Against Marriage

Not everyone in the queer community embraces gay marriage. Here’s why.

When the Supreme Court handed down their decision on same-sex marriage, people all around the country started freaking out. There was laughter, tears, and shouts of joy. People ran through streets and office corridors yelling, “We did it!” They put their Facebook profile pictures through rainbow filters and posted ecstatic updates about how momentous this occasion was, how thrilled they were that justice and equality are finally here to stay.

Oddly, most of them were straight.

By the time I woke up on Friday June 26th, the ruling was already public, and the first text messages I saw were from heterosexual friends and family members congratulating me. Why are they congratulating me?, I thought. I’m not getting married. The only thing I’ve ever done for gay marriage is sleep with women.

This continued when I got to work. My straight colleagues were thrilled, but my gay friends didn’t even talk about it. We talked about Gay Pride and how we were going to navigate the shit show our neighborhood would become over the weekend. One friend’s plan was a day trip to the beach. Mine was Netflix. Marriage didn’t come up.

Naturally, brands got in on the action as soon as the decision was announced. Gatorade — that huge supporter of men’s ice skating and women’s softball — tweeted a bottle in rainbow colors. Tide tweeted rainbow socks in the shape of a heart. Chipotle tweeted a rainbow-wrapped burrito with the message, “¿Homo estas?” American Airlines, Jello, AT&T, Dove, Uggs, Miller, Maytag, IHOP, Smirnoff: They all came to us with their messages of love and hope, urging us to celebrate the moment by buying their shit. The media wasn’t far behind: Mother Jones, The New Republic, Buzzfeed, and Medium — this very website — all changed their social media avatars to rainbows. Hillary Clinton’s Twitter looked like it was hijacked by Lisa Frank.

Throughout the day, straight people kept extending their congratulations. I was hanging out in my backyard with a queer friend and my neighbor, a straight guy with a live-in girlfriend, came over to celebrate. He was so excited — he kept talking about how awesome this was and made a speech about how Justice Kennedy should be on Mount Rushmore. He didn’t seem to notice that my friend and I were less enthused than he was. Later, my landlord stopped me in the street. Big day!, he said. Congratulations.

At a queer house party later that night, I heard people bitching about their jobs and the heat wave and how the cost of rent is going up. I heard guys talking about ex boyfriends and girls talking about new girlfriends and a lot of people talking about the line for the bathroom. But I didn’t hear anyone talk about gay marriage.

As I walked home later, I saw boyfriends and their girlfriends taking selfies in the rainbow crosswalks just installed in my neighborhood in Seattle and overheard banter about how great today was, how it was a great day in American history, the day we finally embraced love for all. Gay marriage, it seemed, was a very big deal to straight people.

When my mom texted me the next day about how happy she was, I couldn’t be polite anymore. “Don’t give a fuck,” I responded. “But some of your best friends are gay!” she texted back. “They don’t give a fuck either,” I said.

If you’re a straight ally reading this, I imagine you might be surprised. What?!, you may be thinking. All homosexuals don’t support gay marriage?? No way! I don’t believe it! Well, it’s true, straight ally, we don’t all support gay marriage, and I’m beginning to think I understand what it must have been like for black people after Obama was elected. Did white people congratulate you on your victory without actually asking what you thought about Obama? I know how it feels.

My lack of enthusiasm about this historic decision by the Supreme Court should not be mistaken for disappointment in the judgment. Had the decision gone the other way, I would have been angry at the justices and ashamed of my country, and I do hope this ruling will go a long way towards ending homophobia in the future. It might not make anyone who is already homophobic any less so (let me know if your right-wing parents change their mind about the whole Hell thing all of a sudden), but hopefully kids raised in a society where gay people can be as legally married as straight people will be less weird about it when they grow up. And, of course, some queer folks are thrilled and surely wept as hard as our straight allies. (Who doesn’t tear up at stories of gay couples who’ve been together for 30 or 40 years and finally get the recognition that they want and deserve?) We’re all happy for our friends whose marriages are now recognized in all states, who won’t have to worry about hospital visitation rights or losing their children. These are very good things, and it’s about damn time. But the passage of gay marriage, while certainly a victory (as is anything that gets Antonin Scalia’s robes in a knot), leaves many gay people ambivalent. Some of us think it’s not the lack of gay marriage that is the problem; it’s marriage that’s the problem.

There are a lot of great things about being queer: We form tight communities based on nothing more than our common sexuality and we’re good at decorating and we’ve got cool haircuts. But one of the greatest things about being queer is that you are exposed to values and ideas that you might not encounter in mainstream culture. When marriage isn’t expected, when it’s not even an option, you stop thinking about it as the ultimate goal, and you’re free to explore alternate versions of romance, partnership, and family. You create the life that you want, and it doesn’t necessarily look like the American ideal. We have more partners, we settle down later in life, and we’re less likely to have children than straight people. And some of us like it this way.

We all know that the institution of marriage did not originate from love. “It really was not about the relationship between the man and the woman,” wrote Stephanie Coontz, the author of Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage. “It was a way of getting in-laws, of making alliances and expanding the family labor force.” In other words, it was about about resources, about money, about property. And thanks to benefits bestowed by the state to married couples — healthcare, tax incentives, inheritance benefits — it still is. But should entering into a legal partnership with another human should entitle you to more benefits than other people? I don’t think so.

The fact is, gay marriage may actually be bad for some queer folks. In states that have already passed gay marriage, some employers have done away with domestic partner benefits, so that if you were formerly able to, say, sign onto your partner’s insurance plan, now you have to get married first. But you shouldn’t have to be married to get affordable healthcare. You should get affordable healthcare because you are a human being.

The institution of marriage values the couple over the individual and over any other version of partnership. The final paragraph in Justice Kennedy’s opinion encapsulates this:

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.

“No union is more profound than marriage.” Really? Is there is something inherently profound about filing your taxes together? I don’t see it. “Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness,” Kennedy continued, as though those who choose not to marry, those who have multiple partners or none at all, are doomed to be lonely. I, for one, am not lonely, and even if I were, I doubt the blessing of the state would change that. As my friend Ken wrote on Facebook, “I’m happy for people who want to get married while also pointing out that I don’t really remember when the struggle for dignity and respect was predicated on conforming to ancient societal norms. This is a victory of sorts, but it also only affects a fraction of LGBTQ citizens, and mostly affluent white ones, at that. BUT SURE YES YAY FOR THEM.”

While the nation celebrates, marriage equality still doesn’t mean we are equal in the eyes of the law. As you weep with joy and wave your rainbow flag, queer people in 29 states can still be legally fired from their jobs or lose their homes simply for their sexuality. The Supreme Court decision does nothing to change this. Meanwhile, trans people are still marginalized, health insurance still doesn’t cover their medical care, and queer kids are still far more likely to be homeless and commit suicide than their straight peers. Makes the rainbow a little less bright, doesn’t it?

Despite my ambivalence, I am not discounting the possibility of marriage in my own life entirely. Ten years ago I would have said I would never work a nine-to-five and guess what I do Monday through Friday now. People tend to get more conservative as they get older, and it’s certainly possible that someday I will want or need the benefits of marriage. But the point is, I, like all queer people, have an opinion about this historic ruling, and so instead of uploading a rainbow profile pic and blindly congratulating us on our victory, you might want to actually start listening.