Gay marriage…not edgy enough for queers?

Today is the three year anniversary for the legalization of gay marriage in Massachusetts which is, in my opinion, a massive victory for all Americans. I don’t expect everyone to feel that way. In fact, the vast majority of Middle America takes issue with gay marriage, and its legalization. No big surprise there. What I didn’t expect is for gays to have a problem with the legalization of gay marriage. That’s a shocker. This afternoon National Public Radio reported on Day to Day that some gays see marriage as a too-conventional institution that erodes the counter-culture that gay identity was founded on.

What is marriage, anyway? That’s a question that is seldom answered. Marriage predates recorded history, and almost every culture has a form of marriage that exists as a socially or legally recognized bond that sanctions a sexual relationship between two (or more) people. Polygamy, polygyny, and polyandry have been present in many cultures throughout history. Africa leads the continents with the most incidences of modern polygamy, while China only outlawed it in 1953. Many cultures have placed restrictions on who one cannot marry, known as exogamy. For example, in the Brahmin caste in India, it was prohibited to marry someone of the same gotra (a clan assigned to a Hindu at birth) because of the possibility of the same patrilineal line, and in most cultures it is not acceptable to marry one’s first cousin. South Korea prohibits marriage between two persons with the same surname.

Endogamy (marriage within a specific tribe or ethnicity) has been a staple of racist lawmaking for centuries. Nazi Germany is a modern example; Jews were to marry Jews, and non-Jews were to marry non-Jews. Keine Ausnahmen, no exceptions. Apartheid-era South Africa legislated endogamy as well. In most cultures, only fully recognized citizens were allowed to marry legally. Serfs and slaves formed unions, but they were not binding. In the United States we didn’t allow our slaves to marry legally, even within their own race. (Slave owners often tolerated slave weddings, which some of them defiled by raping the bride.) Embarrassingly, we didn’t even allow blacks and whites to marry each other until those laws were repealed between 1940 and the 1960s, ending with Loving v. Virginia in 1967.  

So this is the blighted history of a revered institution. We know that marriage is not, as the traditionalists claim, meant to be formed between one man and one woman. It is much more complicated than that, with polygamy being the frontrunner for the “most traditional form of marriage” prize. We also know that marriage was the province of people who are considered to have the rights of emancipated citizens. (Let us keep this about people who are emancipated; eighteen years of age and older.) I can understand why some gays would say “no, thank you” to such a questionable institution. But supporters of gay marriage have a very valid concern that few gays would argue. Gays are humans with human rights. American gays are citizens with all of the rights that citizens are afforded. So citizens should be allowed to marry who they like. Let’s not be demure and pretend that “traditional marriage” means marriage between a man and a woman, because history simply does not bear this out. Marriage is a union between one or more people of varying sexes. Everyone should get to enter into this contract if they desire it. And if they think it’s too conventional, they certainly don’t have to get married; but the right should be there.  

The argument against gay marriage (by gays) is that it dilutes the edginess of the culture. The refrain is now, “I’m not plain, boring old gay; now I’m queer.” Some gays don’t want to be associated with the mortgage-paying, barbeque-giving, suburbanite nuclear family image. They want to be counter culture, with the underground art movements and passionate protests of an oppressed community. But is this a reason to take marriage rights away from the more “conventional” gay counterparts? Is it worth that kind of step back?

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