Wait—Why Get Married at All?

Though I am a queer person living in San Francisco, I did not
celebrate the California Supreme Court decision overturning the ban on
same-sex marriage. Nor will I join those who say, “I would never choose
to get married, but I think everyone should have the right.” Sorry,
honey—marriage is depressing, period. That means gay marriage,
too. And here’s why.

Gay marriage does nothing to address fundamental problems of
inequality. What is needed is universal access to basic necessities
such as housing, health care, food, and the benefits now obtained
through citizenship (like the right to stay in this country). Legalized
gay marriage means only that certain people in a specific type of
long-term relationship sanctioned by a state contract might be
able to access benefits. While marriage could confer inclusion under a
spouse’s health-care policy, it does nothing to provide such a policy.
Marriage might ensure hospital visitation rights, but not for anyone
without a spouse. Marriage may allow for inheritance rights between
spouses, but what if there is nothing to inherit?

For a long time, queers have married straight friends for
citizenship or health care, but this has never been enshrined as
“progress.” And even in the wake of California, the majority of
queers—single or coupled (but not desiring marriage), monogamous
or polyamorous, jobless or marginally employed—remain excluded
from the much-touted benefits of legalized gay marriage.

And let’s not forget the history of marriage as a legal method for
keeping property within specific dynasties (property that originally
included women and slaves). In fact, marriage still exists as a central
venue for spousal and child abuse—there’s a reason divorce is so
popular, and suicide attempts among queer teens so prevalent. If social
change is on the agenda, then the privileges associated with marriage
need to be challenged, not embraced.

In fact, the push for gay marriage has shifted advocacy away from
essential services such as HIV education, AIDS health care, drug
treatment, domestic-violence prevention, youth programs, trans health,
and homeless care—all crucial needs for far more queers than
marriage could ever be. Sure, for wealthy gays and lesbians with
country-club memberships, beach condos, and bulging stock portfolios,
gay marriage might just be that last thing standing in the way of “full
citizenship.” For everyone else, it’s a reallocation of resources in
the wrong direction, as local, state, and national nonprofits that used
to serve a variety of needs now focus the majority of their attention
on marriage.

And this pattern will undoubtedly continue, as millions of dollars
will be spent fighting an anti-gay-marriage constitutional amendment
that is going to be on the ballot in November in California, at a time
when social services are being scrapped across the country, and
especially in California.

Gay marriage is part of a larger agenda of assimilation that sees
the dominant markers of straight conformity—marriage, military
service, adoption, ordination into the priesthood, gentrification, and
consumerism—as the ultimate signs of gay success. Forget about
the original goals of gay liberation—forging sexual
self-determination, challenging police brutality, destroying
hierarchies, and ending all forms of oppression—the gay-marriage
“movement” declares that the pinnacle of achievement is access to this
defining straight privilege.

The spectacle around gay marriage draws attention away from critical
issues like ending U.S. wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, stopping massive
Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids across the country, and
challenging the never-ending assault on anyone living outside of
conventional norms. While many straight people are reaping the benefits
of gay liberation and discovering new ways of loving, lusting for, and
caring for one another, the gay-marriage movement is busy fighting for
a 1950s model of white-picket fence “we’re just like you” normalcy.

And that’s no reason to celebrate.

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (www
.mattildabernsteinsycamore.com) is most recently the
editor of an expanded second edition of That’s Revolting! Queer
Strategies for Resisting Assimilation (Soft Skull Press).