Whether or not marriage is as natural as is often claimed, entry to the institution is bound up with civil rights. Marriage is allowed or disallowed by legislators' and judges' decisions. The separate states from Main to California [ironic choice of geographical distinction, yes?], which have the power to regulate marital institutions as part of their authority over the local health, safety, and welfare, determine who gains admittance... By incriminating some marriages and encouraging others, marital regulations have drawn lines among the citizenry and defined what kings of sexual relations and which families will be legitimate. (p. 4, Public Vows)
She then goes on to talk about how many minorities have been excluded from this civil right- from slaves to Native Americans (and yes, I still find it ironic to think of that "race" as a minority) to Asians. The history of legislation supporting racist structures has been used to support homophobia in general, but this particular right is one that I find particularly... interesting. Is it that every rights movement has their pivotal representative issue? Equal access to transportation or schools or voting or what have you? Or is there something more going on here?
Cott also says (she's very quotable), "The United States has shown through its national history a commitment to exclusive and faithful monogamy, preferably intraracial. In the name of the public interest and public order, it has furthered this model as a unifying moral standard."
So the Gay and Lesbian movement has been pounding out the message that male-male and female-female couples are just like straight couples. That the only real difference is that of sex. In this era of female empowerment and male sensitivity, are heterosexual couples really all that different from homosexual ones?
What troubles me, of course, is that I am not a Gay and Lesbian activist. I am a Queer activist. And I am not willing to stop questioning at this level. Yes, marriage equality is important, yes it may represent and even herald a larger change, but... how can we ignore that this is a larger issue? Why must we pretend that we are all the same? Perhaps that's the smart thing to do, but is it the right thing?
That's the trouble with advocacy work- doing what's smart or appropriate is not always doing what's right, and how do you decide what's most important?
Another thing- is the core of this problem that we are asking people to change themselves? Isn't that always the hard part of social change, asking for beliefs to shift? Asking people to be a little less comfortable? Maybe that's what bothers me about the Gay and Lesbian stance- they are insisting that no one would be made less comfortable, and I think it's that's nonsense. But then, I'm a troublemaker. And the Christian Western European political roots of our institution of marriage make me cranky- it's a specific historical legacy, nothing natural or inherently moral about it.
Marriage law exists because regimes want to "prescribe marriage rules to stabilize the essential activities of sex and labor and their consequences, children and property" (Cott, p 6). So are we upset because this destabilizes the concept of men as sperm providers and women as wombs? That our value as individuals is dictated by our ability to procreate, rather than to parent or serve the community or accumulate property? Somehow I don't think sexual orientation has anything to do with our ability or tendency to contribute to our materialistic consumer economy, and no one who has researched the roles of queers as parents and community members believes them to be in any way inferior. So what, exactly, is the problem?
Ach, well, it's a big complicated mess. And no, that is NOT my last word on the subject.
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