Against Equality: Queer Critiques of Gay Marriage

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/6/12 at 12:09pm

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.

[Bluemoon]

Posted: 1/6/12 at 1:11pm

An intriguing viewpoint. I always enjoy hearing from alternative voices and I like independent minds. Thanks for sharing!

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 1/6/12 at 1:24pm

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.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 1/6/12 at 1:48pm

Sorry, I don't get this at all.

Gay people, if they are of the mind to and so choose, should have the same opportunity as straight people to reject marriage as a partriarchal, unsuitable and outdated institution.

Just as gay people, if they are of the mind to and so choose, should have the same opportunity as straight people to enter into marriage as either a traditional or redefined form of personal contract and commitment, irrespective of matrimony's limitations, imperfections, disappointments and historical baggage.

It's simply a matter of equal rights. To marry or not to marry is a personal prerogative. To debate matrimony's merits might be sociologically and politically interesting and even important. But that debate has nothing to do with denying the option to marry to gay people.

It's apples and oranges.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 1/6/12 at 2:00pm

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?"

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/6/12 at 2:57pm

I just wanna say I agree with what everyone has said!

And to add this funny tidbit from Brian Moylan's Gawker item called "The Secrets Gay Men Don't Want Straight People to Know":

Not All Gay Couples Are Monogamous


What HRC and other gay rights groups would like to sell the straight public is that gay couples are just like straight married couples. In many cases, they are. They are monogamous and have been together forever and raise their kids behind white picket fences. What they don't want you to know is that many gay couples, though married, civilly unionized, or otherwise commonlaw are inviting guys over for threeways, playing around with other guys on the side, or engaged in all other sorts of sexual hijinks. Yes, straight people have "swingers" but it seems like there is a stronger bent of "non-traditional arrangements" among the gays. It might be because gay men are horny bastards and because we didn't have your fiendish and chaste preset relationship constructs until recently when straight people decided it was time to stop treating us like second class citizens. Yeah, we may be married, but that doesn't mean we're dead or conforming to your rules.

My baby's got a secret

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 1/6/12 at 3:14pm

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.

[JerseyGirl2]

Posted: 1/6/12 at 3:20pm

No two marriages are exactly the same. I think he makes his own argument moot by saying that same sex couples (or ANY couple for that matter) shouldn't get married in his opinion. He can think whatever he wants, but that opinion shouldn't effect my rights. I still think my marriage is important. Standing before a magistrate and saying that I take this woman for life was really important to me. He shouldn't get married. I should.

[strummergirl]

Posted: 1/6/12 at 3:38pm

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.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/6/12 at 4:06pm

I think everybody has brought up really great points. Strummergirl, I wouldn't be able to speak to the pressure to be heteronormative on the younger generation, but I DO think there's a pressure to conform to the mainstream narrative and to pretend that these gay marriages are JUST LIKE straight ones.

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 1/6/12 at 4:16pm

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

[strummergirl]

Posted: 1/6/12 at 4:41pm

"I think everybody has brought up really great points. Strummergirl, I wouldn't be able to speak to the pressure to be heteronormative on the younger generation, but I DO think there's a pressure to conform to the mainstream narrative and to pretend that these gay marriages are JUST LIKE straight ones."

I do have friends who have come out and do have supportive parents but have practically settled with somebody within a very small timeframe. Honestly, I feel like I would have the same reaction, which is 'Why?', if they were straight. But they have parents who definitely have the expectations of still wanting their kids to marry before they're 30 like a lot of parents of straight friends I have. I also have gay friends who are still playing the field and just feel like those other friends are 'conforming' and that we are all still at an age to explore rather than define yourself before you even earn your undergrad. The schism between those two groups of friends is both fascinating and uncomfortable.

Updated On: 1/6/12 at 04:41 PM

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/6/12 at 4:44pm

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?

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 1/6/12 at 4:46pm

You read other websites? You mean YOU'RE CHEATING ON US?!?!

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/6/12 at 5:00pm

BWW is still my number one, baby.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 1/6/12 at 5:07pm

The Lady Thiang of musical message boards.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 1/6/12 at 5:09pm

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.

[strummergirl]

Posted: 1/6/12 at 5:16pm

Moylan always felt like a try-hard of Richard Lawson who while I would disagree with from time to time, was incredibly funny and witty in the same vein as Michael K. on DListed who I still find entertaining while skimming over items of people who he has peeves with. Lawson leaving Gawker again was a real loss as I don't believe anybody on the site holds a candle to him, despite Hamilton Nolan and Moylan trying their hardest (which PalJoey aptly describes).

[jacobtsf]

Posted: 1/6/12 at 11:15pm

"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)

[BroomstickBoy]

Posted: 1/6/12 at 11:37pm

Sounds like an anti gay-establishment (not anti GAY) twenty-something playing the apathetic card to garner followers. Someone who plays the opposite opinion "just to be different". Who cares about marriage? Big deal! yadda yadda yadda. Makes me think of the lesbian chick in "Election". "Who cares about this stupid. election. anyway?"

It's like what people always say to anti-marriage right-wing folk, if you don't support gay marriage, then don't get one.


You have a right to your opinion, but really? Don't be a jackass about it.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 1/7/12 at 2:45am

"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.

[jacobtsf]

Posted: 1/7/12 at 10:43am

Eric- My parents (and most of my friends' parents) did not get married until their mid-thirties. I am 24, most of my friends are married, engaged or ready to get engaged. I grew up in a small town, lived in NYC for 6 years, and have friends all over the country, and everyone is getting hitched. Maybe it is just my social circle, but those are my observations.

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 1/7/12 at 11:51am

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).

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/7/12 at 12:59pm

:::Someone who plays the opposite opinion "just to be different".:::

Do you mean the second guy I linked, who wrote the column, or the very first, who edited the anthology. Because THAT guy seems sort of the opposite of the "whatever" crowd.

[AC126748]

Posted: 1/7/12 at 12:59pm

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.