Gay Marriage to Alfred: Your Thoughts

i dont think that is the queer mission & i dont think that's what i'm arguing. i like queerness as a concept--in opposition to heteronormativity--and i dont think thats limited to people who identify as gay. i think it's about opening up the options that people can imagine--whatever their sexuality, whatever their preference. & then making sure that those options are legally protected.

gay marriage, in that sense, is (to me) a conservative ideal, as most marriage is a conservative ideal. it's a right that i think should be protected & fought for but not one that inspires me in the least.

and i think that sexuality CAN BE and IS for many people the impetus to engage in that struggle or that lifestyle or that imagining or uh whatever.

Also, let's put it another way: I think your sense of "straight people" is weirdly prejudiced. Straight people are not homogeneous. To be "just like straight people" means to have the legally and socially recognized right to be yourself. I mean it's more complicated that that, of course, but it's really hard, in 2008, to see straight people as inherently heteronormative -- even if some are, maybe most!

― Casuistry, Friday, October 10, 2008 8:26 PM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is what i was trying to say

ok, so maybe we do disagree cuz i believe that rejection of a social institution is totally a critical response!!!

& i also believe that conflating "being just like straight people" and "having the legally and socially recognized right to be yourself" is seriously problematic!

i think considering the number of gay people who wish to be married, its really hard to ascribe 'heteronormative' to it any more tbh.

its like opposing marriage on feminist grounds bcuz a ring used to symbolize ownership

XXXP, pterodactyl, aren't you stigmatizing marriage as a conservative convention? i see it more as value neutral - it can be a radical relationship or a heteronormative relationship. Part of the gay marriage argument for me (as a straight male) is not just about opening it up to non-heterosexuals, but opening it up to a variety of challenges and new meanings. I don't consider my marriage a standard patriarchal relationship (and I don't think my wife does either). Gay marriage isn't just about "giving permission" to homosexuals to marry. It's about suggesting a new dynamic in what could be generally considered a conservative institute.

+ obviously I recognize that as a married, straight male I have a stake in this position.

xp exactly

mordy, that argument is why, in the end, i am for gay marriage. but i think that in the vast majority of cases, marriage is not about suggesting or creating any kind of new dynamic.

also i have trouble with the idea of marriage as a radical relationship--state sanctioned radicalism ? particularly in the current environment where anyone getting married knows that it is a state-sanctioned right that is ACTIVELY DENIED to other groups of people. including but perhaps not limited to the gays.

Well, marriage isn't historically a state sanctioned institute. It is now, but marriages have existed in radical contexts. Certain gnostic anti-establishment traditions for example have marriages, etc. (Not to derail the conversation.) I don't think we disagree tho - I have trouble with the same thing. And certainly it's problematic when you are married and deny others the right. I don't know if my contributing to defeating Prop 8 is just a way of alleviating my guilt over that problem, or in fact an appropriate way to validate my own marriage. Obv it's something on my mind.

See I have no problem with institutions. I don't see them as something that needs to be, I dunno, railed against, so much as used. Marriage is sortof a contract, on a legal level it really is just about establishing a position in which certain terms and rights become applicable, but it is used to become a declaration of love a very personal thing and a very beautiful thing and is sortof radical when you think about how it subverts this legal institution with private narratives. I don't really see a problem with this really. The same thing for really all institutions, so long as we're free to reject their terms, and really, nobody's forcing you and your gal-pal to get hitched.

and is sortof radical when you think about how it subverts this legal institution with private narratives.

I really like this idea.

i want to know/understand what exactly the grounds are that ppl should be pushing, in terms of federal action/large picture politics, that isn't marriage. whats the better pathway? sullivan's 'politics of homosexuality' made a pretty strong argument i think for marriage being the central platform for the wide view

xpost

You would, breeder! ; )

Tsk. I use birth control. The potentiality of progeny != breeding. :P

Birth control is not as effective as homosexuality in preventing pregnancy.

http://www.nerve.com/CS/blogs/scanner/2008/junior.jpg

c'est la vie. so i'm not perfect. :P

folks we got ourselves a nice spectrum here from reformers to radicals, some want to reorient marriage from within, others want no part of it . . .

I think if you're looking for a case for "why rail against institutions?" you could take a peek at the early Deleuze essay "Instincts and Institutions", which makes a pretty portable ideology-critique case against the ways that institutions legitimize themselves as the best/most inevitable/universal endpoint through which to satisfy our natural instincts. Deleuze's point is that institutions hinge their legitimacy on our instincts in order to survive, but our instincts don't require institutional support in order to be satisfied. This makes the "sooner or later you'll get over your sour grapes and join us" line about marriage all the more maddening and symptomatic of the trouble with institutions. I would also point out that your sense that institutions are there for you to be used is probably not unrelated to who you are/where you live/your demographic. I doubt that, say, a Palestinian living in Israel or an African American in the 50s in the USA would have the same feeling that they could 'take or leave' institutions, that institutions were just something to tip one's hat to or not.

The thing is, Deleuze is wrong.

also i have trouble with the idea of marriage as a radical relationship--state sanctioned radicalism ?

I have trouble with the idea of the state as something that is always already in an antagonistic relationship to the people who constitute it -- the situation is clearly more nuanced than that. I have trouble with the word "radicalism" being used interchangeably with something like "awesomeness" -- the Bush administration has been wildly radical.

particularly in the current environment where anyone getting married knows that it is a state-sanctioned right that is ACTIVELY DENIED to other groups of people. including but perhaps not limited to the gays.

Do you also reject health insurance, knowing it is actively denied to way more people than gay marriage is?

Anyway this is getting more heated than I really want it to, and I'm not helping. And, I don't disagree with you, but it seems like you're letting your disinterest in marriage as a viable institution to engage in dictate what you think other people should feel is right for them, or how you think society as a whole should go. But you also are ultimately OK with gay marriage. So. La la! It's all fine.

For instance, no one here is making that argument about "sooner or later you'll join us", and it's maybe hard to say that there has been pressure on gay people from the straight world to legalize gay marriage so they could get married and be just like straights already.

What is the "sooner or later you'll join us" argument?

yr being too kind imo.

This makes the "sooner or later you'll get over your sour grapes and join us" line about marriage all the more maddening and symptomatic of the trouble with institutions.

As far as I can tell, this line doesn't plague straight people nearly as much as it did 30 years ago; has the queer movement helped homo-normativize the straight "community"?

Deleuze is right. It's just the wrong Deleuze being quoted. A rhizomatic approach to marriage, ala A Thousand Plateaus, could potentially be very useful. There's no one particular entry point or exit point, but a variety that is always changing. No two heterosexual marriages are the same, and there's no reason to believe that a homosexual marriage would be the same either.

It's always the wrong Deleuze being quoted! Sigh. But that does seem more sensible. That's the fun thing with Deleuze, I guess, you can mine for sensible quotes.

(Also... I am being too kind? Is that... a bad thing? I'm pro-kindness, usually.)

i much prefer marginalizing your enemies

Apropos of something, Deleuze was very interested in a variety of holes. Bataille may be relevant here too... (Sorry! I'm being immature!)

kindness is hot

why is everyone talking about gay people tonight? is it gay week? it's leather weekend in nyc. same thing?

Probably cause of Connecticut, I'd imagine?

some of our best friends are gay, dude

some of my best gays are dudes, friend.

I'm not saying that Deleuze's account is the only account of institutions worth knowing about, or that his account is complete. Obviously if you're really interested in the topic then you read the work of the so-called "New Institutionalists" (a cluster of historians and sociologists I just learned a few weeks ago about, folks like March, Olsen, Peter Hall, Rosemary Taylor, etc. who study the enduring forms of institutions via all sorts of metrics) But institutions qua institutions aren't a great locus for transformation at the hands of particular individuals within them because of their slow metabolism, their very capacity to endure past and across generations, lifespans. They endure because of a glacial sluggishness, and yeah, they still change, duh. But they're not the only game in town.

xpost

word?

i don't really think about getting married that much anymore. i don't remember if i ever did, actually! i'm happy in my relationship as it is, so while the idea that i can't bothers me when it comes up, it doesn't on a daily basis.

although you know what sucks, is the money. i have to spend money on weddings too often for me to never have the opportunity to get a cuisinart or a vacuum as a gift.

damn i miss having a cuisinart.

solution: rob your married friends.

geez my one friend, she had like 4 parties to celebrate the whole thing. i was done!

so sur, i know you're not a playa, but don't you crush a lot?

hmm. ya? crushing is good i guess. glad you know i'm not a playa tho

haha sorry xoxo

lol no rly :) no need

But institutions qua institutions aren't a great locus for transformation at the hands of particular individuals within them because of their slow metabolism, their very capacity to endure past and across generations, lifespans.

Yeah but... gay marriage seems like an organized thing? Involving many individuals?

It's like people at church: We have this model that it's a top-down sort of thing, where the Pope says jump and the Catholics say "how high", but of course the relationship between the institution and the people within it (and the Church is waaaaay more of a top-down kind of institution than marriage is!) is far more complicated than that, and the church-goers relationship within the church is rarely one of blind obedience, or even of complete definition; but it serves as maybe a set of axes from which we can plot our sense of identity, and we might be able to use it in ways that it doesn't expect to be used. (Compare, say, the entire history of the internet, an institution which has had a magnificent upheaval every few years -- and an institution more dispersed that Catholicism, but perhaps as less dispersed than marriage!)

i am going to my first gay wedding tomorrow!

I doubt that, say, a Palestinian living in Israel or an African American in the 50s in the USA would have the same feeling that they could 'take or leave' institutions, that institutions were just something to tip one's hat to or not.

Dude, that is just willful misreading of what I actually said right there. The provision is that we are free to accept or reject the institution, and I really don't think an institution like marriage is totalitarian, its just an institution that grants rights and privileges based on restructuring and reforming familial units. I would like to see this become a more homogenous entity, open to everyone, because culturally it is letigitmising. Obviously if you move away from society where institutions bear down upon citizens within that society or on another one, then that is just fucked, but we're not, so it's kindof strawman-ey

But institutions qua institutions aren't a great locus for transformation at the hands of particular individuals within them because of their slow metabolism, their very capacity to endure past and across generations, lifespans.

Pretty much what Casuistry said. I don't really feel like the point here is to transform the institution (I think the institution's "slow metabolism" is a steadying force within society) but an ideology for people to situate themselves within or against, and here there are so many, many shades of grey. That's why I think its more interesting for people, in all their various peopleness, to adopt the institutions and, regardless of changing them, (the introduction of gay marriage is a transformation, btw) for them to use them. Like I doubt Mordy gives a shit about owning his wife like a piece of property, he seems like too nice a guy, I'm pretty sure he and his wife just love one another and used marriage (srsly correct me if I'm wrong) as a way of regrouping their own family unit. But the fact is, this doesn't mean they have to have four kids or that he has to get a job and she'll look after them, there's all sorts of way that that family can work and it doesn't really allow for the prescription of an institution.

The institution becomes a tool, and that's what I figure it's for. It's like any institution: museums, churches, etc. their function can't really be prescribed in the cold theoretical way you're doing because it hinges too much on an individuals, and I would argue especially those who count themselves within that institution, and how they themselves actually behave, with and against the prescription of the institution.

meant to italicise that quote in the middle, sorry.

i think gay marriage is bullshit--i think all marriage is bullshit. i was walking around christopher st this summer and some woman from fox news with a big camera wanted to interview me about the subject--i assume b/c i was the gayest person she could find in the village, but i declined.

it's a weird issue b/c i think it's so consumed the queer movement in the US that, at this point, if someone says theyre against gay marriage, it means they're homophobic. which made it hard to watch biden sidestep the question in the debate.

but in the end--why would i want to be part of your fucked up, heteronormative, historically misogynist tradition? so i can have my relationships okayed by straight people? whatevz.

― pterodactyl, Friday, October 10, 2008 11:11 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Just because *you* don't want to get married shouldn't mean that you or anyone else prevents my mother from marrying the woman she's been with since the 80s. As a married person, I'll tell you for me marriage is not about religion and it's not about being heteronormative or whatever, it's about becoming part of your partner's family. It's about your partner's parents becoming your parents, about your partner's siblings becoming your siblings. It may just be "in law" but it's more -- it's a feeling [queue "what a feeling"] You join two families. My mom has been with the same woman for so long, but when she said, "we're getting married!" I thought of her girlfriend differently, more like a step-mom. And I felt more secure that they will care for each other as they age. I've always understood that if my mom were to go first that her lady-friend would get the house but now she's her wife, it really sealed the deal, but people in other less tolerant families might not get that with a lesbian couple. There are so many good reasons to allow people to get married. That doesn't mean you have to.

Of course they got married in Oregon and now their marriage is no longer valid - it's just a civil union. It's a disappointment to them and to our family.

I'll also mention that the choice to get married was a very radical one for my mom's wife, because her family is not pro-gay and she had never officially come out to them. It provided a very healthy "good news" moment to finally talk to her mother and legitimize her relationship with my mother. They've lived together for 25 years and share a bedroom, but it's amazing how blind people can be when they don't want to admit that their child is a lesbian.

I'm wondering if more lesbians support gay marriage than gay men do, or if more women want to get married to each other than men do.