The Village Voice article below explores why radicals and some left leaning progressives have been somewhat tepid in their support of gay marriage, with some arguing that gays militating for legalized marriage have little true idea what they are letting themselves in for over the long term by chasing the grail of legalized gay marriage.
Having read the article (which argues for legally recognized gay marriages) and from my perspective as a heterosexual man who has been married and divorced, I must admit some degree of sympathy with the radical perspective the article brushes past, about there being limits to having your wedding cake and eating it too. Traditionally marriage has been all about sealing commitments and (ultimately) legally and operationally enforcing the contractual obligations of marriage. In looking over the cultural landscape of relationships, gay unions have often seemed (for middle class and upper middle class gay people) to have the best of both worlds, with guilt free partnering and the option to move on without legal entanglements if either partner desired. In that light and from my admittedly biased perspective as someone who has been through the process, the burning desire and political goal to have gay marriage legalized and normatively validated falls squarely into the “Watch out what you ask for, you may get it” category of unintended consequences.
In sum I wonder if the radical critique of gay marriage as a largely unnecessary, bourgeois exercise in assimilation has merit, or is legalized gay marriage not only a personally desirable goal, but a socially necessary one for gay people?
Yes, well, the government seems to take part in marriage in order to protect the rights of married individuals seeking to seperate. Why this should be denied to homosexuals is beyond me.
So now the justification is supposed to be, “Oh really, it isn’t all that great, you don’t want it anyway and it is for your own good”? I’m sorry, I don’t buy it. The troubles divorce bring seem to justify fair seperation that can happen when people become disenchanted with their relationships. Breaking up is never easy, but you want civil courts on your side in order to have what should be an impartial, objective party to determine what constitutes a fair and equitable seperation of what was collective property.
Breaking up is hard to do. Having someone else work with you on splitting up your stuff may seem like it sucks but this option, of course, can always be bypassed through mutual agreement prior to the divorce proceedings.
All this criticism would be valid if the debate were about mandatory gay marriage, which it is not. The choice will remain, as it currently does for hetero couples, either to marry or to make our own informal arrangements.
lissener hit it on the nose. Assuming that gay marriage is a tool for bourgeois assimilation, there are, I am sure, lot’s of homosexuals who want to be “assimilated” into the mainstream of American life. It’s all about allowing for choices.
The thing is, marriage makes it simpler in many ways for a couple to split up. Suppose you have an unmarried couple. They own a house together. They have a joint checking account. They comingle finances. They buy household goods together. They raise children together.
Now imagine the unmarried couple splits up. Who gets the house? Who “really” owns the new cuisinart? Who has custody of the kids? If there are no reciepts and no records, then the property belongs to whoever grabs it first. And if one person contributed most of the income to the couple, and can prove it, then they are going to walk away with most of the assets.
If my unmarried partner takes care of the house and kids while I bring in income and pay the mortgage and pay for the car and buy the household goods…those are mine. If we split up, I keep everything and my unmarried partner can be left on the sidewalk with nothing.
Something very similar to this happened to a friend of mine. He was with his partner for 8 years, and they owned a house “together”. His partner brought in most of the money, while he renovated the house. When they split up he got nothing except his personal effects. If he could have married his partner, he would have been entitled to half the house, half the savings, etc etc. As it was, he got nothing of what he contributed to.
If this seems like pedestrian and bourgeois obsession with tiresome vulgarities like money, then I plead guilty. The state doesn’t force people into boring relationships, it doesn’t trap housewives in the suburbs, it doesn’t force people to give up their ambitions for the will-o-the-wisp of marriage. No, people do that to themselves. If an individual woman gives up her identity to serve and service a man, that’s her own personal failing, and blaming the legal construct of marriage is simply pathetic.
While you view the issue of marriage from the point of view of splitting up, there are also some advantages while actually being married. One thing would be tax-cuts another heritage. Seems to be obvious that also gay couples want to benefit from this.
I hear assimilation I think Seven of Nine, but thats just my hetero brain thinking.
I have a lot of gay friends, all from a wide spectrum of backgrounds and wide spectrum of tastes, from the stereotypical queen to the scary little Punk Rocker.
Those of whom I have brought up the issue agree that marriage is important, not only will it show homosexuals can be commited to a long term and life time relationship but also makes things a lot easier such as “next of Kin” rights in regards to hospital visits, and God forbid of one of them dies. Etc. Etc. Etc.
It also forces many gay couples to re-evaluate their relationships in the way that they can see it becoming that of husband&Husband/Wife&wife, and not just be the BF/GF thing. It will help solidify the relationship.
Have them have something to look forward for the future.
Who knows if gays get the right to marry legaly they might make us hetero couples look bad, I know of couples that have been together longer than straight ones.
My personal opinion is that if your an adult, your mentaly ok and he or she is not your blood relative and you two want to spend the rest of your days together, so be it.
For gays, the blood relative thing is much a moral issue yes. As for the other things, gay marriage is legally necessary in so many ways, in so many facets, from children and adoption to inheritance benefits. A small example of legal protection is the use of intimate conversations as evidence in a trial. As it stands a conversation between a husband and wife is inadmissable as evidence and not open to public scrutiny. With my partner and myself it would be. Just the small inconsistancies in life that make things difficult. We have to go out and pay money for protections granted most heterosexual couples and even then there is no guarantee that they will not be contested and thrown out. I would much rather have clear legal protection in a gay marriage than pray for a sympathetic judge.
Sigh… my illusions are shattered. The free and easy fabulousity of the gay lifestyle must be highly over-rated for so many to be chasing the bourgeois bettycrockerdom of marriage. Gay people are becoming so… so… ordinary.
The division-of-property-after-divorce knife cuts both ways, y’know. If your spouse contributes next-to-nothing to the household, and sits around all day watching Jerry Springer and doing nothing else while you go out and earn the money necessary to pay the mortage and the bills, (s)he will still be entitled to half the house, half the savings, etc., in the event of a divorce, due to the legal principle of “continuing the lifestyle to which (s)he had become accustomed.”
This is one reason why it’s crucial to have a legally-binding prenuptial agreement in place before you tie the knot. Getting married without a pre-nup is like dying without a will.
And why is that? Is there anything “immoral” about marrying a blood relative? Especially couples (gay or hetero) who will not be having biological kids.
First of all, marriage is based in religion. It’s a sacrament. The actual act of getting married is steeped in religion as a result.
If the Catholic Church, for instance, chooses not to acknowledge this, then that’s their choice, whether you think it’s bigoted or not. So, marriage is out, as far as the Church is concerned. That’s a fight not worth fighting, because it simply can’t be won.
Now, a civil union, like a Justice of the Peace ceremony, that’s just fine with me. It has the same legal standing, and nobody is offended.
That seems to me to be the perfect, or at least best, solution to this whole problem.
Marriage is based in property rights and inheritance, not religion. (My faith does not have a marriage ritual at all, yet I am married.) Keep in mind that some of the earliest recorded marriages in the West were in a culture that considered them purely legal contracts (again, I know nothing about Asian marriage customs), and that the unpropertied classes had no church weddings in the middle ages.
If your religion has a sacrament also bound to the legal contract, and chooses not to extend that sacrament to all possessors of the contract, then good on your religion. However, that is not a good enough reason to restrict access to the legal contract to those people who you are willing to include in your religious rituals.
Yes, but here’s the thing: you go to a Justice of the Peace, with 2 witnesses and a bit of paperwork, and YOU ARE MARRIED, with nary a priest, church or religious ceremony involved. So the term ``marriage’’ is not a religious one, but a legal one. If you don’t like that, better get cracking on the old time machine and go back a few hundred years to nip this one in the bud.
And come to think of it, if I were an asexual, wouldn’t they be discriminating against me, since I cannot partake in the legal benefits given to two people who sign a legal contract to exclusively boink each other?
I may as well be asexual for all the social life I have. I certainly am not going to see any legal benefits from marriage, gay or straight, although if hetero couples have to get the benefits, it would only be fair to give them to same-sex ones as well.
