Queering Marriage: Challenging Family Formation in the United States

6. The Persistent Power of Marriage

104 Q The preceding chapters have largely focused on respondents’ narratives of navigating heteronormative associations, examining how same-sex couples contest or strategically mobilize aspects of heteronormativity through marriage. Heteronormativity, however, is not solely constituted by practice; it also determines practice. The institution of marriage, even if its heteronormative underpinnings are challenged , is likely to have significant impacts on the lives of lesbians and gays. In this chapter, I examine three ways the institution of marriage changes the lives of same-sex couples. I begin by looking at individual relationships. Although the men and women I interviewed had been together for many years when they married, some of them reported that marriage actually changed their relationship. To their great surprise , some respondents felt different after they were married—more committed and more connected to their partner. Their experiences illustrate the normative power of the institution to orient the behavior of its participants: we have ideas about how married couples are supposed to behave and, regardless of how they interacted prior to their San Francisco wedding, some respondents felt the weight of those expectations after their ceremonies. of course, many more respondents insisted that marriage did not change their relationship, but they experienced the normative power of marriage in other ways. Marriage, as a status, orients the behavior of others. It comes with a set of social expectations about how people outside the marriage, both familiars and strangers, should treat the couple. Some respondents actively leveraged these social conventions, c h a p t e r 6 THE PERSISTENT POWER OF MARRIAGE The Persistent Power of Marriage 105 demanding that others treat their partner as they would a differentsex spouse. others found themselves on the receiving end of changed behavior without making any effort. Across my interviews, I heard stories from respondents about how their newly acquired status as married compelled a cascade of changes in their everyday lives. The emergence of these apparent spoils of normativity absent respondents’ intent demonstrates the potency of marital status to cue the legitimacy of family relationships, and thus the deep connection between heteronormativity and marriage. Marriage itself does not necessarily change these couples (and their families), but it does change the way both the law and society interact with them. In orienting behavior, both within and with these marriages, marrying introduced new scripts into respondents’ lives. Legal same-sex marriage also holds the possibility of displacing existing scripts, particularly those used to celebrate commitment. Research on commitment ceremonies shows that many same-sex couples already borrow heavily from the familiar wedding script of one couple, an official, and a gathering of family and friends (Hull 2006; Lewin 1998). However, among my respondents, I also find evidence of rich diversity in commitment scripts, including no formal commitment ceremony and ceremonies that take place exclusively between the two members of the couple. With access to legal marriage, it is unlikely that many of these scripts will continue to feel legitimate. State-sanctioned marriage may emerge as the single, accepted script. We should anticipate that legal marriage will compel changes in what forms are considered legitimate ways of recognizing lesbian and gay couples’ commitments, reducing the variety of ways partnership is recognized. In these three ways, I find evidence for the cultural power of marriage to change the everyday lives of gay and lesbian couples and to establish a normative trajectory for their commitments. Although these couples are outside of the heteronormative ideal by virtue of their partner choice, in marriage they are subject to existing patterns of social behavior. Lesbian and gay couples do not change these patterns through their participation in marriage. These experiences of normativity among same-sex couples married in San Francisco— even though their marriages’ legality was short lived—underscore the tenacity of the relationship between marriage and heteronormativity. 106 Queering Marriage It Changed My Relationship To a person, the individuals I spoke with described themselves as fully committed before their San Francisco weddings. Yet despite their previous felt commitment, several respondents remarked incredulously that marriage had changed their relationship. For some, it made them feel their commitment more deeply; for others, it made the relationship feel more stable, creating what Andrew Cherlin (2004) has called enforceable trust; and for still others, it allowed them and their relationship to open up and grow. They did not articulate these as reasons for entering marriage in the first place, nor did they...