Right now, the headless monster known as the gay rights "movement" is protesting all across California against a proposition which has already passed. I find the sight of people campaigning two weeks after an election sort of comical, but I won't burn through the goodwill of the handful of readers I do have so quickly: I support equality. The main reason I'm not reacting to to prop 8's passing with shock and hysteria is because I see this as a lost battle in larger war. First of all, there is a strong-sounding argument to be made to the California supreme court, so it probably won't even be enacted. Second, if it is, we'll have this same battle again in 2010, and in the long term demographics suggest that the 80s/90s culture war is losing its fizzle and primacy in American politics. Lastly, as far as I understand it, most of the rights and benefits of marriage are federally derived, and so the practical effect of state recognition or state bans is minimal (which suggests that there should by a national movement to press the sympathetic president elect into making good on his promise to recognize gay marriage federally).
But the bigger problem I have with all of this is that I don't actually support gay marriage, in the sense that I don't support any kinds of marriage the way the institution is presently constructed. What strikes me about the laundry list of rights and benefits of contemporary marriage is not how many rights gay people don't have but how many rights married people do have. These are admittedly laws I don't fully understand, but it seems that many of them should not, as a matter of principle, be limited only to people who are married (such as extended hospital visiting hours for spouses). That is, to talk about equal rights for gay people is a little bit of a red herring in the context of marriage, as it takes for granted another inequality: the one between married and single people.
Furthermore, on a broader, historical level, the evangelicals are right: marriage is traditionally defined between a man and a woman, the latter typically not being asked about the matter, and the whole institution existing mainly for the patriarchal transfer and maintenance of wealth and power. This 'substructure' emphasis may be a bit overdramatic, but pretending that marriage is all about the recent invention of "true love" is simply ignorant. The modern gay rights movement has focused on gaining access to two of the most conservative and constitutively homophobic institutions in society: marriage and the military. They do this not even in an attempt to subvert them, as the religious right suggests, but on their own terms, for the sake of monogamy/'true love' in the former and for serving one's country in the latter. Why?
Some proponents of gay marriage like Dan Savage understand the institutional aspect of marriage but claim that it doesn't matter anymore:
Through the lens of Savage's cosmopolitan sex life, even straight marriage doesn't mean anything anymore (I use cosmopolitan as a critical term, not in the sarah-paliny-sense). But marriage is not just an eclectic collection of idiosyncratic arrangements, all individually defined. It's an institution engraved in the legal code, it structures social relations, and many critics would argue it is a fundamental support to capitalism. (And consumerism - as evinced by the $30 billion per year wedding industry which includes everything from dresses and gift registries, to wedding planning, to Savage's getting "married in a tank full of dolphins," to mass weddings and reality tv shows, to, of course, blood diamonds).
So, in my view, the debate over gay marriage is not really between "true love" vs. the "moral sanctity of marriage." Rather, it is between unhinged consumer capitalism vs. bigotry. Similarly, the debate over gays in the military is about patriotic violence vs. bigotry. Do I have to choose sides here? And if, despite my vote and financial contribution to the campaign, I don't have the enthusiasm to stand with the FUCK PROP 8 types nor even read their emails, does that make me a bigot?
The eventual success of gay marriage will be either a Pyrrhic victory - if in the process the potential for a queer movement is lost - or a somewhat meaningless one, as it will achieve equality only by accepting all sorts of other inequalities.
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This post got too long, which prevents me from getting apoplexy while discussing modernity's most attractive fiction: "true love." For those of you who have a Harper's subscription, I would recommend this book review by Laura Kipnis. A couple good quotes:
UPDATE: This is more like it: when I say bread and butter I mean bread and fucking butter.
UPDATE2: Gay marriage supporters quote Walter Benjamin, reach new levels of stupidity
Furthermore, on a broader, historical level, the evangelicals are right: marriage is traditionally defined between a man and a woman, the latter typically not being asked about the matter, and the whole institution existing mainly for the patriarchal transfer and maintenance of wealth and power. This 'substructure' emphasis may be a bit overdramatic, but pretending that marriage is all about the recent invention of "true love" is simply ignorant. The modern gay rights movement has focused on gaining access to two of the most conservative and constitutively homophobic institutions in society: marriage and the military. They do this not even in an attempt to subvert them, as the religious right suggests, but on their own terms, for the sake of monogamy/'true love' in the former and for serving one's country in the latter. Why?
Some proponents of gay marriage like Dan Savage understand the institutional aspect of marriage but claim that it doesn't matter anymore:
The problem for opponents of gay marriage isn't that gay people are trying to redefine marriage but that straight people have redefined marriage to a point that it no longer makes any sense to exclude gay couples. Gay people can love, gay people can commit. Some of us even have children. So why can't we get married?... Ultimately gay people only want what straight people already have: the right for each couple to define marriage for themselves.
Through the lens of Savage's cosmopolitan sex life, even straight marriage doesn't mean anything anymore (I use cosmopolitan as a critical term, not in the sarah-paliny-sense). But marriage is not just an eclectic collection of idiosyncratic arrangements, all individually defined. It's an institution engraved in the legal code, it structures social relations, and many critics would argue it is a fundamental support to capitalism. (And consumerism - as evinced by the $30 billion per year wedding industry which includes everything from dresses and gift registries, to wedding planning, to Savage's getting "married in a tank full of dolphins," to mass weddings and reality tv shows, to, of course, blood diamonds).
So, in my view, the debate over gay marriage is not really between "true love" vs. the "moral sanctity of marriage." Rather, it is between unhinged consumer capitalism vs. bigotry. Similarly, the debate over gays in the military is about patriotic violence vs. bigotry. Do I have to choose sides here? And if, despite my vote and financial contribution to the campaign, I don't have the enthusiasm to stand with the FUCK PROP 8 types nor even read their emails, does that make me a bigot?
The eventual success of gay marriage will be either a Pyrrhic victory - if in the process the potential for a queer movement is lost - or a somewhat meaningless one, as it will achieve equality only by accepting all sorts of other inequalities.
--
This post got too long, which prevents me from getting apoplexy while discussing modernity's most attractive fiction: "true love." For those of you who have a Harper's subscription, I would recommend this book review by Laura Kipnis. A couple good quotes:
The premise that love is a good enough reason for embarking on marriage took grip only in the late eighteenth century, and then only in Western Europe and North America, concomitant with other changes during the era, from the spread of a market economy and rise of individualism to the invention of the novel...
Today, submitting to such regulations seems entirely natural, but let's not forget that licensing our life decisions remains a tool of modern population management. So the next time you file for divorce, amidst the angst and sense of personal failure, take a moment to consider why the state wants to dictate the conditions under which love's dissolution may occur.
UPDATE: This is more like it: when I say bread and butter I mean bread and fucking butter.
UPDATE2: Gay marriage supporters quote Walter Benjamin, reach new levels of stupidity
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2 comments:
you know i agree with much of this, and the ideas are not remotely new. i read a book five or so years ago by a gay writer arguing that the gay marriage movement destroys the potential for radicalism, etc. i also remember our class discussing this last fall. absolutely true. but lots of gay people don't feel the way you or i might about critiquing the institution, capitalism, etc, etc. plenty of people grew up wanting a cake and bridesmaids dresses, and figuring out they were gay didn't change that desire. lots of gay people are quite conservative in lots of ways! i'm all for a broader movement to problematize marriage and consumer capitalism, but i find it unfair and absurd to make it the responsibility of/do it on the backs of a group of people that, of course, isn't a group.
furthermore, what do you think yesterday's nationwide protests were about if not to "press the sympathetic president elect into making good on his promise to recognize gay marriage federally?" other things as well, such as correcting the perception (held by some friends of mine, even) that this doesn't really matter and isn't really worthy of attention, and providing an outlet for the shock and grief of those of us who didn't believe it could pass. but my friends who protested in chicago and dc and brooklyn didn't their presence would affect prop 8 so much as it would push a reexamination on the federal level.
You're right that none of what I'm saying is new, and that perhaps what we are seeing now is a national movement to address what seems to be, on the legal level, a national problem. This new national movement might organize for rights/benefits that are substantive versus symbolic - a shocking thought, I know.
More to the point, the post was mostly a way for me to passionately argue for my own dispassion. The terms in which this debate is structured - and the lack of self awareness of those terms - leave me disaffected. I'm not just operating on an apolitical theoretical level here. I find the issues involved in gay marriage less important than many other issues. Hospital visitation rights might not matter so much if you don't have healthcare. Married people file for taxes jointly to pay for no-bid contracts to corporations that don't pay taxes at all. Marriage is a civil right - and so is habeas corpus.
I'm not, in an "unfair" way, asking supporters of gay marriage to take up all these issues, but this is why some of us believe that the issue of gay marriage "doesn't really matter and isn't really worthy of attention." The Bush republicans tried to amend the constitution to ban gay marriage not expecting it to pass and I don't think they even really cared, at least the more cynical/strategic ones. They've known for years the culture wars are largely a convenient sideshow to distract people while they paved the way for a type of corporate soft fascism.
It will be one in which everyone - gay or straight - is equally free to celebrate their engagement with a blood diamond or bomb an afghan wedding. Or I should say: "equal," but not free.
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