POLITICS OF SSM: Richard Goldstein

When the Massachusetts high court ruled last week that gay couples must be granted full marriage rights, it lobbed a grenade into John Kerry's lap. Here he is, struggling to define himself as a hog-riding, puck-slamming populist, when the patrician tradition of New England liberalism bites him in the butt. ...

Considering how little would change if people of the same sex could marry, you have to wonder why this issue has such power. It's got nothing to do with wages or war. It's not about the deficit or the distribution of wealth. It doesn't involve the question of when life begins. In short, there's no material reason why gay marriage should be such a megillah. But like so much else in American politics today, this is not a matter of substance. It's the symbolism, stupid.

Stigma is a social hormone. It stimulates the creation of order. Without stigma, hierarchy would be impossible to maintain. No one would accept an assigned place in society, and it would be hard to discriminate among moral values.

This chaotic situation is pretty much the state of American society. The history of this country is an ongoing battle between stigmatized groups and their oppressors, and every gain has produced a ferocious backlash. The abolition of slavery was just the start. The modern civil rights movement sparked major political changes, from white flight to the rise of the New Right. Feminism has had a similar, if subtler impact. The Republicans wouldn't hold the commanding position they do if it weren't for the migration of pissed-off white guys to the GOP.

Gay liberation should cause far less disruption than other social movements because it doesn't threaten paychecks or require a revision of power relations between men and women. But sexual stigma has a lot to do with how groups are organized--especially male groups. Everything from sports teams to the bastions of patriarchy must be renegotiated when the status of faggots rises. This is much trickier than it might seem. When you talk about patriarchal structures you're dealing with things like religion and the military. That's why issues like gay marriage and the rights of homosexual soldiers are much thornier than discrimination and hate crimes.

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posted by Eve at 4:08 AM VOTE

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