This guest post is by Rahul K. Gairola, a queer scholar and teacher who completed a joint PhD in English Literature and Theory & Criticism at UW-Seattle. He currently teaches at UW-Bothell and Cornish College for the Arts.
There are obvious reasons that Pastor Ken Hutcherson, leader of the Antioch Bible Church in Kirkland, recently pulled out of his appearance at a “marriage equality” debate at Seattle Town Hall sponsored by The Stranger. Aside from the fact that the city’s savvy inhabitants would crucify his homophobic sentiments, he would hope to garner more conservative support on the Eastside, in Bellevue. As if rubber-stamping Pastor Hutcherson’s move, Pope Benedict earlier this month called gay marriage a threat to “the future of humanity itself.” As a person who identifies as queer and who regularly teaches classes and conducts research on topics like this, I find the corpus of the argument to be misdirected in major ways. In this context, my understanding of “queer” is someone who does not conform to the dominant institutions and lifestyles of straight or gay sensibilities.
What concerns me more than the apparent bigotry that is institutionalized in the arena of religion by Pastor Hutcherson and Pope Benedict XVI is that the success of the very institution of marriage is at an all time low. A recently published BBC article documents the all around decline of marriage in the US. While many gays and lesbians are extolling the wonders of “marriage equality,” I, and many others, are left asking how and why legal codification through the government leads to any form of equality. Indeed, many argue that the conscription of gays and lesbians to “marriage equality” is yet another way that the dire circumstances of people in the US already subject to race and class oppression will become worse. In plain terms, “marriage equality” justifies the further disenfranchisement of those who do not conform to the marital order by framing them as perpetually single or “off-system” while valorizing the insertion of gays and lesbians into the global exploitation that is capitalism. Many teachers, scholars, and activists, namely Yasmin Nair, Kenyon Farrow, Ryan Conrad, and the many other folks who comprise the Against Equality Collective have been arguing this for quite some time now.
The flaw at the heart of “marriage equality” is that, in purporting to institutionalize (normalize) gay sex/partnerships, it produces but another universe of legally codified restrictions that excludes millions of other peoples. It legally codifies prejudice against people who are single and justifies it through the veneer of “gay rights.” The two terms that make up “marriage equality” are incongruent: Marriage as a governmental and socially-accepted contract can never embody or nurture the equality all individuals because it is hopelessly invested in exponentially producing more and more categories. “Marriage equality” does not render any kind of equal footing to anyone; to the contrary, it implicates gays and lesbians in a 21st-century, “separate but equal” capitalist structure that leaves out those who do not conform to rites of passage copied from heterosexual union traditions (which are themselves based on the commodification of women). The flaw at the heart of “marriage equality” is that it is not about opening the heart, but rather the privatization of it. Like DADT, it conscribes gays and lesbians into a tradition that underwrites the conditions of excluding millions of others from basic human rights like health care. How does this embody “equality”? I am less interested in re-defining the heart than I am in revolutionizing it.
Face it. This is the new gay movement.
There was a generation of gays who, faced with our exclusion from normal societal institutions, judged those institutions archaic and wanting and imagined a world that transcended them.
That generation died from AIDS. Whether we like it or not, that’s where they’ve gone. Their dream isn’t dead, but it’s been pushed to the back burner. Today’s gay movement wants to be included in the institutions of the dominating society. To the extent that there is pushback, it is from a dwindling and aging evangelical movement seeking to remain relevant. Corporate America has fully embraced this form of gay “equality”, as it threatens them not in the slightest. The co-option is near complete.
For what it’s worth, it could be a lot better, but it could also be a lot worse.
Face it. This is the new gay movement.
There was a generation of gays who, faced with our exclusion from normal societal institutions, judged those institutions archaic and wanting and imagined a world that transcended them.
That generation died from AIDS. Whether we like it or not, that’s where they’ve gone. Their dream isn’t dead, but it’s been pushed to the back burner. Today’s gay movement wants to be included in the institutions of the dominating society. To the extent that there is pushback, it is from a dwindling and aging evangelical movement seeking to remain relevant. Corporate America has fully embraced this form of gay “equality”, as it threatens them not in the slightest. The co-option is near complete.
For what it’s worth, it could be a lot better, but it could also be a lot worse.
Don’t want gay marriage? Don’t have one. I don’t buy into the basic premise of this argument that “queer” is for people who are outside of straight and gay norms. I don’t agree with someone co-opting a term that I grew up being called and telling me I no longer fit the description. Get your own word and don’t try and push me out. The idea that extending federal protections to what could be millions of relationships is uniportant or beside the point is ridiculous. Anyone who has been incolved in civil rights legislation knows that every hard-won right is important. lawis built on precedent and each legal prtection adds to the body of equality for everyone. Legislation alone does not automatically end discrimination. any person of color will tell you that, but ask any person of color it they would give up their right to vote or their rights to rent or buy a house where they want to. is that type of legislation “main-streaming?”
Holler at all of this! More of this on the SLOG, forever.
I don’t think you know what ‘exponential’ means.
I am a reasonably intelligent person and I cannot for the life of me understand what this person is complaining about.
“The flaw at the heart of “marriage equality” is that, in purporting to institutionalize (normalize) gay sex/partnerships, it produces but another universe of legally codified restrictions that excludes millions of other peoples.”
Huh? That is total nonsense. The point of this bill is to give the same options to gay people as straight people. If you don’t like the option you are under NO PRESSURE to participate but I totally fail to see the point of crapping on the institution of marriage simply because it doesn’t fit into how you want to live your life.
Sounds like this person has a pretty bad case of YDIW.
The end result of marriage equality isn’t just a bunch of gay people getting tax breaks and contractual privileges. It’s providing entire generations of young queer Americans a clear path to acceptance within society.
You’re young and gay. Rather than commit suicide, your local government will grant you and a future same-sex partner a codified life together. Giving young queers a glimpse of a bright future will do more for queer liberation than a thousand treatises on the inherent unfairness of marriage.
Seriously?
Gairola has his head philosophically buried so far up his own ass he has lost touch with reality.
Sure, I get that some people don’t want to get married, and view the institution of marriage as a bad thing. That notion has been floating around since the 1960s, at least. But Gairola telling me I shouldn’t want to get married is no better than Hutcherson telling me I shouldn’t be allowed to get married.
The fact remains that I do want to get married. And the civil law shouldn’t allow my brother to get married but not allow me to get married. That is discriminatory treatment. If Gairola decides marriage is not for him, that’s fine, that’s his choice. At least he, and I, should be allowed that choice. If he wants to advocate to eliminate the institution of marriage altogether, he is welcome to do that as well (good luck with that, bro). But it is insane for a gay person to advocate separate treatment for other gay people under the law.
Yeah more of this on slog.
Yes, its a stupid argument made by a whiny queer extremist who wants to push her own view and is nullifying the desires of the millions of queer people fighting for these rights. But, its well written and is food for thought.
That being said, you’re a moron, professor (welcome to Slog).
[Marriage equality] legally codifies prejudice against people who are single and justifies it through the veneer of “gay rights.” WTF? No…it doesn’t. If you think taxes are the only reason for this contract, you’re wrong. You’re so fucking wrong it hurts. Maybe you’re talking about how one can get health care bennies for married people…but those bennies cost the company money. They want you to be in for the long haul…not just giving bennies away to whomever you want to. You have a girl or boyfriend for a month who doesn’t have health benefits? Marry him/her and you get to share.
Don’t believe in marriage as a legal code or as an institution? Fine. There’s even domestic partnerships! Those aren’t just for gays or straights. You’re in Washington.
But, to say marriage equality discriminates against single people is bullheaded at best. And, fuck you for trying to take down people’s desires to conform within the system.
Also, Yay for being radical…but don’t tear down a movement that could be beneficial to your cause later on.
What a bunch of academic claptrap so divorced from the reality of the people it describes.
I can explain it. My sweetheart and I have been together for nearly 10 years; I’m female, he’s male; both early 40s. We could easily get married, but here’s the thing … I don’t want to. I’ve been married; it didn’t work, I didn’t like it, I’m not good at it, I’d rather not do it again. But my sweetheart doesn’t have health insurance; I have excellent coverage. My employer (WA State) covers same-sex partners (and good for them for doing that), but doesn’t cover us. In addition: TAXES — we’d get a major break if we married. My financial advisor actually advised me (from a financial perspective) to get married.
You can’t deny that we’re committed. Except that we’re not married, we’ve got a traditional relationship. I don’t want to be forced to get married to get these benefits. Gay, straight or other … marriage isn’t the issue at all, equality is.
Dude. You freelance for Seattle Gay News.
PGan the only person stopping you from getting equal treatment under the law is you — not the state. That’s the difference. You could get all the benefits and responsibilities of marriage. You’re just choosing not to because you are afraid.
This is the most delicious straw man that keeps popping up. No one is *forcing* anyone to get married. But having the right is kind of an important step to being viewed as full citizens (just as no one is forcing everyone to have interracial marriages, but making them legal was really important).
I am glad that you, and apparently so many others, hate marriage and think it should go away forever!
Many of us do not feel this way, so please stop acting like you speak for everyone or are somehow “right.” Because you don’t, and you’re not, and if you don’t see marriage equality as an important next step in trying to get to actual equality, you’re an idiot and I can’t help you.
Think this guy has Phd in Hipsterism.
I see. So because Mr. Gairola and his ilk have, for their reasons, decided not to participate in this aspect of the social order, the rest of us ought to be forbidden from it, as well? Due respect, but fuck that noise. Whatever disorder the author claims to find in the pairing off of members of our society into new families must surely be outweighed by the enormous social benefits. Family is the basic unit of human society since time immemorial. The law should, must, support that notion and provide means for the legal protection and recognition of our rights to build those units.
In many ways, Mr. Gairola falls victim to the same logical fallacy that Hutcherson and his band of merry douchebags fall victim to (though I doubt Mr. Gairola’s motives are as nefarious). The belief that my marriage in anyway negatively impacts your marriage (Hutcherson), or your decision to remain single (Gairola) is false. Patently so.
In any event, to a hammer every problem is a nail. When you’ve devoted your life to studying and “researching” oppression you find oppression around every corner. (I’ve found most “research” on this subject to be more philosophical than empirical. The social-justice set gussy it up with nicely contrived academic jargon and then spew forth about it like they’re enlightened beings and the rest of us mere mortals. Hogwash.) Provided there is equal provision in the law, you can make a decision to participate in the institution of marriage, if it suits you to do so, and you can make a decision to not participate if it doesn’t. Don’t get married, if you find the institution repulsive. But you’ve no right to insist the rest of us play your little game.
Yes, you have, albeit unwittingly, touched on the falsehood inherent in the “marriage equality” (and your own) arguments – that fundamentally different behaviors, with profoundly consequentially different value to society can be declared equal — or even more ridiculously that there is a right to such.
All behavioral choices are NOT equal. Indeed, that’s the entire purpose of marriage — do codify that they are NOT — that children being raised by their very own biological mother, and their very own biological father is the ideal — and so the institution exists to get potential mothers & fathers tied up in legal knots so in the event that they have children, that ideal is already inherently realized.
Yet the entire impetus of your argument is that normalizing gay marriage will make you feel even more abnormal. I’m sorry if you feel bad about choosing to do different things. Contrary to your pseudo-intellectual psychobabble, marriage does not exist to make you feel better about being different. As the axiom goes: you’re here, you’re queer, get used to it!
@12 That’s a semantic argument if I’ve ever seen one. You’re doing all the same shit as marriage, but then arguing it’s not the same? No, it’s the same, you just don’t like the title.
And arguing about titles/words is a ridiculous waste of time.
You’re married. Sorry. You just choose not to have legal recognition of it because you’re having a hangup over a word. Don’t even bother with a wedding or taking names or signing over property or anything, just get the goddamn marriage certificate so that you have the legal rights.
Do you know what the difference between a non-married and a married couple is? A piece of paper. That’s it. To say you’re “bad at marriage” is equivalent to saying you’re “bad at committed relationships,” and that’s clearly not true, so I think it’s time you realized your hangup is just a word, nothing more.
Yes, you have, albeit unwittingly, touched on the falsehood inherent in the “marriage equality” (and your own) arguments – that fundamentally different behaviors, with profoundly consequentially different value to society can be declared equal — or even more ridiculously that there is a right to such.
All behavioral choices are NOT equal. Indeed, that’s the entire purpose of marriage — do codify that they are NOT — that children being raised by their very own biological mother, and their very own biological father is the ideal — and so the institution exists to get potential mothers & fathers tied up in legal knots so in the event that they have children, that ideal is already inherently realized.
Yet the entire impetus of your argument is that normalizing gay marriage will make you feel even more abnormal. I’m sorry if you feel bad about choosing to do different things. Contrary to your pseudo-intellectual psychobabble, marriage does not exist to make you feel better about being different. As the axiom goes: you’re here, you’re queer, get used to it!
Yes, you have, albeit unwittingly, touched on the falsehood inherent in the “marriage equality” (and your own) arguments – that fundamentally different behaviors, with profoundly consequentially different value to society can be declared equal — or even more ridiculously that there is a right to such.
All behavioral choices are NOT equal. Indeed, that’s the entire purpose of marriage — do codify that they are NOT — that children being raised by their very own biological mother, and their very own biological father is the ideal — and so the institution exists to get potential mothers & fathers tied up in legal knots so in the event that they have children, that ideal is already inherently realized.
Yet the entire impetus of your argument is that normalizing gay marriage will make you feel even more abnormal. I’m sorry if you feel bad about choosing to do different things. Contrary to your pseudo-intellectual psychobabble, marriage does not exist to make you feel better about being different. As the axiom goes: you’re here, you’re queer, get used to it!
Also, what @14 said. You at least have the choice. Many gay couples don’t, and that’s wrong. Whether or not you agree with marriage as an institution people have a right to it.
This brightened my day. I was wondering just this morning if I had made the right decision when I dropped out of graduate school.
You have a PhD in English and you do not know what the word comprise means or how to use it.
The Against Equality Coalition comprises Yasmin Nair, Kenyon Farrow and Ryan Conrad. Not the other way around you moron. Others have already noted your egregious misuse of the word exponential. Let me concur.
Far more concerning than the inane arguments you’ve made is the fact that the University of Washington Seattle chose to give you a PhD in English. Jesus Christ.
Oh, yeah, and you can’t have “queer,” either. I, like @3, have had that hurled at me my whole life, and won’t be told it isn’t mine to keep because I do not conform to *your* standard (which is as arbitrary as the dominant standard, by the way), Mr. Gairola.
What Reverse Polarity @ 9 said, x 100.
Slog already has one Charles, does it really need two?
@1 (&@2). There are quite a few of us queer folk floating around out there who decided that cultural institutions are archaic who did not die of AIDS, thank you every much.
That said, Marriage Equality for All.
Marriage is an option that any two consenting adults are allowed to pursue unless they’re gay. It’s a simple matter of applying the right to exercise that option to all American adults regardless of sexual orientation.
Some of the strongest and longest-lasting relationships I know are between couples who have chosen to forego marriage. Rather than expressing disenfranchisement, I actually hear them say they’re thankful that *not* choosing marriage has become a viable and widely-accepted lifestyle choice. They know what they’re giving up; they also know what they’re avoiding.
Yes, those people do not reap the legal benefits of the marriage contract, but that’s part of the consideration that goes into their choice. In exchange, they don’t get embroiled in an institution that is fraught with unrealistic expectations and demands of conformity. I don’t know why you seem to think it’s bad that different choices produce different, sometimes unequal outcomes. That’s just life.
@28: A damned succinct final paragraph there. Thanks for that!
boring.
If you think the institution of marriage is bullshit, then fine. Work towards ending the institution of marriage (good luck with that). Most people in favor of marriage equality accept the practical reality that the institution of marriage is not going anywhere. And so, marriage equality is their preferred answer, as opposed to abolishing all marriage. With your argument, the practical result is most likely to be that the institution of marriage continues, but gays are excluded from it.
I, personally, think the institution of “no self-serve gas in Oregon” is absurd. But, let’s say, for some reason, the law was, men must have their gas pumped by an attendant, but women pump their gas themselves. If there was no practical chance at all of getting rid of mandatory full service, you can bet that I would be arguing for equal treatment. The unequal treatment and discrimination would bother me more than the institution of mandatory full service. I might still grumble how philosophically, mandatory full service is ridiculous. But being treated equally under the law would trump anything else.
And, yes, I did just compare gay marriage to pumping gasoline.
This was pure claptrap.
So lobby that all single people get the same tax credit per person that married couples do. What’s this got to do with marriage?
lolz @23.
http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/orig…
This is why you get your degree in a science.
There’s academia and then there’s the real world.
It’s clear what world the author inhabits. It must be nice being upper middle class and not having to worry about the rights of others.
Have fun with your lectures Rahul. Those of us in the grass roots will keep fighting and will win without you.
Ground control to Dr. Gairola, please descend your ivory tower.
Fuck you dude.
Try having your husband pried from your side and exiled to another country because of DOMA then come back and tell me that marriage equality doesn’t matter.
Just fuck you.
And no, you don’t get to use Queer to describe your comfortably hypothetical hipster pseudo-philosophy and exclude the gay people who have suffered and fought and raised Queer to a badge of honor. No fucking way.
Fuck you dude, just fuck you.
I’ll try to break it down for you, Rahul.
There’s this existing legal framework around marriage that governs a bunch of important shit.
My husband and I have a 14-year marriage that is excluded from this body of law for artificial reasons, to the detriment of us and our 1-year-old daughter.
We are asking the state to correct this exclusion on behalf of our family and many families like ours.
So there’s a question at hand that requires a “favor” or “oppose” response. You want to have an entirely different conversation, which is fine, though it seems like the conversation you want to have leans toward the “oppose” response.
There’s a petition before the state concerning my family. You want to petition the state for something else? Go right ahead. I’m not interested in the conversation you want to have, though when your petition comes up for public review I will likely have a more charitable attitude than yours.
I feel like this is a really dry, presumptuous and academic way to say, “hey! Remember in this fight for equality, marriage still isn’t for everyone.” Which is an important thing to remember.
And I have a real hard time believing that y’all couldn’t have found a better person to remind us.
The tone is dry, and really indicative of an academic vacuum. Outside that, these structures exist, and most people are happy with them. Options are good. Accommodating as many different lifestyle choices is ideal. But those lifestyle choices include those who want to get married.
Currently, I am not among the people who do. But if you want to settle down with one partner, forever, with children involved? So much of that, and the complicated structure of our country and legal system, is tied into marriage. This is one battle in a larger fight, but it’s still an important battle.
Kodos: Marriage equality for some; indecipherable queer diatribes for others!
Crowd: Yay! {waving miniature American flags}
I might have bought into Gairola’s argument when I was in my 20’s. Perhaps even in my 30’s. I’m in my fifties now, and things are very different. It’s not that I’ve become more conservative with age; if anything, I’ve become more liberal. But as a couple of SLOGGers have noted, the institution of marriage isn’t going anywhere in the forseeable future, and if it’s here to stay (in my lifetime, anyway), I’d like to partake.
Here is where being in my 50’s is relevant. I’ve had gay friends who weren’t allowed to make their partner’s medical decisions, or who weren’t allowed to make funeral decisions, or whose wills were declared invalid by judges who decided that two men “pretending” to be married didn’t constitute a legally recognized relationship. I have employer-provided health benefits, but my husband doesn’t. I tried to put him on my policy, but because our home state does not recognize same-sex marriage, he was denied. Note, by the way, that all of my heterosexual colleagues can put their spouses and children on the plan without question; only I have been denied. My husband and I keep copies of our powers of attorney, our living wills, and a bunch of other papers in our cars at all times in case one is called because the other is sick. Heterosexual married couples do not have to drive around with stacks of notarized documents in their glove compartments; their word is sufficient.
In my fifties, issues of health insurance and medical decisions and wills are no longer legal abstractions for me; they are vivid realities. I’m two years away from early retirement. As soon as I get there, my husband and I are moving to a marriage-equality state. If Mr. Gairola considers that too bourgeois, or too heteronormative, or insufficiently queer, he’s welcome to his opinion. I’m just tired of living in a state of sexual apartheid.
Is the institution of marriage flawed? Probably. But for people in committed relationships, it is, IMHO, much less fucked up than the alterantives.
@ 40, I would question the necessity of the reminder. The fight for marriage equality isn’t a fight for marriage.
I don’t think that that’s what this person is trying to say, anyway. I think he’s saying that he’s too outré for mainstream stuff like marriage, which is a very tiresome thing to be.
Marriage is going to seem pretty damn heteronormative if only heteros can marry. I’m sure voting seemed pretty anglonormative at one time, and land ownership pretty patriarchal…
looking through the comments, i find only @33 got the same thing out of this that i did.
i read nothing about marriage equality, gays/queers (whatever the definition) vs. straights.
i read this as singles vs. partnerships. the people being excluded are singles. that is, there should be no advantages afforded to marriage. no tax break–a couple should pay 2x the taxes of a single. singles should be able to extend their health benefits to another single of their choice (??). no one should be barred from a hospital visit (??).
this is a completely different debate. talk about the corpus of the argument to being misdirected in major ways.
@OP, conscription?!? “the conscription of gays and lesbians to “marriage equality”…..nice hyperbole. Stopped taking you seriously there, but read the rest anyway. All I can say is, nope. Not at all convinced of anything but the fact that getting a doctorate in English is way easier than it should be.
@12, @19 pretty much covered it but I can’t stop myself. So you’re saying, you want all the benefits of marriage, without having to call it marriage. So…what, you want [i]all[/i] of society to make up a new word for the same damn legal contract just so [i]you[/i], one person, don’t have to deal with your feelings about your marriage track record? Either you’re incredibly self-involved, or you failed to explain it. For fuck’s sake, just get married and don’t tell anyone that you’re married if it’s that big of a deal to use the word (HR departments are bound by confidentiality and if you ask explicitly, won’t tell your coworkers that your spouse is on your insurance, or is in fact your spouse and not your bf/gf).
I am another person who hates all of the connations that come with the word marriage. Monogamy, religion and traditions, conventional romance tropes. I’m only monogoamish, I’m an atheist whose “ceremony” performed by an internet minister was the bare bones of what is required by state law, and I don’t believe that my husband is the only person I’m meant to be with, Bella and Edward style. But we wanted to save money on taxes and get one of us on the other’s employer health insurance, and fortunately we also meet my one other prerequisite of being able to communicate effectively about how to share finances, and the state’s prerequisite that are private bits look different. So we got married. And guess what? It’s totally fine. I’m not a different person. The only change in my relationship is that we now have to sit down once a year and talk about deductions. THAT’S IT. It is not as fucking hard as you’re making it out to be.
@45, it’s hardly surprising that the corpus of an argument unrelated to marriage equality should be misdirected when the title of the entry is: “The Problem with ‘Marriage Equality.'”
@48–i get it. but there is an established context to ‘marriage equality,’ in this case referring to gay rights. the guest poster chose to take the phrase at face value and create a different debate about the phrase itself…the problem with marriage equality is marriage? that may not be the perfect definition of a strawman argument, but it’s pretty close.
we need the potholes on my street repaired. but maybe the problem isn’t potholes, it’s streets in general. we shouldn’t have streets at all. we should all have jetpacks.
Marriage equality is not a fight for everyone to get married. any more than being pro-choice means everyone should get an abortion. It all means it is legal to make the choice that is right for me and my partner.
And no, you cant have queer. I got dibs on queer long before you were born.
and yes, that was intentionally age-ist.
@49, that’s a good analogy.
You live on a pothole-riddled street, and your neighbors on the next block enjoy a pristine street. So you petition the city to fix your damn potholes because it’s ruining your alignment.
Then some guy from a whole different neighborhood shows up at the city council meeting where you are presenting your testimony and starts talking about jet packs and how bourgeois it is to worry about potholes. And fuck if internal combustion engines aren’t ruining the whole damn planet, so your car’s alignment is a tool of oppression. You just wanna slap the fucker and tell him to schedule his own meeting to talk about jetpacks and fossil fuels.
@45 There’s also that fact that many couples do not get a tax “break” from getting married (some couples experience a “marriage penalty”). Just depends on the disparity of income between the two parties. How the tax code deals with marriage is imperfect, but it does try to recognize the fact that some couples completely combine finances (so, if everyone was required to file separately, it would be tough to assign mortgage expenses or charitable deductions) and others don’t.
I’m on board with “domestic partnership” being for opposite-sex or same-sex couples, though, for the purposes of health insurance. That’s what my now-husband and I were able to do…
Re @3: Sorry about all the typos folks. I am not really unable to spell and I do have some understanding of punctuation. I was carried away by the utter gall of someone attempting to re-define “queer” in such a way as to denigrate the experiences of generations LGBT people. I went to high school in Tennessee in the ’70’s, don’t come around now and tell me I’m “normative”. The writer of this post is the beneficiary of decades of protest by a Gay Lib movement begun by people who literally put their careers, safety, and even their lives on the line. Queer Studies wouldn’t even be a thing, were it not for the people who fought for it. The ass-hattery of the writer’s position is astounding given that actual disenfranchised, marginal and out-cast people do not have access to university degrees.
You know, getting gay-married to a building is pretty bourgeois, when you think about it.
Most of the responses after@1 seem to me to demonstrate the truth of what @1 says (but right on to @27). The level of outrage here at the questioning of marriage equality as the prime focus of the gay movement is rather stunning.
Of course gay people should have the same right as anyone else to get married, or join the military, or make out like a bandit on Wall Street. And I certainly understand the anger of @38 and others here who insist on that. The victories on DADT and on marriage equality in WA gladden my heart.
But is it not at least worth considering that prioitizing such demands will do more to validate traditional marriage, militarism, and capitalism than it will to establish people’s right to be who they are and want to be? Psycho-Christians who condemn homosexual promiscuity aren’t about to sing a new tune because homosexuals choose to be monogamous and extol ‘family values.’
Should people be more concerned to establish that LGBT folks are just like everybody else, or that they are different and so what? (We’re here, etc. ) Just asking.
One more thing: so the article is written in current left-academese rather than Stranger-style street language. It’s still well-written and cogent. (And it’s @5 and @24 who need to learn what exponential and comprise mean, not R. Gairola.) Let’s drop the anti-intellectualism.
@56 Your question about LGBT people being “just like everyone else” strikes me as misguided because LGBT people are not a monolith nor is the “everyone else” group. So what is “everyone else” like that LBGT people are to be measured against? Also, psycho Christians are not going to be swayed. Period. They are psycho. So the fact that marriage equality does not sway them means exactly nothing.
Personally, I think government ought to be out the marriage business entirely. Marriage should be a religious/cultural institution and nothing else. The government should care about households and the social good (mutual support, resource sharing, etc.) those households accomplish, regardless of the interpersonal relationships between the household members. There are a number of things that need to happen before we get there though, and one of them is that the notions of religious marriage and civil marriage need to be clearly and decisively cleaved. I think the legalization of same sex marriage helps that along.
Another is that health care access needs to not be based on employment or relationship to someone who receives it from their employer. It needs to be a right provided to each individual by the government. Marriage will never be able to be significantly reconcieved until that happens.
I’m sure this is far too pragmatic for the lofty-minded, but which do you think is more likely:
That we chip away at existing inequalities in marriage codes, or
That we destroy the institution of marriage for everyone?
(Hint: It’s the first one.)
@ 56 I hear what you’re saying, but can’t agree that establishing marriage as a right for everyone who wants it regardless of sexual orientation is somehow playing into the right-wing agenda. Marriage as an institution is at an all-time low in popularity. It is not going to increase among straight people because gay people can do it as well. Marriage rates have gone down in Massachusetts since equality passed. Less straight people than ever are making use of their right to marry and are excersizing their right *not* to marry. LGBT don’t have a right to refuse to marry because it is not a right they have to refuse. In order to have the right to not conform, you first need to have your right to exist as an individual under the law on an equal basis with everyone else. I am gay and have no desire to be married, but it doesn’t lessen my support for others to do so. Setting up litmus tests for queerdom, is distasteful and smacks of accusations of Uncle Tomism. LGBTQ folks who want to marry aren’t necessarily assimilating and I feel that such arguments are divisive and destructive.
If you want to really understand what Dr. Gairola is saying, read this. I know him personally and consider him a fantastic thinker and person. He is not trying to demean people’s love, he is trying to challenge its boundaries while questioning the historical roots of marriage. We need more of this, not less of it.
http://www.sgn.org/sgnnews39_13/page18.c…
@56:
>> “But is it not at least worth considering that prioitizing such demands will do more to validate traditional marriage, militarism, and capitalism than it will to establish people’s right to be who they are and want to be?”
The individual right to be who you are and who you want to be has already been established and is not being challenged.
>> “Psycho-Christians who condemn homosexual promiscuity aren’t about to sing a new tune because homosexuals choose to be monogamous and extol ‘family values.'”
Marriage equality is not about them. I didn’t marry the man I love and adopt a child with him so that I could change some christwad’s opinion of me. I am unconcerned with their beliefs, which they may keep as long as they wish.
@60, my general lack of enthusiasm for Dr. Gairola’s essay does not stem from a lack of understanding. I find his brand of obstructionism tedious and sophomoric, not because I don’t understand his arguments, but because I have no use for them.
Way to go Rahul!
If queers want to get married fine, but the government shouldn’t give anyone special rights and privileges for participating in it! Marriage is an archaic, heteronormative, patriarchical, proprietary, and most importantly a RELIGIOUS institution. We need to abolish ALL laws regarding marriage, not make more. Hello separation of church and state anyone? People can make their own damn contracts.
Oh, please, @63, marriage has always been a civil construct from the very beginning up through the present day. Always has been a civil construct. Always.
Survivorship rights for one’s spouse and children is in no way a “special right.” Family law is not founded on special rights for anyone. It is based almost entirely on practical concerns that arise naturally from interpersonal relations among human beings.
Abolish all laws regarding marriage? Stupid idea. No thanks.
@64 marriage has always been a religious institution mascarading as a civil one. Why have priests or other religious leaders always been the ones conduct the ritual? If you’re concerned about survivorship rights put in your will. The government shouldn’t have a say in what i consider to be my family.
I am married. There was nothing religious about the wedding ceremony and there is nothing religious about the marriage.
@61
>>”The individual right to be who you are and who you want to be has already been established and is not being challenged.”
What universe do you live in? (I’d like to join you there.)
@56: “the article is written in current left-academese” and that makes me (like Tom Sackett @23) sure that fleeing the academy and dropping out was the right decision.
I’m about as left as it gets and I wish leftist academic prose would suffer a fast, but still painful, death. It’s a horrible travesty. In the old dichotomy of “if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle em’ with bullshit”, they’re over their heads in bullshit.
@66 I’m talking about marriage from an historical perspective. The fact remains Irving, you have rights and priveleges over me because you chose to participate in it. How is that equality?
The government has every right to encourage marriage – gay marriage as well as straight. Cohabitation uses less resources than 2 people living apart. It’s better for raising children for there to be 2 (decent, loving, non-abusive) parents than 1. It’s less stressful, more economic, and frankly feels better for a majority of people to live with a loving partner. And that’s coming from a man who’s been thru the shittiness of a divorce.
If you want the societal benefits of being married, then goddamn get married. And stop bitching about what it doesn’t do. You’re not being punished for being single. You’re being rewarded for doing something that makes sense. I’m sorry if that makes you unhappy. It makes me unhappy that not every man or woman is allowed to marry the person they consensually love. Also, it makes me unhappy that I need to work for a living. Sadly, that last is the way of the world. And isn’t going away any more than marriage.
@65, no, in fact, marriage began as a legal structure governing mainly property and inheritance rights.
Also, your premise is faulty. Priests and religious leaders are not always the officiants. Civil marriage is adequately officiated by a licensed clerk. Priests and religious leaders are authorized by the state to sign certain civil documents following a religious ceremony that provides a satisfactorily equivalent function of solemnizing the arrangement.
Wills and other legal documents are a subset of family law, not the totality of it. I find your suggestion inadequate to satisfy my family’s needs and reject it.
And fortunately, I’ll never have to worry about your argument gaining any traction in matters of public policy. Feel free to lobby anyone you want about eliminating all laws regarding marriage. Have fun with that.
@69: It’s equality because you have the same opportunity to participate as the rest of us – at least, you do or will assuming you’re allowed by law to marry the person you love. We are all created equal, with the same broad opportunities. We do not all remain equal. That’s the way of the world.
@67, you’ve been denied these rights? In what way, and by whom?
entirely apart from the merits of the actual argument (or lack thereof), I just have to say: that is one inept piece of writing.
it doesn’t just fail as a work of “Stranger-style street language”, as one commenter put it, but *also* as academic writing. words are misused, syntax is needlessly garbled, and the actual flow of the argument is so clumsy that it becomes downright incoherent in places (paragraph 1 is especially awful).
Rahul – for the love of god, please sign up for a 100 level comp course immediately.
Actually @65, it wasn’t always a religious institution. Up until 1545, Christian marriages in Europe were by mutual consent, declaration of intention to marry and upon the subsequent physical union of the parties.The couple themselves would promise verbally to each other that they would be married to each other; the presence of a priest or witnesses was not even required. If the promise was made in the present tense it was considered unquestionably binding and was known as “verbum”, if the promise made in the future tense then it was considered a “betrothal”. The sacrament of marriage was a later construct made by the church. It may seem like it is the norm, but it historical marriages, at least in Europe, didn’t require a churches participation.
You should also know that same-sex unions were performed from Platonic Greece to premodern Christianized Europe. There are some really lovely Catholic and Orthodox liturgies. One of the loveliest ones I have read had this lovely prayer translated from its original Greek. (Presented at the Fifth Harding Memorial Address, 1982) I like how it closes with “Bless also these your servants……….. and ……….. not joined by nature, but by means of love. Give them love toward each other, and may their union remain without hatred or scandal all the days of their lives through the power of your most Holy Spirit.” The rubric goes on calling for the stephaneis gamou
Google is your friend.
@56: here is a helpful link that will show you how to use the word comprise, as you also seem to have some confusion.
http://www.grammar-monster.com/easily_co…
@56, Slog readers aren’t exactly an anti-intellectual group, many of us are part of academic circles or have backgrounds in academia. We are, however, allergic to bad writing and arguments divorced from reality.
@73:
I wasn’t really thinking about myself. I’m not even gay. But I have in fact been relentlessly attacked over the last four years at the school where I teach (Mount Si H.S.) simply for standing up for LGBT kids there. In 2008 I booed the very reverend Hutcherson and the school for putting Hutcherson up as a suitable speaker on Equality Day (the MLK Day assembly). I’ve not backed down & I’ve never heard the end of it. Every year since then a half to a quarter of the student body has stayed out out school on the day the Gay-Straight Alliance sponsors its Day of Silence activity. The GSA can’t even keep a Day of Silence flyer up for more than an hour or two. (The other side of this also needs stressing: participation in the DOS activity is probably the highest of any school on the West coast!)
The Snoqualmie Valley may seem like alien territory to those of us who live on Capitol Hill, but I suspect it’s the more representative community in our country today.
I repeat: if you live where the right to be yourself “has already been established and is not being challenged” you live in a different universe from the one I know.
@78, I guess I don’t understand how the right to be yourself necessarily requires a right to immunity from hardship. Being surrounded by assholes is just a part of life, but it doesn’t infringe on your right to be yourself.
Even after my family secures the right to be included in the body of civil law that governs marriage, we will still be surrounded by assholes who disapprove of us for whatever asshole reasons they might have. The major difference is that we will have rights we did not have previously.
What I mean by “not being challenged” is that no one is suggesting legislation preventing you from being yourself, or opposing legislation that would grant you that right. You already have that right.
My response to @56 was intended to point out that marriage equality is a struggle for actual rights, not imagined ones, or for rights that we already have (like the right to be ourselves), or for the validation of people who don’t like us.
@69, if you choose not to particiate in something, you don’t get to complain about what you’re missing.
@76 (RGW):
‘To include,’ which your “Grammar Monster” site provides as ‘the’ meaning of ‘comprise’ is only one meaning of that word.
The meaning of ‘comprise’ in Rahul Gairola’s article (he refers to “the many other folks who comprise the Against Equality Collective”) is meaning 8b in the Oxford English Dictionary: “To constitute, make up, compose.” The OED attests such uses of the word from the 18th through 20th centuries; it is still in use in this sense — increasingly so, according to the Merriam Webster Dictionary.
@75 Dammit I knew I should have google that! I stand corrected. I still think marriage originated as a way to keep women as property though.
Wow, that was a lot of academic surface glitter. Encouraging anybody not to get married or to not demand their right to marry their partner will not resolve the problems that you claim are at the heart of your argument: that single people and married people are treated differently when it comes to State and Federal taxes, social benefits, health care coverage, and social status or stigma. The problem isn’t marriage or the “privatization of the heart” (whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean), the problem is not having comprehensive socialized universal health care and not challenging cultural norms and expectations for personal and family relationships. Seriously, other than basic or extended health care coverage for spouses, what other basic human rights are single people excluded from?
Description of Ad Hominem
Translated from Latin to English, “Ad Hominem” means “against the man” or “against the person.”
An Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument. Typically, this fallacy involves two steps. First, an attack against the character of person making the claim, her circumstances, or her actions is made (or the character, circumstances, or actions of the person reporting the claim). Second, this attack is taken to be evidence against the claim or argument the person in question is making (or presenting). This type of “argument” has the following form:
Person A makes claim X.
Person B makes an attack on person A.
Therefore A’s claim is false.
98122: Non sequitur: a statement that does not logically follow from the previous argument or statement.
Meat Weapon in response to 98122:
Ha! Brilliant!
(BTW, I suspect we don’t really disagree very much.)
I suspect we don’t disagree at all. Standing up for LGBT kids in a high school setting is a pretty good criterion for sainthood in my book.
88:
Thanks.
– Saint George
@84, my guess is that folks might say, the ability to say whoever wants to can visit them in the hospital. Some areas have ‘family only’ as a default policy. A good friend isn’t close with her birth family at all (and has never married), but has a strong chosen family. Luckily, she lives in Vancouver BC, where they don’t very often have their heads up their arses.
@86:
I think what #85 was suggesting was that many of the comments are actually personal attacks against Gariola, rather than actual engagements with Gariola’s argument.
@85: Ad hominem rhetoric can be valid in some cases. If someone makes a certain claim, pointing out that person’s history of making false claims would make perfect sense.
Thank you so much for writing this article! I found it via the Twitter feed @gay_rights, and enjoyed it immensely. I have written a lot in response, evidence that it stimulated much thought for me.
As a legal studies educator, I am intellectually perplexed by the seeming lack of understanding that marriage, as an institution of social order, division and propaganda, is not equal. The sexual orientation of its members is irrelevant to the question of its equality or lack thereof. Marriage has never been about social equality. Its historical foundations are rooted in political and socio-economic power, as much as they are in religion, male-dominated arenas with virtually no real or theoretical dividing lines.
As a consequence, marriage has disadvantaged women and children since we began recording history, dis-empowering women even after they joined the “club,” so to speak. (Consider, parens patriae power of males dating back to Ancient Rome, dowry laws, and the like) Children, too, have been casualties, as can be seen in the terrible treatment of children under “bastardy” laws. Despite efforts to reform these situations, laws remain on the books in many U.S. states promoting an arcane system of presumptions and legal regulations that reward participation.
On a personal, emotional, political, or even bold-faced selfish financial level, one can certainly understand the desire of those in the queer community who back the “marriage equality movement.” It’s a simple and familiar argument, “If only we could get married, then strike one for equality. Equality all around, right? Unfortunately, not everyone even wants to be married, and even if they do, never get the opportunity. Forget the why’s or what-for’s. Let’s say they chose not to marry; that’s a choice just like choosing to get married is. Regardless, these individuals do number in the many millions. They develop their own stable and respectable social and familial bonds sans marriage, go to work, pay taxes, incur mortgages, raise children, and maybe a little hell too from time to time. They get laid off, foreclosed on and bankrupted. These individuals will continue to be treated inequitably so long as marriage remains favored as an institution and its members – regardless of their sexual orientation – treated preferentially through both pecuniary and non-pecuniary benefits and privileges.
I would like to see the “queer” community talk more about how and why the governments of man even got into the business of doling out preferences to married people in the first place…that would be a good start.
@83 Madasshatter: For the life of me I can’t figure out why marriage is soooo validating in our placement in the social hierarchy.
also! why do married people get to keep their foreign spouse in this country? Why can’t any individual ask a person to be part of this country? What’s the difference? I totally don’t get it.
It’s true that it’s strange that gays are rushing to mimic the habits of those who’ve traditionally hated them.
Not sure how anyone would find this particularly liberating, but hey, horses for courses.
@90 I had given that some thought. Here’s my take on that: You can claim to be your friend’s sibling or sibling-in-law, and for the most part, hospital staff will accept your claim (my mom has successfully pulled this off in the U.S.). It’s also the case that as a single person you can specify a ‘next-of-kin’ or emergency contact or power of attorney for personal care who isn’t a blood-relative, and hospitals (at least in Canada where I live) count unmarried partners as ‘equivalent to spouse’. Marriage is a serious committment in that it automatically grants couples certain privileges and certain obligations for each other’s care including financial ones that ‘chosen family’ haven’t committed to; just like adoption, marriage creates legal kinship in ways that ‘civil unions’ don’t, and that’s kind of the point. Perhaps the answer isn’t a revolution in marriage as the author alludes to so much as (and I’m being completely serious here) creating a new ‘BFF Status’ for single folk: a legal contract, without the financial or property implications of marriage, whereby an unmarried person designates their consenting best friend to be their next-of-kin.
#98
A person can now, legally, designate a “BFF” as next of kin through medical power of attorney, and through a supplementary document authorizing that person to release a body and make funeral arrangements in case of death. Many (though not all) of the rights and responsibilities automatically conferred through marriage can be conferred through supplementary documents.
The problem is that each of these documents involves yet another trip to a lawyer, who will charge yet another fee of abourt $250 an hour, and yet another set of photocpies or certified true copies to be made and kept on hand in case of an emergency. Trust me: my legal (though unrecognized) husband and I go through this all the time. In fact, we wrote our most recent check to the lawyer earlier this month.
Still, some problems remain; in the event that any of those documents is challenged by a bio-relative (say a sibling or a parent), things then have to be arbitrated by the hospital or be sent to court at the worst possible time, and there is no guarantee that the court will rule in favor of the BFF, document or not (I’ve had friends find themselves in these circumstances). And there is no guarantee you will forsee all possible circumstances in which you will want that BFF designated to perform action X, and if you don’t forsee it, your BFF is then legally powerless.
This is one of the reasons marriage is important to the LGBT community; the marriage lisence automatically conferrs over 1,000 rights, responsibilities and priveleges for a one-time fee.
I understand that there are reasons why many people–gay and straight–would not want to be married. And I realize that marriage is an imperfect institution. I would like to have my marriage recognized by my state and federal governments, nevertheless, and it pisses me off that so many people are invested in denying that recognition.
I am married now and I have been “not married because I am gay and not allowed to be”.
Married is different. I like it better. Its hard to explain but I would have sworn that being married would make no difference in our relationship. But it has. There is a sense of some sort of comfort and protection to it. I dont understand it either.
@100, yes, thank you. When we had our ceremony, I felt the same way–even though we’d been living together for over a year by then. We made it legal, when you could do that in Multnomah County (for about a minute).
@99, also yes, thank you. I have a hard time using the word ‘wife’, because of its historical baggage. But I still want my piece of paper.
@98, in your first scenario, I’m required to lie. I’m damned if I’m going to lie about who I am, or who she is to me. I get what you’re saying, I think. You’re looking for some middle ground, some way to get single folks’ needs met. That’s laudable, but it’s not a reason to dismantle the institution of marriage.
Anyone who reads this carefully will see that this is not all “academic glitter.” That kind of dismissal is rubish; it is a convenient way for those who would not want to admit the merit of Gairola’s argument to brush him aside. If he had not identified himself as an academic, no one would be roasting him for having a doctorate. And so what if he is an academic? You don’t need two PhDs to understand what he is saying. In fact, the argument is not academic at all — it is elementary. He is making an argument about marriage, not “gay marriage.” He is saying that the institution of marriage discriminates against people who are single regardless of their sexual orientations. He is saying that divorce is at an all time high. He is saying that “marriage equality” is a rhetorical term because it does not essentially insure equality. I agree with all of his points. We should not be seduced into the marriage romance as a means to get immigration and healthcare — our state should give these things to us irrespective of whether we are single or coupled, gay or straight. Those who are talking down to him or reacting with anger need to re-read what he is written. This is one of the smartest and well-written posts I have read on the SLOG, and I commend The Stranger for posting this. If nothing else, it has gotten a lot of people talking about a passionate subject.
@102, the problem is that humans get married. It’s one of the very few things that all cultures throughout history share–a marriage ritual. It looks different in different places and at different times, but it’s important to humans. (Obviously, this doesn’t mean all humans; there are always individual exceptions.)
If you want to say that we should have universal healthcare, I agree! Let’s fight for that. If you want to change immigration law so that a non-relative can sponsor one immigrant for legal status and eventual citizenship, well, that’s less important to me, but good luck to you if you want to pursue that.
But don’t try to tell me that marriage is wrong, or broken, or outdated, or bourgeois. Ain’t buying it.
People keep bringing up the “origins” and “roots” of marriage to criticize it. And I admit, the origins of marriage, in which women were considered legal property to be exchanged, are reprehensible.
However, the notion that awful origins cause an institution to therefore remain awful foreverafter is bullshit. Marriage is simply a tool. It used to be a tool to exchange women (BAD!) and to ensure absolute control over those women (ALSO BAD!). In some places, this is still its use (ALSO BAD!). In other places, it’s a practical tool used to make it easier for consenting adults to combine their lives (NOT BAD!). And in some places, marriage is in some place between, such as when it contains codified policies that favor one spouse (or sexual orientation) over another.
A vague historical or theoretical connection to one (BAD!) thing isn’t enough to taint another thing. You’ll notice that the pseudo-academics tend to stop after they point out such connections, as if their mere existence is argument enough. It isn’t.
You have to be able to point to a tangible, undesirable effect created by marriage as it is practiced here and now. Women being legal property, for instance, was harmful because it made their lives worse: it allowed them to be mistreated, devalued, objectified, made into human livestock. This, however, DOES NOT HAPPEN when two equal partners decide to legally combine their lives in a nation whose marriage laws give NO greater authority to either one of them. The fact that the equal legal arrangement shares the same word (and some history) with the wife-owning arrangement does not make them the same thing. Nobody in the latter arrangement is complicit in wife-ownership.
If a mere theoretical or historical link is enough to condemn something by association, then there is no logical reason to single out marriage. Knives, for instance, are derived from a variety of early weaponry. They were used to slaughter innocent animals, bringing some to extinction. They have been used in countless wars, genocides, and massacres. So, when I use a knife to chop vegetables, am I complicit in these murders and extinctions? If I argue that my use of knives is benign, practical, and healthy, is this trumped by their undeniably brutal origins? Or is a knife’s CURRENT use more morally relevant than the technology’s history?
Or if the knife analogy is too much of a stretch, how about dating? The historical oppression of women isn’t unique to marital law: much of it has been cultural, and much of it was relevant to courtship and dating life as well (and remains so to this day). So is dating permanently tainted by historical gender oppression the same way marriage is? Is it a bourgeois act of compliance with archaic cultural norms for any two people see each other more than once? Are gays betraying their radical queer roots when they “emulate straights” by entering LTR’s of any sort?
There are currently flaws in U.S. marriage law, the exclusion of gays being just one example. But a person has to keep some intellectual honesty in mind when arguing whether these are inherent evils of marriage itself, or whether they are faulty laws whose scrapping would improve marriage as an institution. Descriptions of marriages from other cultures or other time periods, however, are 100% irrelevant to the critiques of marriage in THIS culture during THIS time period.
I read this thing, and I have no idea what the author wants. I mean, let say for a moment that what the author wants is Universal Healthcare or something (i.e. marriage shouldn’t be a necessary part of getting healthcare). How does preventing gays from getting married accomplish this goal? As far as I can, it doesn’t. You want Universal Healthcare? Go fight for that. Going off on tangents that will disproportionately harm minorities (aka, people in same-sex relationships) isn’t helpful. You can huff puff all you want about how you don’t like ANY marriages, and how you would vote ALL marriage bills down (which I’ve had people say to me), but the fact of that matter is if you fight against them both, you’re going to end up disenfranchising gays and not straights.
Maybe he would say that there should be no privileges accorded to people who are married versus people who are not? That seems like a much more feasible way of thinking about equality to me. Sure, let anyone get married but deny rights and privileges to people because they do not want to get married. That makes sense to me.
@107, rather than talking abstractions, are you able to discuss practical matters that actually affect the lives of real people? We can even go halfway from abstraction to real and speak in hypotheticals, if you like.
If I, the primary income earner in my household, were to die tomorrow, should the money I’ve paid into the social security system go to my spouse? My daughter? To the state?
As the primary income earner in my family, should I be able to extend my employment benefits to cover my spouse and my daughter, at some non-trivial deduction from my take-home pay?
Should I and my spouse, who contribute in financially disproportionate amounts to the family income, which is nonetheless ONE THING, be allowed to file a joint tax return?
Should I be allowed to take family leave if my spouse becomes seriously ill?
Should my spouse and I be jointly listed as parents on the birth certificate of our adopted daughter?
Oh, one caveat: “anyone should be allowed to do anything they like” is not an acceptable answer, because see, like, we live in a society and shit, and laws exist for mainly practical reasons that protect most (ideally all) citizens from the abuses and/or neglect of other citizens.
What “privileges”, specifically, do you object to married people having? Most privileges enjoyed by married people amount to: the privilege to form a family and live as a family unmolested by people who don’t care about your family.
If you find yourself lacking rights that you desire, petition the state (as we have). Please leave my marriage out of your puerile delusions about how marriage equality deprives you of something you deserve. It doesn’t.
Meat Weapon: That’s the thing that these people don’t comprehend. They’ve convinced themselves that every detail of a person’s life is a political abstraction that either represents obedience or rebellion. They haven’t considered that some people want to live their lives according to their own terms, and that this requires some practical considerations that will sound boring compared to exciting speeches about turning social convention on its ass. So maybe they need it put more simply:
Marriage isn’t some treat that’s thrown at people for being good little bourgeoisie and conforming. It’s a system of rights that serve to make it easier to combine your life with someone else, which involves a lot of domestic and financial entangling. Maybe it’s our unfortunate consumer-driven capitalist system that makes this financial entanglement so consequential. Maybe that wouldn’t be the case under some ideal economic system free of wage-slavery and consumerism. However, people (even radicals) aren’t going to wait for The Revolution to happen and utopia to arrive before they pair up. And it’s when you pair up that most marriage rights become relevant, hence the lack of marriage rights for single people.
Nobody is arguing that there’s something wrong with choosing to stay away from marriage, so long as it is a CHOICE. There are a million reasons to choose to stay away from marriage, and every last one of them is completely irrelevant to the argument of whether or not marriage should be a right.
You can call marriage rights bourgeois all you want; it doesn’t justify a set of policies that allow some people to choose it (OR NOT) and not others.
Regardless of whether you think gays should choose to get married, I challenge anyone to argue that keeping them from that choice is a radical, pro-queer scenario. There’s a difference between finding fault with marriage’s cultural connotations vs. legally mandating one’s exclusion from it.
And for the people saying that gays shouldn’t get married because they’d then be emulating their oppressors: Marriage isn’t an imitation of “the oppressors” any more than fucking is (straight people do fuck, after all). When you start fixating on some style of living that divides “real” queers from “fake” ones, you make it obvious that image is all you really care about. You don’t give a shit about substantial social change, you only care about appearing “more radical than thou.”
The point isn’t to live the exact opposite of “the oppresor’s” stereotypical lifestyle in order to show them what a big bad scary queer you’ve grown into. The point is to stop letting the oppressors dictate what you may and may not do and live your life according to your own desires and tastes. This is going to vary, and so it’s going to include some desires and tastes that look boring and insufficiently queer to your totalitarian standards. Deal with it.
@102 “That kind of dismissal is rubish; it is a convenient way for those who would not want to admit the merit of Gairola’s argument to brush him aside.”
Ahhhh, the classic “if you don’t agree with me you don’t get it” mixed with the equally classic “there’s no other possible interpretation so you must be disregarding the argument…..like, just because and stuff” argument.
I think that people are disregarding his argument not b/c he has two degrees but rather b/c he’s got two degrees and constructed such an inherently weak argument that’s poorly supported and that lacks internal logic.
@83 “For the life of me I can’t figure out why marriage is soooo validating in our placement in the social hierarchy.”
Which is fine, no one is saying that you have to understand it and it seems like you’re the exact kind of person who probably should be married. Kudos to you! I fully support you right to be single. But there are people who do understand it and would like to participate in it and it would be really nice if they were able to choose to do it regardless of the fact that they’re gay.
I agree that people who want to be married should have that right, and I do not think the author is saying they shouldn’t. Does it say that in the piece? But many of these posts are either attacking him as a person, belittling his education (I know people in grad school and can imagine that it is hardcore training), or claiming that he has “constructed such an inherently weak argument that’s poorly supported and that lacks internal logic.” How so? Please tell me how? Can this be done without attacking him, making general statements about him being outright wrong, or possibly considering that marriage is yet another classification of privileges that excludes single people. I know he is not homophobic, and I also know he has friends who are coupled with partners. He does not look down on them. He might be a bit idealistic, but he does not wish ill on people. In fact, that is why I think he wrote this, he wants to see everybody or nobody get the privileges that marriage affords people. I said this before and will say it again — read what he is saying carefully and word for word. He does not have a mainstream view but does not seem to be pushing it on others. We should welcome that and not substitute disagreement with his views for a judgment on him or his academic background.
@111: “… marriage is yet another classification of privileges that excludes single people…”
Excluding single people from marriage is a simple matter of taxonomic rank.
I am glad that someone actually notices the rights married people have over single people. I am not married, but I do not get a tax break, benefits, hell I don’t even get to have a fancy greeting like “Mrs.” just plain old “Ms.”
And I agree with 111, please stop barking at the Author. Because quite honestly, he wrote an article for a newspaper, which is more then people bashing him have done. Being rude to the author makes you no better. At least he had the balls to stand up for something.
An ideal for this country is equality, then how can married people have rights that I don’t have? That does not seem equal to me.
Rock on Rahul, fight the good fight. Don’t listen to these people who put you down.
@113, I am absolutely supportive of your equal right to file a joint tax return that combines the household income that supports your family. I unconditionally support your equal right to extend health benefits to your spouse and/or dependents. I support your family’s equal right to all the protections afforded by marriage.
Don’t have a family? Then you don’t have a dog in this hunt. You cannot make “single” and “married” mean the same thing, which is the only way you’re ever going to make them “equal.”
@115, and similarly I suppose the argument would be that Social Security benefits should revert to the state coffers upon death, rather than going to the remaining members of a household formerly supported by the deceased.
So opposition to marriage benefits really does amount to an argument that families don’t deserve the security provided by this body of law.
I could not disagree more strongly.
Grad school ain’t free.
@Meat Weapon: I have been reading all your posts and they are viciously ad hominem. The way you have dominated this entire conversation makes me feel like you have a personal problem with the author instead of the ideas he has presented. Your observations are either crude or totally off. Let’s take the above post. You write: “So opposition to marriage benefits really does amount to an argument that families don’t deserve the security provided by this body of law.”
If you read what he has written, the argument is meant to EXPAND the very definition of family, and not have the privilege of marital rights limited to a) erotic relationships or b) a tradition that causes immense social pressure and which is already failing at an all-time rate. So let me ask: Do you know Dr. Gairola, and have you had beef with him in class? Do you have something against him as a person rather than the provocative ideas he has presented?
I must say that I am totally appalled at the majority of the comments here. This is a place to discuss ideas and not make personal attacks– especially those questioning educational attainment and degree worth.
First of all the points Dr. Gairola are not and do not miss the point of the queer project and agenda. Rather they fall in a long genealogy of radical queer and queer of color criticism of current LGBTQ politics (i.e. Cathy Cohen, Rodrick Ferguson, Jose Munoz, Larry La-Fountain Stokes, Lisa Duggan, etc). Instead Dr. Gairola’s comment speak to larger issues and systems of oppression and privilege at hand. Face it we live in a complicated and complex society where there is no perfect victim and no perfect oppressor– we all move through and experiences those roles multiple times a day. With that stating, the problem with marriage is that is privileges and upholds 1) an assimilationist perspective and agenda; and 2) continues to discriminate against those who are already marginalized in queer communities: trans populations, poor, and of color populations. If our only goal in the LGBTQ community is to get married and serve in the military, is that really going to change the structures of homophobia that run rampant in society? No.
Simply this goes back to the argument of civil rights and who is outside religious institutions. This is not just an academic discussion as many of you position, but rather an issue that impacts many of our daily lives. We need to remember our roots in radical queer activism and not be complacent in this homonormative (sorry for throwing out an ‘academic’ word) project.
I must say that I am totally appalled at the majority of the comments here. This is a place to discuss ideas and not make personal attacks– especially those questioning educational attainment and degree worth.
First of all the points Dr. Gairola are not and do not miss the point of the queer project and agenda. Rather they fall in a long genealogy of radical queer and queer of color criticism of current LGBTQ politics (i.e. Cathy Cohen, Rodrick Ferguson, Jose Munoz, Larry La-Fountain Stokes, Lisa Duggan, etc). Instead Dr. Gairola’s comment speak to larger issues and systems of oppression and privilege at hand. Face it we live in a complicated and complex society where there is no perfect victim and no perfect oppressor– we all move through and experiences those roles multiple times a day. With that stating, the problem with marriage is that is privileges and upholds 1) an assimilationist perspective and agenda; and 2) continues to discriminate against those who are already marginalized in queer communities: trans populations, poor, and of color populations. If our only goal in the LGBTQ community is to get married and serve in the military, is that really going to change the structures of homophobia that run rampant in society? No.
Simply this goes back to the argument of civil rights and who is outside religious institutions. This is not just an academic discussion as many of you position, but rather an issue that impacts many of our daily lives. We need to remember our roots in radical queer activism and not be complacent in this homonormative (sorry for throwing out an ‘academic’ word) project.
@118, I have been neither vicious nor have I engaged in any ad hominem attacks. If you are unclear about this, you can research what those words mean.
I have never met the author. Never been in the same room with him as far as I know.
My problem with the author’s essay is that it exploits the present marriage equality debate to present an unrelated (and largely incoherent) agenda in which I have no stake or interest. This offends me because marriage equality is very dear to me and my family.
I have read the author’s words carefully, I assure you, and to the degree that they are coherent, I understand them. The author explicitly disparages the marriage equality struggle without actually asking for any meaningful substitute. “Revolutionizing the heart,” whatever that is supposed to mean, will not magically translate into some other bill that will achieve what I hope SB 6239 will.
It would be very simple for the author to present an alternative argument, but he does not. “EXPAND the very definition of family” is a phrase that may sound non-conformist and revolutionary to you, but what does it actually mean? Neither you nor the author have actually presented an argument at all, other than that you’re not too keen on marriage equality because capitalism or some such bullshit. Oh, and you don’t conform to some standard or other. Bully for you.
I, on the other hand, am very keen on marriage equality, and I have coherently laid out at least half a dozen reasons why the issue will make a practical difference to me, Mr. Meat Weapon, and our beloved adopted daughter. You haven’t responded to any of those questions, by the way (which makes it super easy for me to dominate the conversation). Your objection to my posts is that they are “viciously ad hominem,” which they are not. I’m serious. You can look it up and stuff. Condescension is the worst I’m guilty of.
In short, it is entirely possible to object to the content of an essay, point out the various ways in which it fails intellectually, and dismiss it as claptrap (a word another poster used and which is entirely appropriate in this case), without being vicious or engaging in ad hominem attacks. Honest to gosh.
@118, expand the definition of family? Can you define that for me, please? I’m thinking of something like a household community, which may or may not include some romantic/erotic partnerships, and may or may not include the raising of children. Is that something like what you mean?
@124 ” Can you define that for me, please?”
Oh! It’s too much to ask! Why are you oppressing F4T with your demands for conformity to heteronormative standards of reason? All you have is viciousness and personal attacks! All he is saying is radicalization of hearts defeats slavery! If you would only read his words again and again and again you would understand!
My sock-puppet-o-meter has gone way off the charts.
He explicitly says: “The flaw at the heart of “marriage equality” is that, in purporting to institutionalize (normalize) gay sex/partnerships, it produces but another universe of legally codified restrictions that excludes millions of other peoples. It legally codifies prejudice against people who are single and justifies it through the veneer of “gay rights.”
Then he writes: “The flaw at the heart of “marriage equality” is that it is not about opening the heart, but rather the privatization of it. Like DADT, it conscribes gays and lesbians into a tradition that underwrites the conditions of excluding millions of others from basic human rights like health care. How does this embody “equality”? I am less interested in re-defining the heart than I am in revolutionizing it.”
To me, that means that he is trying to expand the definition of “family” outside of the 1+1 partner paradigm that is already failing miserably for straight people. He is saying that millions of people who do not fit into the 1+1 formula are denied rights that now gay people who subscribe to it are not (but have been up till now). My understanding of this is that people should all have the same privileges regardless of whether or not they are married and whether or not they are straight. This means we have to consider all sorts of different ways of thinking about family, and not just through blood or sex relations. It is a courageous argument that actually makes sense. Whether or not you are for or against gay marriage, it seems self evident to me that giving some rights to some people contradicts equality.
OMG, I just read it AGAIN and you’re totally right!