t want to, but that doesn’t mean it’s not valuable to have the choice.
I’ve always wanted the opportunity to say to my husband, in front of a group of equality opponents: “Sorry sweetie, I love you to bits, but now that the gays can marry, we’re going to have to get divorced.”
This is, as KevinQ says, a purely tactical argument. Hopefully we can all remember that we all have the same goal here – 100% equality for all people, period.
I had another example I wanted to share. We all know (hopefully) that the ‘anti-religious’ furor about Amanda over the past month or so was utter bullshit. When I say it’s bullshit, though, I feel like people take it less seriously than when Frances Kissling says it’s bullshit, and I think that that’s in part because she’s religious, and I’m not.
Also, I’m unmarried, by the way.
—Myca
It wasn’t your attempt to show support that was interpreted as silencing. It was your assertion that this question amounted to an insult to you and other supportive people that was interpreted as silencing.
But it was. So I guess each of us gets that special indignation of feeling silenced.
And yes, like I said: unduly burdensome. I would not expect anyone to give up marriage if it were an option for them, given the number of benefits it offers. Marriage isn’t abstract for anyone in this discussion. But the income-redistribution thing is a red herring. It’s not simply a privilege you have that other people don’t. It’s a privilege you have because you’re not a disgusting faggot.
That’s why I said marriage was unlike income redistribution.
Seriously, I don’t know why you keep wanting to make me into some kind of freeper. As far as I’m concerned, it is simply a priv. that gay people don’t have for no good reason.
But, I can take the hint. I’ll shut up now.
I have no problem with seeing my right to get married as an example of unearned privilege. One point I regularly make is that despite three failed marriages, the state cheerfully issued me a new license to marry my fourth and final bride. I know plenty of gay and lesbian couples whose track record at commitment puts mine to shame, but the state is very lenient with the likes of me, even though folks like me probably do more to hurt marriage as an institution than anyone else.
Am I a more effective proponent of gay marriage because of all that experience? Probably not. Do I get bothered by those who suggest I ought to have stayed unmarried in order to show solidarity with gay and lesbian folks. Not in the least.
All I said was that it was obnoxious. So’s this.
No, you said it was unlike income redistribution in that it’s not something you’re physically stealing from someone else. I said that was a red herring because…that’s not the point. It’s not why anyone’s complaining, so far as I can tell. It’s not just about inequality, but about the rationale behind it. The legal recognition of your marriage occurs on explicitly homophobic terms.
I did not call you a freeper, or say that you were reactionary, or tell you to shut up. I disagreed with some of the things you were saying, and I really resent the implication that I’m trying to make you into anything.
interestingly enough, there are disgusting faggots such as myself, a certified member of the lgbt community, who have managed to secure said privilege. assuming of course, that someone from either of our families (or anyone for that matter) doesn’t decide, at some point in the future, to legally challenge our marriage.
do i get to keep my disgusting faggot i.d. card?
Ah, privilege. Sometimes, I do privileged things. Like marry. Or walk down the street with my family and not get things thrown at me by passers-by. Or talk about what I did over the weekend without playing the pronoun game. When I do, I’m not looking for a fucking cookie. If there’s a pure progressive ascetic somewhere who is in a position of privilege but manages to never use it, I have not met him. Because that affluent cisgendered white hetboy lives in a cave. Which is still a choice.
I got married. I don’t get a cookie. I did the easy privileged thing. When I do the easy privileged thing I don’t get a cookie. I don’t deserve one.
When I manage to do the hard things, I don’t need one.
Then it’s still a flawed analogy. If marriage doesn’t interest you because it doesn’t interest you, then you do indeed lack a personal stake. I would be skeptical of a polyamorist or single person refusing legal marriage as some sort of sacrifice.
If marriage doesn’t interest you only because this otherwise amenable institution covers you but not your gay friends, then it’s different. It’d be like, I dunno, a trained linguist with military ambitions opting out of military service specifically because of DADT, not an avowed pacifist saying that he’d never serve in the military because of DADT.
My husband and I had no desire to get married. We had been together for years and our relationship was, in every way before it was legal, just as committed and interdependent as any legally recognized union.
So why did we do it?
Because the cost and difficulty of handling estate planning between two unmarried adults is insane. Of particular concern to us were end of life issues, since neither of us feel that we can rely on other family members to make decisions aligned with our wishes…we trust only each other.
We talked to several of our gay friends about it, not for approval but because we felt that choosing to get married would strain our friendships in light of their inability to do the same. The response was universal: We, as a married, childless straight couple, are the perfect example of wingnut arguments against same-sex marriage. WE chose to get “married” for legal purposes. WE were already “married” in our hearts and in the eyes of those we love.
Marriage needs to be reduced to a religious ceremony, and legal unions need to replace marriage as the domestic binding of two adults.
Piny, I really liked what you said in the other thread about marriage being a legitimizing act. While I’ve definitely evolved over the past year or two from a position of “abolish marriage altogether!” to appreciating that it’s probably better to have straight and queer marriage, I’m very struck by how the tension between those two positions plays out in threads like this. To some extent, people who have a problem with current state of marriage have to choose between a political strategy of keeping the privileges of marriage the same but broadening the eligibility standards, or de-legitimizing marriage to some extent to be simply one of many ways that couples intertwine their lives.
I’m on the side of lessening the way that marriage confers automatic legitimacy on relationships. To that end, being in a serious long-term relationship without being married, without being engaged, and forcing various institutions to accommodate that (like my job, my bank, my landlord) is a political act, and every straight couple that marries is also committing a political act that re-affirms marriage as the penultimate state of a serious relationship. This is not to say that if the rubber hit the road, my partner lost his health insurance and needed some right away, that I wouldn’t walk down to the courthouse and do what needs to be done to make that happen. (Worth noting that at my current job, it wouldn’t be necessary, as they offer health insurance to straight and gay partners, and the very fact that I was unmarried meant that I was very invested in asking about this during my interview.)
If one is more concerned with getting gays the right to marry, I guess it does make sense to take Myca’s tack and not try to delegitimize the institution of marriage itself. I don’t think that’s entirely unproblematic, but I can see that if one doesn’t have a problem with marriage being a privileged legal status, only the restriction to straights, then it does make a certain amount of sense to view straight progressives marrying as having positive rather than negative political consequences.
Okay, I can see that.
—Myca
good lord. i was already trying to put marriage into a feminist context for myself (since it is so tightly wrapped in patriarchy) and now this. fuck marriage! but hot damn do we need health insurance.
I’ll come right out and say it:
I think marriage is a good thing. I think it’s a way to signal to society, “We plan to be a couple for the long haul and will be making decisions together for the good of the new family that we have now formed.” I think that, within reason, people should be encouraged to get married. I think society is better off and more stable when people are publicly pair-bonded, and that there should be some rights and privileges attached to that (though not as many as there currently are).
Like it or not, marriage is the way that you signal to the rest of society that you have left your family of origin and formed a new family, and many people do consider that a sign of maturity.
For all of those reasons, I fully support equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians. I realize that not all of them want to have those rights, but that’s immaterial to whether or not they should have the right.
It’s not just health insurance. Both my partner and I identify as bisexual. We are also citizens of different countries. There is no way we could even live together without getting married. It happens that we are of different biological genders, and so that was an option. I can see why people might opt out of marriage in solidarity with those who are denied marriage by the law. In our case we had the choice of passing as heterosexuals or never getting together at all.
piny posted:
I think you’re right on here that this is a matter of a married het person’s words having weight because they are patriarchy-approved rather than because they have experience. I have been married; however, I’m divorced. I have had the experience of marriage, but I think you can readily imagine that my shameless hussy self is not respected as a commenter on marital matters by the religious right.
This point (piny in 16)
prompt me to reiterate an aside I made in the other thread:
There are things other than marriage inequality that are keeping me from getting married. However, marriage equality would, in my opinion, strike a major blow against the patriarchal construct of/assumptions about marriage. I would be far more interested in the institution if there were gay couples in it.
But, while I guess each may be silenced, each may have different privileges and, hence, different resources, historical experiences, and feelings of subjugation.
Like it or not, marriage is the way that you signal to the rest of society that you have left your family of origin and formed a new family, and many people do consider that a sign of maturity.
So sayeth Mnem. And I can’t but agree: To the extent that marriage is what you do in order to get support for your committed relationship from your community, it’s a great thing and an important ritual. I’m not only talking thorugh my hat here; I stood up at my older sister’s straight wedding to read the Scripture but didn’t attend the rest; our younger sister refused to marry until I could. I’m from a tribe that takes marriage seriously.
Of course there are a number of ethical issues connected to the state privileging marriage as THE way to show that committment that would remain problematic if marriage were open-access.
However, speaking for the lesbian-married hivemind, I’ve stopped boycotting straight weddings since being legally married myself. (I used to send a nice card that congratulated the couple and wished them happiness, and only explained if pressed that I’m hardly buying them a present in addition to paying for their Social Security, inheritance tax waivers, etc.)
Piny raises an important point here:
The same debate occurs in other spheres of the queer revolution–whether it’s good or bad to have the inner fringe act as spokespeople for the outer. The normative option in that case are other queers, but more palatable to the mainstream. It’s a dilemma. They are unarguably better at being liked. On the other hand, they often narrow the debate to the least contentious issues. Finally, they have their own interests and cannot always be relied upon to defend any others.
and answers it too.
Is this a political question? Or it is about how we feel about each other, and whether straight people respect and acknowledge the real pain and costsa associated with their queer friends being treated as non-citizens in the question of choosing a life partner?
Because politically, of course it’s better to have me (and my lovely wife and our adorable daughter and her cute puppy) acting as the face of queer equality than our young transgendered babysitter with facial tattoos. It’s not right, but it’s reality. (As to my imputed unreliability, my state is considering a DP bill that gives all the rights and responsbilities of marriage precisely because families like mine moved the goalposts; you’re welcome.)
If it’s a question about how we treat each other, any straight person who doesn’t like hearing my wedding-boycott policy can roll it and smoke it. Like it or not, your privilege is being bestowed by the state at my expense…if I’m supposed to show how much I love you by not pointing that out, sorry.
Can straight people get married as an act of radical equality? We’ll get back to you. My mom was part of SNCC but when she got off the bus, she was still/again white. Is her committment worth less because of that privilege? I have no idea.
I think I’ll just respond to the title at face value.
If I lived in state that banned homosexuals from marriage, it would only be honest of me to recognize that if I got married there, I would be signing a contract to a very specific, misogynist, sexist, immoral god and a state that is equally bad for endorsing it. So I would refrain to agree with any such disgusting contract.
Cecily, I agree. For better or for worse, marriage is not simply something people do to get health insurance, make financial planning easier, or immigrate. It also is standing up and making a public declaration of our commitment to a partner (I imagine even people who talk about how they had to get married because of health insurance still had a wedding rather than trotting down to the courthouse with no family), as well as an institution that sends a strong, societally-understood message about what type of relationship we’re in.
I mean, on a feminist blog, it’s not totally surprising to anyone that the same people who argue most strenuously against SSM are the same ones with the strongest ideas about women’s proper place and proper role, right? I’m not reflexively opposed to what Mnemosyne says about encouraging a pair bond, but the whole reason that SSM is such an explosive cultural issue is precisely because marriage gives the ole stamp-of-legitimacy by saying certain types of bonds are inherently better than others.
So in my opinion, it’s a bit simplistic to say that it’s swell for straights to marry and agitate from within for SSM. Yes, they can (maybe) use their legitimacy to more persuasively argue to let gays in, but I’m not sure how you can do that without also buying into or at least supporting traditional views of sex roles. If you’re going to argue that letting the gays in won’t appreciably change the nature of marriage, you’ve already conceded that the way marriage is now (with all that entails about the role of the wife) is okay.
I didn’t say that all less-threatening spokespeople were selfish bastards. I was thinking more along the lines of, say, the HRC’s earlier, “No, listen: we throw you under the train now and come back for you later!” strategy wrt transpeople.
I can understand that. We did have many qualms about asking my husband’s only brother to be his best man, but eventually decided we’d rather ask than decide on his behalf. He agreed and was happy to do it. But he’s not in a relationship right now — if he was, that would have been a completely different discussion.
I’m a little allergic to the discussion because, to my ear, it starts to buy into the premises of the right-wing a little too much for comfort. As I said in another of my bajillion comments, I don’t like the idea of leaving marriage to the conservatives and fundamentalists who are busy ruining it.
And then there was the weird thing on Pam’s House Blend where one of the posters (Tip O’Neil) said he’s going to start picketing random weddings of straight people to protest gays not being allowed to marry. Because that’s going to win over lots of allies, I’m sure.
You wouldn’t, but that’s exactly what Tara was advocating, er, demanding. Which is what I think rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.
You wouldn’t need to get the god involved at all to effect the legal marriage. And if you get the legal marriage, the god isn’t involved.
It’s certainly doing wonders for Fred Phelps.
I would also like to remind everyone that the expense of the privileges bestowed on married people (i.e., tax cuts) are not just borne by same-sex couples who would like to marry but can’t, but by anyone who is unmarried. Like I said in my post, while I can theoretically attain the same privilege by marrying, I have to actually find someone I want to marry and who’s willing to marry me in order to take advantage of this. Since I do not have anyone in my life who fits that description, I am in the same boat as any other unmarried person when it comes to footing the bill for the marriage benefit.
Does it have to be “either/or?”
What about having the straight married people saying how wonderful marriage is and since gay people are people too, we should be able to get married, AND
have the straight single people who are coupled up but don’t choose to marry say that marriage is not the only way to define oneself as a grownup contributing member of society?
In other words, why don’t we encourage ALL straight people to speak and think of gay people as people. Not as people who don’t have valid relationships because we can’t get married, but also not as people who should be forced into a certain relationship form if we don’t so choose?
I don’t get the logic of asking people to “prove how important marriage is, in so many ways” by choosing to avoid it, thus “proving” that people can get by without it quite well, thank you very much.
For me, the whole point is that marriage is a good thing that I want to be able to participate in. I cannot personally conscience asking someone else to forego something good just because I cannot have it. And it’s why I attend weddings with my partner when we are asked by friends, even though we can’t currently do the same.
I don’t object to straight people making that choice themselves, but I won’t ask for it or advocate it.
Sorry, I don’t get that. Don’t we need lots of people in marriage proving that marriage works just fine without following rigid gender roles in it?
Did I miss your point? Because it sounds to me that you are saying that, to support (or at least in part to support) gay marriage, people who don’t support traditional gender roles in marriage shouldn’t marry until gays can. But doesn’t that just leave marriage to the people who DO ascribe to the rigid roles? And doesn’t that just make it that much harder for people to broaden their perspective to include gay people?
Well, just a view as a bisexual man in a long-term legally recognized (I feel ambiguous about that) heterosexual relationship.
Forms of oppression take a massive human toll. This creates a lot of anger on the part of people who are oppressed.
Responding to this anger, whether it be straight privilege, male privilege, or white privilege, with personal defensiveness is part of the overall problem. People with privilege who want to support ending these systems of oppression need to find ways to constructively listen to that anger.
I don’t think there is a clear winning choice here. But IMHO those of us who take advantage of heterosexual privilege need to be honest about the ways in which we have made a deal with the devil.
Or I should say, while I don’t think there is an obvious good solution for people in heterosexual relationships here, I think that the tendency to respond to criticism with defensiveness is a very bad solution.
Piny, point taken, apologies for mistaking you.
However, I think that HRC’s official policy is to throw you under the bus and then explain in short, simple declarative phrases that since they’re not an organization dedicated to eradicating bus-caused injuries, you’re being an unreasonable ass to even mention it.
Zuzu, excellent point. The successful fight against a superDOMA in Arizona was waged by pointing out to everyone how much we all have to lose when certain kinds of relationships between consenting adutls are outlawed.
Heh.
Point taken yourself.
piny, i’d come to your complaining shower any day of the week.
i think it’s rather daft to have straight folks looking over at the queer peanut gallery and asking if it’s okay. i’m sorry, but you don’t need my permission. the conversation we ought to be having is not about that. not being a homophobe does not get you magical “ally” status. if you have to ask, i don’t care what you do.
my state is considering a DP bill that gives all the rights and responsbilities of marriage
No DP bill gives “all the rights and responsibilities of marriage”. Period.
Mnemosyne, I don’t care about getting married and I hope I don’t but who knows. However, obviously there are a lot of people who’d love to be in a happy, stable, committed relationship but aren’t ever going to get that opportunity for whatever reason. From their perspective, it would seem as if those who are in that position are already privileged to some extent, and to grant further rights and privileges based on their good fortune (plus obviously the fact that an entire group is denied the right to marry) seems somewhat unfair.
Also, it would seem like there are other ways of forming a family–and why does it have to be a new family? what’s wrong with a multigenerational family sticking together if it works for them–and demonstrating maturity than marriage and domestic partnerships and it’s not immediately obvious why the two partner nuclear family is the only arrangement that should be associated with rights and privileges and official sanction. I tend to think the goal should be equal rights for everybody in marriage and outside marriage.
Thank you for reminding *this* lesbian that I will not assimilate. And thank you for reminding *this* lesbian that it never was the conservative, comfy queers who got the closet door open in the first place.
I’m glad you got yours, but don’t ever mistake your heteronormative pandering to be the face of my homosexuality.
Sorry, this is from pretty far upthread, but:
The difference there is that in the linguist example, given enough involvement, the military finds itself short on linguists. The military needs linguists, so the military has a new, immediate reason to rethink its position. On the other hand, there is no Marriage Corp. that’s going to miss the licenses of an unspecified number of progressive het couples. There is no entity to starve out, so the boycott model doesn’t apply.
I guess what I’d like to know is, what is meant to be tangibly accomplished by straight couples not marrying? I’m sympathetic to the idea in general and have long said that I wouldn’t get married until everybody can (which is pretty selfish in my case, because I want to be able to ask my two best friends to stand with me, and there’s no way I would ask them that while they don’t have the same right) – but for the sweeping “straight should” to make any real sense, it should signify some sort of strategic gain. If someone could explain to me what that gain would be – apart from purity and solidarity, which only us in the choir care about – then I think I would understand this much better.
wait, um, MARes,
the first problem that comes to mind is children eventually being born with tails. In the absence of new families, we would have a pretty stagnant gene pool.
For those straight folks who aren’t getting married as a protest of straights-only marriage laws, how do you let people know about your decision? Do you wait until they ask? Or do you tell them upfront? (I.E.- “This is my partner, David. We’re not getting married until gay couples can, too”.) I ask because when I was in a straight, long-term, unmarried relationship, almost no one ever asked us why we weren’t married. Certainly not the bank, landlord, phone company, etc. (Of course, we eventually gave in to his relatives’ pressure and got married. Real strong in the face of adversity, us.)
A fascinating discussion, by the way.
I guess defenestrated put it better than me – apart from solidarity and giving emotional support to people who can’t marry (like her best friends), what does a marriage boycott accomplish? Are we looking at it too narrowly, when we look at it in terms of changing public opinion and thus voting? It would give the straight couple more reasons to fight for marriage equality, and would mean that unmarrieds aren’t paying for the tax benefits of married couples*, and maybe that’s enough.
* From what I understand, these tax and Soc. Security subsidies only benefit married couples with uneaqual earnings, but I may be wrong about that (I’m getting info from a book that’s about 13 years old.) Does anyone know?
kaw, to answer your question of what a marriage boycott would accomplish (although I wouldn’t really use the term ‘boycott’): if a critical mass of people reached the point of commitment with their partner, and knit together their lives that closely, without getting married, their mere existence creates pressure on the system to accommodate. I mean, 40 years ago women had a hard time taking out a loan without a husband’s signature. Today, I can talk to my bank or the mortgage broker down the street about what sort of home loans me and my partner would likely qualify for together without anyone blinking. (I live in a large urban area with many co-habitating non-married straights and gays, and their very existence has made my life easier in this respect.) Similarly, at some point in the past 15 years, the company I work at had to deal with the fact that an increasing number of their employees were partnered but unmarried (both because straight cohabitation has increased in acceptability, and more gays have come out of the closet), and the very fact of their existence meant that HR re-jiggered the benefits package to include health insurance for straight and gay partners, because their employees needed family coverage.
What’s all this got to do with making it easier for gays to marry? Maybe nothing at all. Or maybe a little something. I think there might be an argument to be made that by expanding political reality to acknowledge that there are more than two settings–straight unmarried single people who will one day get married, or straight married people–that by forcing institutions to change, to acknowledge that people’s lives are intertwined marriage or no marriage and that has policy consequences that have to be dealt with, it takes away some of the “legitimizing” power of marriage. In other words, my staying unmarried means that traditional (read: straight) marriage holds less power as the sole way that people should be allowed to organize their lives.
So, all in all, the net effect is much more that it makes it easier for unmarried gay people to just live their lives. And it makes it easier for straight unmarried people to just live their lives. And it makes it easier for unmarried mothers who still have contact but don’t live with the father of their child to just live their lives.
That’s what I was saying (badly) about the tension between pushing for SSM, and de-legitimizing marriage. If the net effect of my choice to not marry my partner is that the most egregious examples of inequality fall away, it may be that I’m making it harder to push for SSM. Although I’m pro-SSM, I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.
Basically, I think there’s a limit to how much you can ask people to give up for some symbolic political value. Symbols can be important, don’t get me wrong, and so can leading by example. But sometimes the harm that people do to themselves by refusing to marry (i.e. health insurance, healthcare decisions, etc.) outweighs whatever political value their refusal to marry might have. Refusing to marry is one way straights can express their support. It is not the only way, nor is it always the best way.
In other words, I agree with what sophonisba said on the other thread.