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.
@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.