brilliance from subjective
Oct. 22nd, 2008 06:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adrienmundiNote: I'm reposting this not as a for/against kind of argument, but with the hope of widening the discourse around the question of assimilation, specifically of g/l marriage mainstreaming. I'm not against any form of mutually agreed upon relationship, but I have serious issues with marriage and the state, and am deeply concerned about it being the sole entry point for access to privileges denied others.
Talking Points for Those Rejecting/Critiquing State-Sanctioned Marriage:
1. limiting of rights and benefits -- Same-sex marriage would extend rights and state benefits (like shared health insurance, immigration/citizenship status, and access to certain welfare benefits) to those in "standard" two-person, conjugal, ostensibly monogamous relationships. These rights continue to be withheld from all other relationship and family structures.
2. false image of nuclear family as u.s. norm -- The majority of households in the U.S. do not conform to the nuclear family standard. Blended and extended families, single-parent households, and siblings/friends/elderly folks who live together & serve as each other's primary caretakers are just some of the many forms of family that do not benefit from rights extended to married couples. Creating an idealized image of the nuclear family (whether gay or straight) may likely make it even more difficult for other family structures to gain state recognition.
3. phasing out of domestic partnership -- Currently, non-normative and unmarried couples/families can often access rights and benefits through domestic partnership. Yet in Massachusetts, after same-sex marriage was legalized, many corporations and organizations eliminated domestic partner benefits, assuming they were no longer needed. This results in many people -- of all sexual orientations -- actually losing access to benefits they previously had & essentially forced into marriage to retain them.
4. marriage as tool of state coercion and control -- Marriage is historically and currently wielded by the state as a coercive tool, particularly in cases where individuals need access to healthcare, immigration, and welfare benefits. For example, under Temporary Aid for Needy Families (TANF), many states offer extra welfare benefits to single mothers who marry the biological father of their children, regardless of whether this relationship is desired or beneficial. (See Gwendolyn Mink's article "From Welfare to Wedlock" for further info.) Thus, particularly for the most marginalized, marriage can be a form of violence and deprivation, rather than a source of love, support and liberation.
5. further privatization of social services -- Naming marriage as the primary access point for rights and state benefits often elides the ways these rights and benefits are increasingly privatized, and gives the state more leverage to withhold them from unmarried people. Rather than serving as a first step to more access for everyone (as is commonly argued), state-sanctioned marriage severely limits the number of people who can gain access, by further attaching benefits to a privileged class of people. The focus on marriage as the gateway to equality draws attention away from broader struggles towards goals like universal healthcare and social services for all. (In fact, as Nancy Polikoff's book Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage demonstrates, there are numerous local laws already in place around the country that grant access to state benefits without reliance on marriage. Yet instead of working to expand these laws, marriage is positioned as the only viable access point.)
6. reliance on economic privilege -- The argument that same-sex marriage would allow queers to extend their health insurance, retirement funds, and other state benefits to their partners assumes that they have these things in the first place. This argument assumes a particular level of class privilege that bolsters the myth that queers are all wealthy and erases the ways poverty and classism damage many queers and queer families.
7. increased state surveillance and regulation of bodies and sexual behaviors -- State-sanctioned marriage serves in part as a way for the state to regulate sexual behavior. Rather than a step towards liberation, marriage actually allows the state increased power over our sexual lives, our relationships and family structures, and our bodily autonomy. If the queer movement in the U.S. is said to have initially congealed around resistance to police brutality and state surveillance/regulation of queer bodies and sexual behavior (e.g. at Stonewall & similar queer uprisings), the current marriage movement actually invites the state to further track and regulate our bodies, families and sexual relationships.
8. erasure of queer political and familial alternatives -- Queer movements in the U.S. have a long history of creating vibrant and innovative family and relationship structures, in direct response to a heteronormative society that privileges the nuclear family and denies/demonizes all other models of the family (think queers exiled or ostracized from their families of birth, creating their own families and support networks, etc). The current insistence on access to same-sex marriage (which remains limited to two-partner relationships that essentially mimic the heterosexual nuclear family) obscures this history and rejects non-normative models of family in favor of pushing queers to conform to heteronormative values and family formations.
9. demonization of marginalized & non-normative relationships -- The rhetoric of the same-sex marriage movement typically demonizes, rejects and shuns all other family and relationship structures, promising conservative voters and state institutions that same-sex marriage will not lead to the legitimation of multiple-partner or other "deviant" kinds of relationships. Rhetoric that relies on relationship longevity and monogamous fidelity serves to idealize and privilege certain "normal" relationships at the expense of all others, in an effort to convince the state and conservative voters that queers are non-threatening and worthy of rights. "Good" gays (generally defined as long-term, monogamous, middle-class, not-overtly-sexual couples) gain rights, benefits, and state & community recognition only through an overt and continual promise to deny these things to "deviant" queers.
10. polarization of queer and allied communities and politics -- By reducing the conversation around marriage to "yes" or "no," the above complexities are typically erased, leaving unquestioned the institution of marriage itself, the proliferation of state violence against marginalized communities, and the increased privatization of social services. Also erased are the complexities of queer politics altogether, leaving little room for queers and allies to speak against state-sanctioned marriage without being framed as homophobic (for those who are or are presumed to be straight) or as detrimental to "the movement" or even as suffering from internalized homophobia. Queers and allies who criticize state-sanctioned marriage are not only silenced on a political level, but may also find themselves ostracized from queer communities.
--
Further questions for discussion:
* Is it just a coincidence that same-sex marriage has reached this level of national attention at the same time that the U.S. remains deeply entrenched in war? How is the idealized family mobilized by the state to promote war and bolster support for military goals? Why do marriage and military service so often form the most prominent goals of mainstream lgbt politics, and what forms of violence are obscured by this?
* What assumptions are being made in the argument that gaining same-sex marriage rights mean more "choice" for everyone? In what ways is marriage already "chosen" for many of us, through abstinence-only education, through distribution of welfare benefits, through immigration policy, through privatized healthcare, and through many of our own heteronormative families, schools, workplaces, religious institutions, etc? Will the legalization of same-sex marriage really enable more "choice," or will it result in even more social and political pressure to marry?
* What kinds of normalization are at work in the fact that advocating for same-sex marriage has become a primary marker of the good straight ally? How does this limit political options for non-queers? Does this imply that straight people really just want queers to be "just like them"? How does it further solidify the notion that marriage is right, good, normal, should be desired by all, and is the inevitable & ideal goal for any sexual relationship?
* Why is it that the same-sex marriage movement has garnered a level of widespread networking, public awareness, media attention and funding that other political issues relevant to queer folks (war & militarization, violence against trans people and queer people of color, universal healthcare, pathologization and imprisonment of "deviant" queer & trans people, etc) don't have? Is the marriage movement (and the rhetoric used in it) more palatable? What is going to happen to all of those political networks, organizing strategies, media skills/contacts and funders once same-sex marriage is legalized? What is it about the institution and idea of marriage that leads so many people to believe this is the last step needed for queer equality?
Talking Points for Those Rejecting/Critiquing State-Sanctioned Marriage:
1. limiting of rights and benefits -- Same-sex marriage would extend rights and state benefits (like shared health insurance, immigration/citizenship status, and access to certain welfare benefits) to those in "standard" two-person, conjugal, ostensibly monogamous relationships. These rights continue to be withheld from all other relationship and family structures.
2. false image of nuclear family as u.s. norm -- The majority of households in the U.S. do not conform to the nuclear family standard. Blended and extended families, single-parent households, and siblings/friends/elderly folks who live together & serve as each other's primary caretakers are just some of the many forms of family that do not benefit from rights extended to married couples. Creating an idealized image of the nuclear family (whether gay or straight) may likely make it even more difficult for other family structures to gain state recognition.
3. phasing out of domestic partnership -- Currently, non-normative and unmarried couples/families can often access rights and benefits through domestic partnership. Yet in Massachusetts, after same-sex marriage was legalized, many corporations and organizations eliminated domestic partner benefits, assuming they were no longer needed. This results in many people -- of all sexual orientations -- actually losing access to benefits they previously had & essentially forced into marriage to retain them.
4. marriage as tool of state coercion and control -- Marriage is historically and currently wielded by the state as a coercive tool, particularly in cases where individuals need access to healthcare, immigration, and welfare benefits. For example, under Temporary Aid for Needy Families (TANF), many states offer extra welfare benefits to single mothers who marry the biological father of their children, regardless of whether this relationship is desired or beneficial. (See Gwendolyn Mink's article "From Welfare to Wedlock" for further info.) Thus, particularly for the most marginalized, marriage can be a form of violence and deprivation, rather than a source of love, support and liberation.
5. further privatization of social services -- Naming marriage as the primary access point for rights and state benefits often elides the ways these rights and benefits are increasingly privatized, and gives the state more leverage to withhold them from unmarried people. Rather than serving as a first step to more access for everyone (as is commonly argued), state-sanctioned marriage severely limits the number of people who can gain access, by further attaching benefits to a privileged class of people. The focus on marriage as the gateway to equality draws attention away from broader struggles towards goals like universal healthcare and social services for all. (In fact, as Nancy Polikoff's book Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage demonstrates, there are numerous local laws already in place around the country that grant access to state benefits without reliance on marriage. Yet instead of working to expand these laws, marriage is positioned as the only viable access point.)
6. reliance on economic privilege -- The argument that same-sex marriage would allow queers to extend their health insurance, retirement funds, and other state benefits to their partners assumes that they have these things in the first place. This argument assumes a particular level of class privilege that bolsters the myth that queers are all wealthy and erases the ways poverty and classism damage many queers and queer families.
7. increased state surveillance and regulation of bodies and sexual behaviors -- State-sanctioned marriage serves in part as a way for the state to regulate sexual behavior. Rather than a step towards liberation, marriage actually allows the state increased power over our sexual lives, our relationships and family structures, and our bodily autonomy. If the queer movement in the U.S. is said to have initially congealed around resistance to police brutality and state surveillance/regulation of queer bodies and sexual behavior (e.g. at Stonewall & similar queer uprisings), the current marriage movement actually invites the state to further track and regulate our bodies, families and sexual relationships.
8. erasure of queer political and familial alternatives -- Queer movements in the U.S. have a long history of creating vibrant and innovative family and relationship structures, in direct response to a heteronormative society that privileges the nuclear family and denies/demonizes all other models of the family (think queers exiled or ostracized from their families of birth, creating their own families and support networks, etc). The current insistence on access to same-sex marriage (which remains limited to two-partner relationships that essentially mimic the heterosexual nuclear family) obscures this history and rejects non-normative models of family in favor of pushing queers to conform to heteronormative values and family formations.
9. demonization of marginalized & non-normative relationships -- The rhetoric of the same-sex marriage movement typically demonizes, rejects and shuns all other family and relationship structures, promising conservative voters and state institutions that same-sex marriage will not lead to the legitimation of multiple-partner or other "deviant" kinds of relationships. Rhetoric that relies on relationship longevity and monogamous fidelity serves to idealize and privilege certain "normal" relationships at the expense of all others, in an effort to convince the state and conservative voters that queers are non-threatening and worthy of rights. "Good" gays (generally defined as long-term, monogamous, middle-class, not-overtly-sexual couples) gain rights, benefits, and state & community recognition only through an overt and continual promise to deny these things to "deviant" queers.
10. polarization of queer and allied communities and politics -- By reducing the conversation around marriage to "yes" or "no," the above complexities are typically erased, leaving unquestioned the institution of marriage itself, the proliferation of state violence against marginalized communities, and the increased privatization of social services. Also erased are the complexities of queer politics altogether, leaving little room for queers and allies to speak against state-sanctioned marriage without being framed as homophobic (for those who are or are presumed to be straight) or as detrimental to "the movement" or even as suffering from internalized homophobia. Queers and allies who criticize state-sanctioned marriage are not only silenced on a political level, but may also find themselves ostracized from queer communities.
--
Further questions for discussion:
* Is it just a coincidence that same-sex marriage has reached this level of national attention at the same time that the U.S. remains deeply entrenched in war? How is the idealized family mobilized by the state to promote war and bolster support for military goals? Why do marriage and military service so often form the most prominent goals of mainstream lgbt politics, and what forms of violence are obscured by this?
* What assumptions are being made in the argument that gaining same-sex marriage rights mean more "choice" for everyone? In what ways is marriage already "chosen" for many of us, through abstinence-only education, through distribution of welfare benefits, through immigration policy, through privatized healthcare, and through many of our own heteronormative families, schools, workplaces, religious institutions, etc? Will the legalization of same-sex marriage really enable more "choice," or will it result in even more social and political pressure to marry?
* What kinds of normalization are at work in the fact that advocating for same-sex marriage has become a primary marker of the good straight ally? How does this limit political options for non-queers? Does this imply that straight people really just want queers to be "just like them"? How does it further solidify the notion that marriage is right, good, normal, should be desired by all, and is the inevitable & ideal goal for any sexual relationship?
* Why is it that the same-sex marriage movement has garnered a level of widespread networking, public awareness, media attention and funding that other political issues relevant to queer folks (war & militarization, violence against trans people and queer people of color, universal healthcare, pathologization and imprisonment of "deviant" queer & trans people, etc) don't have? Is the marriage movement (and the rhetoric used in it) more palatable? What is going to happen to all of those political networks, organizing strategies, media skills/contacts and funders once same-sex marriage is legalized? What is it about the institution and idea of marriage that leads so many people to believe this is the last step needed for queer equality?
