Queering Marriage: Challenging Family Formation in the United States

4. Marrying for Love

65 Q 65 In Robert’s mind, marrying in San Francisco was about making a political statement. In Steven’s mind, it was about securing legal and social recognition for his relationship. For most of my respondents, these two meanings for marriage resonated strongly. They wanted to challenge the unequal social position they found themselves in because of heteronormativity and, simultaneously, many wanted to gain the privileges marriage bestows. In complicated ways, these individuals acknowledged the presumption of heterosexuality and the social preferences for normative behavior, sometimes pushing against this system and sometimes wanting to be on the inside. Separate from these, a final set of meanings for marriage that cropped up in my interviews ignored normativity all together, insisting that same-sex couples are no different from different-sex couples. In these descriptions of marriage , marriage is (only) about love. About one-third of respondents explained their participation as stemming from a general cultural expectation that, simply put, when you love someone, you get married, regardless of whether they are the same sex as you or a different one. These participants echoed the contemporary meanings for marriage commonly found among differentsex couples, including the belief that marriage is about emotional satisfaction (Giddens 1991), personal achievement (Cherlin 2004), and finding oneself (Bellah et al. 2008). This suggests that gay couples have much in common with their committed straight counterparts. Some advocates of marriage equality have embraced the apparent similarity of meanings for marriage across different sexual identities, c h a p t e r 4 MARRYING FOR LOVE 66 Queering Marriage arguing that same-sex marriage should be legal because gay and lesbian couples are just like straight couples. This framing is consistent with strategic moves by the gay and lesbian movement historically to emphasize their similarity to, rather than difference from, the straight majority (Bernstein 1997; Bernstein and Taylor 2013a) and fits into a broader set of assimilationist politics (Ghaziani 2011). The invocation of love and commitment as meanings for marriage among same-sex couples should not be a surprise. These are the contemporary cultural norms for marriage and, as with all cultural norms, have influence beyond just those able to marry (Swidler 2001). Examining this borrowing helps us trace the influence of cultural norms and illustrates the extent to which norms established for heterosexual marriage have permeated definitions of marriage among those excluded from the institution. As with the other meanings for marriage offered by respondents, the idea of marrying for love did not occur in a vacuum; these individualistic understandings of marriage appeared alongside political, social, and legal meanings for the weddings. But, unlike the other meanings for marriage discussed so far, they were not accompanied by an engagement with heteronormativity. By avoiding the concept of heteronormativity all together in this meaning for marriage, this argument effectively asserts that (some) gay and lesbian couples are normative. In so doing, this strategy ultimately circumvents but does not destabilize heteronormativity. In her analysis of legal successes by the gay and lesbian movement, Mary Bernstein (2001) argues that campaigns that preserve heteronormativity are more successful, leading us to interpret this focus on love as a potentially winning strategy. However, I suggest it may win the battle but not the war. Positioning same-sex couples as “the same” as heterosexual couples risks reinforcing , rather than undermining, heteronormativity. Such framing tacitly accepts a (heteronormative) standard of coupledom that does not impact the broader systems of inequality produced by heteronormativity . Instead, as Celia Kitzinger and Sue Wilkinson (2004) argue about claims that gay parents are the same as straight parents, it papers over ways in which the lived experience of being gay (or being a gay parent) matters in the experience of marriage (and parenting). In this chapter , I discuss the ways marriage equality advocates invoked a meaning for marriage grounded in love and some participants’ support for this Marrying for Love 67 understanding of marriage. But, I suggest, even as this shared meaning for marriage exists as part of a cultural norm for marriage, it is fundamentally false: gay couples are not the same as straight couples. To this point, I offer evidence from respondents’ experiences in city hall applying for licenses, evidence that illustrates ways in which same-sex marriage, in fact, is not like different-sex marriage, including the length of the lines, the materials given each couple by city hall, and even the application form itself. When...