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.
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!