Against Equality: Queer Critiques of Gay Marriage

Being the type of fella who has always found the HRC's polite little equal sign such an uninspiring goal, I'm just glad to see some good old-fashioned gay-lib-like critiques surfacing through the mainstream noise every once in a while. To wit:

“My question is, if you’re serious about making the world a better place, why are you doing this? Why are you becoming part of the wedding industrial complex?”
Of course he got death threats.

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I get where he's coming from, though I disagree with him. Yeah, the "history of marriage" has low points much like the history of any particular social subject. But marriage is not simply a social experiment that went wrong. It's existed in every culture, regardless of race, geography, or religion, for as long as history has been recorded. The institution of marriage has evolved just as technology, religion, social customs and behaviors, and governments have evolved. To participate is a choice and I'm not sure eliminating the choice for everyone is somehow beneficial to gays or anyone else. Sort of like Prohibition. Lots of people abuse alcohol, but making it illegal didn't solve the problem. I'm definitely pro-gay marriage, but I also believe it should be far more difficult to divorce and if accidental pregnancies weren't so easy, I'd wouldn't be against licenses to have/raise children.

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I understand thinking marriage (or gay marriage or whatever) isn't right for you. Even if it does become the law of the land or I am someday living in a place where it is, I don't know that it's something that I'd ever partake in, for myriad reasons. In fact, I never gave much thought to gay marriage until states started proactively banning it. Then, to me, it became an issue of support because I have real issues with states enacting laws against groups of people or amending constitutions to prevent people from doing something they already could not do.

I only know a handful of people in states where gay marriage is legal that have actually partaken. Most of them had quiet little services that don't seem to have much to do with the "wedding industrial complex," although I'm not 100% sure what said industrial complex actually is.

I've often thought about how things would be a lot easier and fairer if we did abolish civil marriage, but short of an all out revolution, I don't see that happening.

I'm curious to read the anthology, but I hope it's more than just straw men arguments like "And if marriage today is such a lov­ing institution, why is the divorce rate so high?"

I read that Gawker article, too!

Yes, straight people have "swingers" but it seems like there is a stronger bent of "non-traditional arrangements" among the gays

I have nothing but anecdotal evidence to back this up, but I think the bent is just louder for gay relationships, not stronger. I can't think of a single straight marriage I know personally that didn't have at least one partner go outside the marriage for sex at one point (in some cases the relationship was open, in others it was not). I think the myth of heterosexual fidelity is pretty damaging to all.

Our house is an LGBT safe space on campus and we do bring in speakers. Our last one was a professor, actually one of my favorite professors, who just talked about the inherent inequality and patriarchy in marriage (and if you didn't guess by now she runs the Women and Gender Studies Dept.). She has a male partner but they don't have a marriage license but because they have been together for decades and have kids they do get benefits. I have an uncle who also has not married his long-time girlfriend with no kids and they get benefits. I thought it was an interesting angle and how no matter the partnership be it platonic, romantic, gay or straight or queer, this is not a black and white issue that the current laws and even some of the current arguments make it to be.

I have noticed there being a dichotomy in those who want to marry vs. those who have not really jumped to do it even with the law recently passed in New York. The ones who are the former have been in long-term relationships with their partners and are older while the ones who have been very open about marrying their better half are younger. I am not sure if this is because of different generations but I do wonder if there is certain pressure for younger gay people to be essentially 'heteronormative' and monogamous because of the unfortunate portrait painted of gay people in the preceding decades, particularly of gay men, that they do not have long-term relationships and are promiscuous.

To Phyllis's point, here's a recent Savage Love column on the topic.
Meet the Monogamish

Is my memory faulty or did Savage's whole "monogamish" thing not infuriate some folks around here? Or was that some other website I read?

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BWW is still my number one, baby.

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Dan Savage doesn't infuriate me, but Brian Moylan does. I always groan when he does "post-gay" pieces on Gawker. He's the the party guest who gets too drunk and thinks he's really, really clever, and when he finally notices that people are rolling their eyes, he says, "I bet you think I'm really annoying, don't you? DON"T YOU?!?"

His responses to criticism of his Gawker items are usually even more annoying than the columns themselves. In this case he called one critic "Bitch!" and the next one "Bottom!" And when he was called on it, he tried to claim he was using the terms as compliments not as insults.

I dislike him as much as I dislike that Ramin Setoodeh from Newsweek. I just wish they would stop writing about the gays as if they were writing "on behalf" of the gays.

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"I do have friends who have come out and do have supportive parents but have practically settled with somebody within a very small timeframe."

Just my observations but our generation (early to mid 20 somethings) have been much more open to the idea of marrying early compared to our parents' generation. Where many of our parents waited years to marry, or sometimes didn't marry at all, we have this drive to find a mate early on. That drive to settle down isn't just a gay thing or a straight thing but a generational thing (at least for those around me)

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"Just my observations but our generation (early to mid 20 somethings) have been much more open to the idea of marrying early compared to our parents' generation. Where many of our parents waited years to marry, or sometimes didn't marry at all, we have this drive to find a mate early on. That drive to settle down isn't just a gay thing or a straight thing but a generational thing (at least for those around me)"

WHA? Really? I'm sure the overall marrying age has gone sharply up (with straights) and I certainly have noticed it (then again I'm 31 so not quite your generation). I mean to bring this to Broadway a musical like Company IMHO works less if brought up to date because, while there IS still huge pressure (perhaps more than ever) to be partnered, there is FAR less pressure to be married by the time you're 35.

My mom had my older brother in 1977 and me and my sister in 1980--at the age of 29 and 32 respetively and she talked about how shocked people were by that back then. (of course she had been married for 6 or 7 years before they decided to have kids).

Anyway re the original post--I find it pointless. It's like some gay people who complain at the lack of other (usually younger) gays being political or "realizing how hard the struggle was for those before them". While THAT actually makes more sense to me, both points just feel like whiney crap. If you truly want to be non-conformist and have a liberal attitude, or even one built on anarchy, then, IMHO you SHOULD be all for the rights of gays to choose marriage if they want, not to if they want, and anything else. To complain that anyone who chooses what they want to do is merely prescribing to some theory brainwashed into them and needs rescueing is completely against that spirit, IMHO.

My boyfriend is younger than I am, and his straight friends started getting married in their late 20s. Not all, of course, but those who'd been coupled for a while were married--and not infrequently having their first kid--by the time they were 30.

But I have no idea at what age folks were getting married 10 years ago; I probably wasn't paying attention (he has more straight friends than I did, I guess).

I'm now in my late twenties, and I've noticed that nearly all of my straight friends are married, engaged, or committed; I'm really stretching to think of many people I know who are single and casually dating. In graduate school, almost all of my close-in-age colleagues were married by 25. I think Jacob has a point that our generation does seem to be reverting back to the marrying young standard. As an undergraduate, I had many female friends who admitted to actively "husband-hunting" around campus, which always surprised me.

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