GAY MATRIMONY: GET USED TO IT: Allison Xantha Miller

...For queers, marriage seemed for so long both an unglamorous, assimilationist goal and an utter fantasy. Now, judging from the reactions it provokes, it seems radical and, perhaps, imminent. How did this happen? A recent book by historian George Chauncey attempts to put the debate in perspective historically. Why Marriage? draws on Chauncey's pathbreaking first book, Gay New York, as well as his work writing the Historians' Amicus Brief in the 2003 Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas, which overturned the nation's sodomy laws and was part of the reasoning behind the Massachusetts' court decision to allow same-sex marriage. Same-sex marriage, he maintains, has been floated as a possibility by successive generations of queers, from a variety of political standpoints. A kind of "marriage" had always existed informally whenever partners lived together and were recognized by the community as a couple. (This, not church-sanctioned nuptials, was the "ancient" form of marriage.) What brought it to the fore in the '80s was AIDS and the so-called lesbian baby boom -- in other words, death and children. You could say this raised the stakes somewhat.

These experiences made gays and lesbians realize the ways in which the lack of legal recognition of their relationships interfered with some of the most intimate aspects of their lives -- the ability to care for a sick partner, for instance, or the bonds between parents and children. Those with exceptional foresight and enough money learned how to navigate the bureaucratic nightmare of powers of attorney and other sorts of legal documentation. "A full set of the documents necessary to approximate the protections provided by marriage could cost several thousand dollars," Chauncey writes, "a marriage license might cost $ 25. . . And given the expense of other legal documents, marriage was the only way many poorer couples could afford such protections at all." ...

Chauncey also clarifies the limits of marriage -- it's not synonymous with equality, as some of its proponents believe -- and acknowledges that some in the gay community are wary of marriage, if not outright against it. Those attitudes are represented in the raucous anthology That's Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation, which dares ask whether the LGBT movement can include social justice goals such as universal health care, housing, the protection of civil liberties, the rights of immigrants and youth services. Contributors include community organizers, punks, artists, anarchists, sex workers and students. The focus is on activism; there's no queer theory. The tone is fierce and funny, inspired as much by the spirit of Seattle as Stonewall. ...

It's also ironic that part of resisting assimilation has to be essentially conservative -- that is, preserving gay culture as it is. Forget for a moment that this is impossible, that gay culture, like everything else, is subject to the forces of time. Forget too that it was created as a refuge against oppression. The radical heritage of gay culture is real, and it is worth preserving to whatever extent possible. ...

Chauncey suggests another way of seeing assimilation, based on recent theories of ethnicity, which "recognize that even as immigrants were reshaped by their incorporation into American culture, so too was American culture." As annoying as the marriage movement can be -- its squeaky-clean poster children, its romantic sentimentality, its denial of genderqueers -- the process of trying to change marriage laws is having a radical impact on American society. Although the aspect of heterosexual privilege that marriage advocates target is extremely specific, it is also profoundly consequential. It is perhaps the most obvious boundary separating straight from queer, and as such is taken by many as a profound threat to heterosexual identity. Yet marriage advocates didn't start this process; challenges to heterosexual privilege have been driven for the past 30 years by those willing to put their bodies on the line to fight homophobia and trans-phobia. And they're not going away.

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posted by Eve at 10:19 PM VOTE

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