Serious LGBTQ

[KM]

It's not an unproductive argument if that's what it takes to remove the legal civil rights issues from the institution of marriage lol. I don't doubt saying "we got married" or the celebration of such will stay around for years to come, but our language and culture doesn't stay static. If everyone enters a civil union and a marriage is a religious/secondary aspect that isn't required for the process (it technically isn't today but still), I can imagine views changing on what it means to be "married".

As nice as this sounds, and as nice as it would be, I don't think the disintegration of the institution of marriage into an optional part under a wider umbrella of civil unions is going to happen any time in the near or even moderately near future. While I realize that you acknowledged this already in your post, I bring it up again because the issue of gay marriage, as it stands, is seemingly already resolved. I can't speak for the rest of the developed world, nor the developing world, but a simple look at statistical and historical trends makes it pretty clear that public opinion is very dramatically shifting towards supporting it. When this is combined with the legislative progress like that of the elimination of DOMA and Prop 8 last year, it's pretty clear that - at least in the U.S. - gay marriage will be somewhat widely accepted, however begrudgingly, in the somewhat-near future. Is it possible that sometime in the distant future, trends away from religion will drive people away from marriage and towards civil unions that grant the same right without the implicit religious connotation hanging over it? Sure, and to some extent, it's already happening today. However, the opinions about marriage are deep-seated enough so that there is still a very significant portion of people who oppose gay marriage purely on the basis of it corrupting the institution, so any suggestion to completely eschew the institution will most likely fall on deaf ears. Given that your hypothetical desired scenario is currently unfeasible, and the concept of gay marriage isn't whatsoever, it seems sort of ridiculous to use it as an argument.

 

[Bughouse]

First, it's unproductive because it will never happen. Good luck convincing a majority of straight Americans that their marriages aren't recognized by the government as marriage, but only a civil union.

Second, it seems to me, Oglemi, that you're the one hung up on the term marriage still being an inherently religious thing. It isn't. As you mentioned, language evolves. It is simply the term people use for all lifelong commitments whether legally recognized as marriage or whether the people in them are religious. Gay couples who can't get married because of legal restrictions still call their relationships marriages, as do Atheist couples who weren't married by clergy. Furthermore, non-religious weddings exist outside of the state's offices: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanist_officiant

Also, for anyone still going on about traditional (Christian, because let's face it Smogon is mostly American and most of America is Christian) marriages being conducted in churches and overseen by clergy etc, that didn't start until about the 1500s. Before then, people got married in private by their own agreement and then often would inform the church of their action because the church kept the town records. Marriage has a long history that goes back before any involvement of faith existed.

Finally, the infighting itt (and this marriage argument is pretty representative of the LGBTQ community in general) just makes me cry a little inside. This graph joke has never been more true:

 

[Oglemi]

It's not a "resolved issue" in the slightest are you kidding me lol, talk to half the people in Wisconsin and tell me it's a resolved issue. The Supreme Court shooting down DOMA is nice and all, but that's still only 17 out of 50 states that have a form of same sex marriage, and the issue has already been going on for as long as I can remember. This is something that will go on for the next 25 years absolute minimum.

Which is why I find fighting for wanting gay marriage ridiculous, when the actual issue is the fact that gay people can't get the same legal benefits once they find a partner they want to spend the rest of their life with (tax benefits, hospital visitations, parenting and adoption) right now. The majority of the "Christian population" (in parentheses because that's the majority that are against it) in the U.S. is so much more hardpressed to change their minds on the notion of what marriage means than they are actually giving gay people the same rights once in a civil union. And you're kidding yourself if you think that marriage isn't still religiously connotated. It doesn't mean the same thing that it used to, in the same way divorce doesn't either, but it's right now a nice blanket term to describe the stage of relationship you're in with your partner only because it's the main thing that everyone does.

I want to be able to visit whoever I end up with if they get really sick and are in the hospital, I don't give a flying fuck if it's called marriage, or a civil union, or butt buddies, or the unification-of-those-that-exclusively-like-the-same-genitalia. If the solution lies in either: separating marriage and civil unions by orientation, or forcing everyone to have the civil union denotation, or whatever other solution (which includes giving gay people marriage but I think it's an overzealous fight), then so be it. I don't want marriage, I want the same fucking rights. And right now, people are fighting for marriage, which is why it's such a stupid thing to fight for. And it's already been mentioned that the institution of marriage in religious terms should be removed from the function of the state regardless, but that's a fight for another day.

 

[Princess Bubblegum]

Minwu

Gender dysphoria is not a necessary condition to be transgender, while its not as common, there are plenty of trans people who do not have gender dysphoria.

The necessary condition is identifying as the "opposite" gender, and thinking you are that gender, usually also proceeded by wanted to be it (but not always). Its an interesting mixture of what you want to do and what you think you are.

Personally, I do not have much genital dsyphoria, I have it to some degree but its not high. My dysphoria is more focused on my breasts and hair, mixed in with occasional feelings about my shoulders, hips, muscles, ect. My penis ranks pretty low on the things I am uncomfortable with, I may never get GRS actually, its just not a concern of mine.

For those wondering, the process is proceeding, but rather slowly, I have a doctor's appointment with an endocrinologist a week from now and my therapist is in the process of writing the letter.

 

[KM]

It's not a "resolved issue" in the slightest are you kidding me lol, talk to half the people in Wisconsin and tell me it's a resolved issue. The Supreme Court shooting down DOMA is nice and all, but that's still only 17 out of 50 states that have a form of same sex marriage, and the issue has already been going on for as long as I can remember. This is something that will go on for the next 25 years absolute minimum.

Which is why I find fighting for wanting gay marriage ridiculous, when the actual issue is the fact that gay people can't get the same legal benefits once they find a partner they want to spend the rest of their life with (tax benefits, hospital visitations, parenting and adoption) right now. The majority of the "Christian population" (in parentheses because that's the majority that are against it) in the U.S. is so much more hardpressed to change their minds on the notion of what marriage means than they are actually giving gay people the same rights once in a civil union. And you're kidding yourself if you think that marriage isn't still religiously connotated. It doesn't mean the same thing that it used to, in the same way divorce doesn't either, but it's right now a nice blanket term to describe the stage of relationship you're in with your partner only because it's the main thing that everyone does.

I want to be able to visit whoever I end up with if they get really sick and are in the hospital, I don't give a flying fuck if it's called marriage, or a civil union, or butt buddies, or the unification-of-those-that-exclusively-like-the-same-genitalia. If the solution lies in either: separating marriage and civil unions by orientation, or forcing everyone to have the civil union denotation, or whatever other solution (which includes giving gay people marriage but I think it's an overzealous fight), then so be it. I don't want marriage, I want the same fucking rights. And right now, people are fighting for marriage, which is why it's such a stupid thing to fight for. And it's already been mentioned that the institution of marriage in religious terms should be removed from the function of the state regardless, but that's a fight for another day.

This would be a wonderful and perfectly logical utilitarian argument if it were written like, 18 months ago. Unless I'm completely confused about my legislation, the repeal of DOMA allows that any rights granted from marriage in any state in the United States are translated into all state jurisdiction, no matter whether they support or do not support gay marriage. If your desire really is just to obtain the same rights as everyone else has, I'm pretty sure it's as simple as getting married in another state, and then being granted the rights as you would in that state no matter where you live.

It's possible that i'm completely misinterpreting, and if I am please don't hesitate to tell me, but I don't really see your argument as anything other than semantical when there's a fairly simple solution to your problem.

 

[Oglemi]

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/recognition-same-sex-gay-marriage-32294.html

In August 2013, the U.S. Department of Treasury ruled that all same-sex couples that are legally married in any U.S. state, the District of Columbia, a U.S. territory or a foreign country will be recognized as married under all federal tax provisions where marriage is a factor. This includes provisions governing:

filing status
personal and dependency exemptions
standard deductions
employee benefits
IRA contributions
the earned income tax credit, and
the child tax credit

The Treasury Department further clarified that federal recognition for tax purposes applies whether a same-sex married couple lives in a jurisdiction that recognizes same-sex marriage (such as California) or a non-recognition jurisdiction (such as Texas). But the decision does not apply to same-sex couples in domestic partnerships or civil unions.

however,

Non-Recognition States

36 states currently have "defense of marriage" statutes that expressly state that the government will not recognize a same-sex marriage. If you live in one of these states, the state will not recognize your same-sex marriage. This means that you can't enjoy health plan benefits, state tax benefits, protection from discrimination, or other legal rights that married spouses enjoy. And, if your relationship breaks up, chances are the local family court will not accept your divorce filing or issue a divorce decree, which you would need before you're able to marry or partner with someone else. To find out whether your state has a defense of marriage act or recognizes same-sex marriage, visit Lambda Legal's website at www.lambdalegal.org and click "In Your State."

it did solve a couple federal issues, but state-level issues are still there and frankly more palpable as they concern more things in day-to-day life

 

[Myzozoa]

Why not give all of the benefits of marriage (legal, economic, procedural) to any 2 people (such as me and my aged grandmother) who agree to co-habitate ( srk1214 said something about any 2 people who make a life-long commitment, that sounds vague enough that I could define it later to assure a wide range of skeptics, so i like that)? The centering of the mainstream rights movement on marriage equality is a sad reflection of the relationship between money and politics in this country. Marriage equality is like the most lolsily 'I am a republican and oh wait im also gay and the state is being inconvenient about it' issue to stress over, imo. People are ACTUALLY dying (not even dramaticizing) because little money is going to counter the more violent forms of discrimination facing queer (I keep the queer because im not about categories, there is no salvation, but if there is, it isn't going to come from RECOGNITION) bodies.

Representation hinges on including some categories while erasing others, if the plan is to go after state recognition of an identity, where will it end? You can add and add and add, but you won't get everyone, and you won't be dealing with inherent contradictions through which the judicial apparatus maintains itself (general you, not trying to call anyone out). And no, I'm not saying that 'we're all the same' when I attack liberation through representation. Marriage is really, like actually, i promise: about where (rich) people's property winds up...

The ideological push to have the state recognize a very particular relationship as marriage shores up the hegemonic political ideologies that maintain juridical sexism (and racism?) and the (neo)liberal public-private distinction. (the argument that it maintains sexism is easy, so is the public-private distinction argument, too lazy to EFFORT the racism argument right now)

do you actually want to get married? (not a rhetorical question, id be interested to hear answers)

 

[Bughouse]

I'm glad you don't want marriage, Oglemi.

I do. And no, I'm not at all religious.


EDIT: also yes much more focus needs to be given to anti-discrimination. Marriage is such a side issue I can't even.

 

[elcheeso]

Partially semantics, partially 'I don't want a gay marriage so no one else should care either'. The world doesn't work like that. The state of being married (compared to unioned), for better or for worse, is something that has a lot of meaning to a lot of people for social and sometimes religious reasons. Gay people are no exception to this (see: srk). Plenty of gay people have strong links to religion, others have a strong connection to the idea of being married because of whatever reason. Genuinely surprised you would claim otherwise, Oglemi. For what it's worth, I'm not any of these. I don't want to get married, I don't want to get unioned. If I wanted to get married or unioned or whatever, it would be for the legal benefits alone. However, that doesn't negate the importance other people place on the word marriage, and the fact that your ONLY argument here is "'it's easier for gay people to fight for civil unions/separate but equal/I don't have a problem with gay marriage per se', and the fact that no one in this thread (to my knowledge) is opposed to civil unions being offered, just not as an end goal, so to speak, makes this whole thing goofy as fuck.

I also think you wildly overestimate how many people will simply give up opposing gay people and their unions just because we "gave back" marriage.

Also interesting that civil marriage conductors are something people have to actually be pointed to. Civil celebrants are common as fuck here.

As for you Myzo, I actually completely agree that violent discrimination against queer people is a more pressing issue than gay marriage. I just generally disagree with the rest. I know you said you were too lazy to effort right now, but I don't really understand the sexism OR racism inherent in marriage in terms of the law and would be interested in an explanation. I could see arguments from the social implications of marriage (but only from a sexism angle, I don't really get the racism connection at all), but as it relates to the law? Ehhh.

 

[Crux]

I will edit in a post here later about how marriage as a whole is evil but further how gay marriage is especially evil if you don't want to / don't beat me to it myzo.

 

[jumpluff]

Minwu

Gender dysphoria is not a necessary condition to be transgender, while its not as common, there are plenty of trans people who do not have gender dysphoria.

The necessary condition is identifying as the "opposite" gender, and thinking you are that gender, usually also proceeded by wanted to be it (but not always). Its an interesting mixture of what you want to do and what you think you are.

Personally, I do not have much genital dsyphoria, I have it to some degree but its not high. My dysphoria is more focused on my breasts and hair, mixed in with occasional feelings about my shoulders, hips, muscles, ect. My penis ranks pretty low on the things I am uncomfortable with, I may never get GRS actually, its just not a concern of mine.

For those wondering, the process is proceeding, but rather slowly, I have a doctor's appointment with an endocrinologist a week from now and my therapist is in the process of writing the letter.

Hey, good luck and thanks for the update! I'm glad to hear things are at least headed in a good direction for you.

I agree that LGBTQ marriage is hardly the most pressing issue facing the community right now. Trans rights are decades behind gay rights, violence against LGBTQ people is still a very prevalent issue, bullying starts from a very young age, youth homelessness is a serious problem (the statistics I have are for the US and they are really alarming), employment discrimination and workplace harassment/discrimination (which is so hard to enforce against as things currently stand) result in higher levels of LGBTQ unemployment and poverty, there's a serious intersection with mental illness and suicide rates (and as a mentally ill person with a mentally ill family I can assure you that mental illness infrastructure atm is really shit...) etc........ but I still see it as necessary that people in queer relationships have the same legal rights as everyone else. I just believe the marriage issue is both taking precedence over issues that affect the most marginalised members of the LGBTQ community and pushing those issues out of the spotlight wrt. cis/straight people. It's ridiculous but I'm already seeing ignorant cishets saying shit to the effect of 'when gay people can marry [in Australia] WE CAN FINALLY STOP TALKING ABOUT GAY RIGHTS JEEZ' as if LGBTQ rights start and end at marriage.

Admittedly I am 20 and not about to get married. Due to my own life circumstances etc. though I find issues like visitation rights, joint custody, etc. very compelling. But those are legal issues. I believe the other issue is a separate, less important issue as I have explained in my previous post that will come with cultural acceptance as much as legislation (and what we really need is to drop this idea of some state-privileged religious institution anyway, which isn't happening any time soon). This acceptance is also necessary to deal with the other problems, as is legislative and infrastructural change that we are presently not seeing. That acceptance won't come with legislation alone.

And, frankly, queer people should be able to accepted with or without the blessings of heteronormative institutions. The simple truth of it is that gay marriage is a way more palatable thing to address than trans or gay teenagers getting kicked out of home and/or killing themselves.

(I'm tired, can you tell by how bad my English is?)

Crux / Myzozoa eagerly awaiting, like/upvote cabal at the ready

actually ooooh I'd love to yell at marriage as an institution but I'm so tired

 

[Oglemi]

I also think you wildly overestimate how many people will simply give up opposing gay people and their unions just because we "gave back" marriage.

I never said to give back marriage, I said marriage isn't want should be being fought for right now. If we get marriage down the line then great, but that's not what should be most important or how the argument is centered like it is currently.

 

[Myzozoa]

Partially semantics, partially 'I don't want a gay marriage so no one else should care either'. The world doesn't work like that.

The fact that anyone does or does not want marriage does not have any implication for whether or not they are maintaining an ethical or sensitive opinion on an issue. This is the weak person's way: overdetermining the relationship between desires and knowledge such that an individual's knowledge is instantly compromised if they have certain desires or lack them (to have certain desires is seemingly similar to having a certain identity). This prevents the rich white person from being held responsible for holding ethical opinions on race and income inequality. "I guess I can't speak to poverty because I'm rich," or "I think affirmative action is bad, I'm white after all."

Perhaps as deadly is doing the opposite: to think that because someone has certain desires, that they have an accurate knowledge of 'the situation' facing people with those desires, "I'm gay, so I understand what it means for others to have a deviant sexuality and to face discrimination for it." Here knowledge is granted authority based on presumed authenticity of identity, in the former case knowledge was EXCUSED from accountability based on presumptions about the relationship between identity and knowledge.

Instead, everyone should feel obligated to account for their subject position. Examining how the cisperson's experience may be mediated in comparison to a queer person's experience (scare quote everything k) is itself the site of an opportunity: an opportunity for a producer of knowledge to account for their own location's impact on the experience and knowledge they have. This is a self-conscious practice then.

"Instead of interrogating a category, we will instead interrogate a [person]. It will at least be more agreeable."

Certainly, we can acknowledge that people who don't want marriage SEEM to have less of a stake in the outcome, but I think that all have a stake when the state apparatus is being shored up by the same ideologies that are the basis for arguments for marriage inequality. what we want, and how we want it to come about, must always be evaluated for it's ethical and material implications.

The state of being married (compared to unioned), for better or for worse, is something that has a lot of meaning to a lot of people for social and sometimes religious reasons.

Indeed. If for the worse, then for the worse right? I don't get that. Why fight for the representation of one's identity in a culture or legal system of oppression?

"Well duh myzozoa, you need the recognition so you can visit your lover in the hospital,or so that i can get x benefit, or be exempt from x infringement." This is real, and I'm not dismissing these desire/needs/concerns.

But this doesn't excuse people. If they obtain rights in some way that affirms unethical power relationships, the whole project must be called into question.

Fighting for recognition from a state comes at a cost: the functions of the state are legitimized. Why is the government involved in something like marriage in the first place? The function of marriage is to instantiate a property relationship on the basis of romance. sounds messed up to me.

I also think you wildly overestimate how many people will simply give up opposing gay people and their unions just because we "gave back" marriage.

I agree with this, but I also question the pollution of the discourse on sex/gender/sexuality by centering on a marriage equality issue, which btw, isn't even what it gets called when they debate this shit in the media, right? Most countries it usually gets called 'same-sex marriage' or 'gay marriage'. Like, the fact that you and I (or maybe just me idk) are arguing using the term 'marriage equality' is already disguising the fact that the mainstream discourse on the issue doesn't entertain complicated understandings of gender or desire, and they certainly don't implicate or complicate marriage as a property relationship. The only non-arbitrary implementation of marriage recognition would have to extend marriage to apply to any relationship between consenting adults, and that makes divorce law look weird as fuck certainly. If I get my cohabitation with my grandmother recognized, and then I don't want to live my grandmother anymore, it seems weird for that to be handled the same way a divorce is. The legal privileges and liabilities that go along with marriage, and the property implications, all add to the 'this marriage shit is kind of messed up, maybe reform marriage or find something else, instead of trying to include more categories in it' message that im trying to go for. Marriage just don't make no sense to me as a desirable legal status. The logic of marriage itself also remains uncomplicated and unquestioned.

As for you Myzo, I actually completely agree that violent discrimination against queer people is a more pressing issue than gay marriage. I just generally disagree with the rest. I know you said you were too lazy to effort right now, but I don't really understand the sexism OR racism inherent in marriage in terms of the law and would be interested in an explanation. I could see arguments from the social implications of marriage (but only from a sexism angle, I don't really get the racism connection at all), but as it relates to the law? Ehhh.

I should have been more precise: marriage as it functions legally is gendered vis-a-vis "same-sex/man woman, woman woman, man man" language. there is nothing INHERENT about this, right? The law doesn't have to be written this way. Laws can be changed and re-worded, it is definitely possible to create a legal form that recognizes a relationship between two consenting adults that does not also gender them. The fact that one is legally a man or a woman, in America, is not complicated within the mainstream discourse: the law can only recognize one as a male or a female. It seems too obvious, right? Because you and I probably know better than to fuck up our terms. gender is complicated, but that isn't how it's playing out in the discourse I'm attacking.

I am not discussing what is INHERENT, im discussing what IS. There is no reason why the 'mainstream' activism movement has to use arguments and means that perpetuate sexism and racism, they just do.

I never wanted to be interpreted to say that perpetuating racism or sexism is necessary to marriage or unions or the state recognition of relationships. I'm pointing out that in fact it does perpetuate these forms of discrimination and that the marriage equality movement has not amounted to a radical critique of the legal system's terms and procedures.

The above^ implies a simple 'word game' argument, which is all I'm going to put out atm:

The marriage equality movement perpetuates racism because the marriage equality movement places value on recognition from a state that is racist, thus legitimizing that state, and legitimizing the appropriateness of the forms which the state recognizes, in the contexts that it recognizes them: including race in criminalization, gender in property relationships, black agency in criminalization, lack of female agency in sexual decisions, etc, I can not enumerate all the myriad forms the state recognizes, nor can I enumerate how the attributes of these forms change from context to context, but they are often contradictory: a woman has agency when she performs an abortion, or signs a marriage document, but when it comes to her sexual decisions within the confines of marriage her agency is contested...


replace sexism/sexist with racism/racist in the above for the sexism argument. don't take the argument horribly seriously right now, im hoping Crux is gonna have some links to better analysis/theory or at least do a better rehearsal of the arguments. I'm not sure I have anything off the top of my head, but look at how the state of israel is praised frequently by lgbtq groups (scare quotes everywhere still) for its progressive laws regarding sexuality and gender even as Israel carries out a genocide against palestinians. their progressive laws (including their progressive marriage laws) shore up their ideological relationship with the neo-liberal West that finances their genocide. lovely...

I'm not saying it's dumb to want marriage, I'm saying that a more nuanced political strategy/discourse is needed to realize it ethically and avoid the pitfalls of identity politics.

inb4igettorn2shredz

 

[Eo Ut Mortus]

I encountered these links in discussions about the Prop 8 / DOMA hearings, and they seem relevant.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/02/opinion/brooks-freedom-loses-one.html?_r=0
http://www.againstequality.org/about/marriage/

 

[Crux]

Firstly, a call out Brap

Are you gay? Have you ever experienced homophobia? Based on your posts in this and other threads I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say that the answer to both of those questions is no. That means that you don't get to tell me what homophobia looks like, buddy. If this wasn't a lazy attempt to avoid actual argumentation, this would be about half as bad as it actually is. But instead of actually engaging with the arguments against your position, a terribly uninformed one at that, you intend to just call your opponents homophobes. This is kind of problematic for you given that nearly everyone who posts in this thread is gay. In future, fuck off.

Onto the post which I promised you :)

I am very hungover and don't really care so this post is likely to be messy and unstructured. Sorry about that.

Why is marriage a fundamentally oppressive institution? I'm going to divide this part of the post into brief analyses of the various oppressive aspects of marriage, if you would like me to clarify certain points or if you would like to read more on certain points, feel free to contact me. I don't intend to write a tl;dr.

Firstly, regardless of the fact that we have largely moved on as a society from some forms of female oppression, particularly the view that females are property to be handed over by the institution of marriage, marriage remains as a coercive institution. Marriage is essentially coerced onto us by societal narratives that place enormous pressure on extra-marital relationships, particularly sexual ones. Outside of marriage, physical relationships lack legitimacy and recognition (both social and legal). This is really problematic for two reasons. Firstly, it socially delegitimises extra-marital relationships in a way that is really harmful to individuals who choose not to get married. Secondly, it creates coercive systems that actually force you to get married if you are in a stable relationship because in order to receive the tax benefits and other legal benefits that come with marriage, you need to get married. Everything else aside, given that you are always essentially coerced into marriage, marriage is a harmful social institution. This is problematic given the large barriers to separation that are enforced legally. Marriage is a state-awarded license giving one individual claims over another person's property. This exposes individuals to each other and puts in place further, non-legal, barriers to separation. This leaves the participants in a marriage, usually and especially the female participant, vulnerable to abuse.

I think that the arguments that relate to marriage as a sexist institution have been spelled out reasonably well above. I would add that institutions that are historically oppressive generally have large emotional harms to the people who would have suffered from them if not for the lottery of birth placing them in our time. This is also a sufficient reason for the abolition of marriage as an institution, in my opinion. That assumes that marriage as a sexist institution no longer exists, which is untrue, as someone else posted earlier. Marriages tend to reinforce the gendered division of labour, which means that women earn less and are less independent than men as a result of marriage. It reinforces the idea that women do most of the housework, even if they work outside the home. Domestic violence is also exacerbated by marital concepts of entitlement and ownership. I think that it's probably also true that the mere existence of the institution of marriage is more harmful to the female partner than to the male in nearly all cases. It broadly has greater and earlier impacts on the lives of young girls than it does on young men. It makes girls less likely to aspire to prestigious occupations or feel able to be happily independent. This is again a product of social narratives that push girls towards marriage as a goal, making them feel that they are in some way flawed and failing if they fail to achieve the goal of marriage.

In my opinion, excluding the sexism, the most compelling arguments against marriage stem from the idea that marriage and monogamy are constructed narratives that the government projects onto its citizens for its own purposes. These arguments have been made very well by Marx, Engel, de Beauvoir and Greer. If you want to read more about these go buy their respective books. Greer destroys marriage from about page 155 onwards here http://khurrambukhari.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/the-female-enuch.pdf and a nice summary of Marx and Engels is made here http://archive.csustan.edu/History/Faculty/Weikart/Marx-Engels-and-the-Abolition-of-the-Family.pdf . I could not recommend that you read these more.

The case against marriage is essentially that it is coercive and oppressive in literally every way imaginable. As such, I think it is quite compelling.

The case against gay marriage takes all of that and adds two additional rejections. myzozoa outlined the first one well so I won't spend too much time on it. It is a criticism of the gay movement that relies on the existence of political capital. Given that any movement only has a limited number of resources, they can only achieve certain goals. Additionally, as jumpluff added earlier, the public has a very limited attention span, so each group or movement only has a limited capacity to enact change over a given time. Gay marriage is an institution that only benefits rich white gay men because it involves tax breaks. Given the plight of trans people and other oppressed queer groups, and given that that oppression is usually intersectional, the focus of the queer movement on gay marriage is abhorrent because we are literally leaving our ITQ brothers and sisters to die. If anything is homophobic, I think it is that.

But further, marriage is a bizarrely conservative goal for the gay movement to strive for. This argument is made very well here http://www.philosophersbeard.org/2014/03/gay-marriage-is-not-enough.html and I can't really be fucked typing more, so go read that.

 

[Shiny_Tyranitar]

Firstly, a call out Brap Given the plight of trans people and other oppressed queer groups, and given that that oppression is usually intersectional, the focus of the queer movement on gay marriage is abhorrent because we are literally leaving our ITQ brothers and sisters to die. If anything is homophobic, I think it is that.

I agree with everything else you said, but I'm in the camp that thinks gay marriage was a good first goal. It does benefit transsexuals because so much of the narrative is "r they menz or wommins???" At least in states with gay marriage, this debate is largely moot. The other side of this is that several states, such as Kansas (In re Gardiner's Claim) have "de-gendered" transsexuals. The holding from that case was the marriage is between one man and one woman, not a man and a transsexual. Of course, a lot of news media missed the point and said "oh, she can't marry a man, she must be recognized as a man because it's one or the other." And since so much of this debate comes down to "what are [we], hurrr," we kind of get shafted both ways. We (transwomen) can't marry men because we're men and can't have babies. We can't marry women because we're women and still no babies. I've never been able to get a consistent answer from a group of people on this question. At least with gay marriage, the point is moot.

The problem I have with gay marriage is exactly what you said, there are many, many more issues than just that. We didn't get hate crime legislation for killing LGBT folk until 2009... We [lgbt people] still don't have federal protections for things like employment or housing and since the LGBT movement got gay marriage and DADT repealed, well, that's it, civil rights are over go home. To illustrate this point, a few weeks ago a friend on facebook posted about how he was discriminated at work for being gay. A friend of his told him to sue because that shit's illegal now adays. It isn't in Virginia. And of course, like Crux said, the focus being on gay marriage and DADT does largely exclude transsexual interests. We can't serve in the military. Healthcare discrimination is still a very real thing, one which I've experienced over and over this last year. The murder rate is still around 1:12 and suicide is 1:3. Not to mention police seem to enjoy policing gender, so we're more likely to be profiled, discriminated against, and then throw in jail (which is, according to Amnesty International, a "rape sentence"). All this focus on gay marriage, and the modern complacency with queer rights, is only going to exacerbate these problems.

TL;DR, I think Crux is right on a lot of things. I disagree with his view that marriage only benefits rich white gay men (though, they are the largest beneficiaries), but hate that gay marriage and DADT-repeal were the vocal point of the gay rights movement and now that they're won, people are getting complacent, which is a great detriment to transsexuals and a substantial detriment to LGB individuals.

 

[Crux]

read the links in my post, they better explain why rich white men are the only real beneficiaries. I think your analysis as to the reasons why trans people are oppressed is misguided. the reason they are discriminated against because they subvert gender norms in ways that are worrying to the patriarchy. people dont form attitudes that are discriminatory based on legal findings. marriage clearly reinforces those norms regardless of the sexes of the individuals that participate in the institution. the rest of your objection was contingent.

 

[Th!nkPi]

So I recently found out being drunk makes me smoother with guys and being high makes me smoother with women. The effects of the former gets me past any insecurities and the results of the latter just make me quieter and less...ADHD. Though, this is a generalization based on people I've already dealt with. This isn't to assume it's going to be the case with every man or woman I meet.

 

[Photo]

So I recently found out being drunk makes me smoother with guys and being high makes me smoother with women. The effects of the former gets me past any insecurities and the results of the latter just make me quieter and less...ADHD. Though, this is a generalization based on people I've already dealt with. This isn't to assume it's going to be the case with every man or woman I meet.

Just don't get too drunk! I'm all for fairly drunken nights out but someone who's completely wasted is one of the biggest turn offs imo.

 

[Th!nkPi]

Just don't get too drunk! I'm all for fairly drunken nights out but someone who's completely wasted is one of the biggest turn offs imo.

Perhaps buzzed would be a better word. I'm talking 2 shots, max 3, and I'm feeling social and less self-conscious. I've never actually gotten drunk to the point I couldn't walk or talk coherently.

 

[KM]

First of all, before I write this post, I want to make something clear. I think that the arguments made by Myzo, jumpluff, Crux, and a couple of others are honestly fascinating. They completely changed my attitude towards the institution of marriage and its place in society. The notion that we have a limited number of resources as a community and that expending them into marriage is dumb was especially intriguing to me, and I just wanted to thank all of you for sharing your knowledge and your opinions, because they're fucking enlightening.

Anyway, my question, directed especially to the aforementioned people, is, if you had a ballot in your hand right now and there were two boxes, one in favour of the legalization of gay marriage and extending the rights inherent in marriage to all married persons, and one opposed, which would you pick?

Before reading all of your arguments, my answer would be a complete and instant yes - purely because the arguments I've heard against gay marriage seemed utterly irrelevant and I think that the right to marry is relevant to more than just that, and that it will end up trickling down and somewhat helping other LGBT issues. And, regardless of how interesting and compelling all of your arguments are, and the way they definitely changed my viewpoint on marriage in general, I'd have to say I'd still answer yes equally as easily - albeit a little bit more informed. My reasons for this in light of what you've said fall into two main categories.

1. Gay marriage is more than just gay marriage. The trickle-down effect that gay marriage will have can positively affect some of the other LGBT issues regardless of the relative corruptness of marriage; the vast majority of the population still reveres marriage, and as such, the ability to marry is viewed as a positive thing. By giving cultural legitimacy to unions between two persons of the same sex, it reinforces the normalcy and presence of those persons and their place in society. From this, many of the very real issues that were cited as more important (high suicide rate, high rate of child homelessness, etc.) will be reduced as a consequence of marriage equality reducing discrimination in general. Although giving universal civil unions would make it so everyone has the same rights, which is objectively desirable, giving the right to marry another person regardless of gender has a social oomph, for lack of a better word, that civil unions do not; they promote the idea that "gay people have the same rights as us", not "through a similar process, gay people can obtain similar rights to us". Furthermore, whether or not it should be viewed as so, the legalization of gay marriage is symbolically a massive step - and for the millions of Americans who do view it as the premier civil rights issue concerning LGBT folk, it's a step forwards in their eyes, regardless of gay marriage (and marriage in general)'s actual worth.

2. It still seems illogical and unlikely that we can all of a sudden shift the focus on LGBT matters away from marriage and towards something else. Regardless of what some users have said, I still maintain that gay marriage in the United States is progressing quite rapidly - good evidence of this is in the current cultural phenomenon of national companies and corporations being forced to either outright support gay marriage or at least shut up about it (there was a really interesting article I read somewhere about this, but I couldn't find it). Moreover, in very recent conflicts concerning LGBT rights (like the anti-discrimination / religious tolerance / whatever law in Arizona), the media has almost unilaterally portrayed the people opposing gay rights as bigoted and backwards.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/02/opinion/sunday/the-terms-of-our-surrender.html?_r=0

What I'm getting at is that society is certainly getting to the point where they're ready to accept gay marriage. Whether the correct step was not to go for gay marriage and instead seek equal rights through civil unions or focus on more pressing LGBT issues is at this point mostly irrelevant, as there is little to no chance of convincing society that gay marriage actually isn't the right thing or the thing that we desire, and that we should focus on other things instead. Once again, regardless of marriage's objective horribleness, it's still very highly regarded in society, whether or not that's justified. I think there's some value, even if it's not quantifiable, in people thinking that they've achieved something great, even if it isn't all too directly or palpably beneficial.

So, Myzozoa , Crux , jumpluff , and everyone else, what would you tick on that ballot? If the answer is no, why do you think that opposing gay marriage entirely will benefit society or advance the cause of LGBT rights? (this question sounds really accusatory, but I'm genuinely curious as to what you guys all think).

Once again, thanks for all your awesome posts, really learned a lot.

 

[Woodchuck]

I don't think the point is they would oppose it were it put to a vote, the point is that you use resources lobbying for any kind of change and it is possible that they find other potential changes more worth lobbying for than the idea of lobbying for gay marriage vs. settling for legally-equivalent civil union.

 

[elcheeso]

Marriage is a state-awarded license giving one individual claims over another person's property. This exposes individuals to each other and puts in place further, non-legal, barriers to separation. This leaves the participants in a marriage, usually and especially the female participant, vulnerable to abuse.

I think that the arguments that relate to marriage as a sexist institution have been spelled out reasonably well above. I would add that institutions that are historically oppressive generally have large emotional harms to the people who would have suffered from them if not for the lottery of birth placing them in our time. This is also a sufficient reason for the abolition of marriage as an institution, in my opinion. That assumes that marriage as a sexist institution no longer exists, which is untrue, as someone else posted earlier. Marriages tend to reinforce the gendered division of labour, which means that women earn less and are less independent than men as a result of marriage. It reinforces the idea that women do most of the housework, even if they work outside the home. Domestic violence is also exacerbated by marital concepts of entitlement and ownership. I think that it's probably also true that the mere existence of the institution of marriage is more harmful to the female partner than to the male in nearly all cases. It broadly has greater and earlier impacts on the lives of young girls than it does on young men. It makes girls less likely to aspire to prestigious occupations or feel able to be happily independent. This is again a product of social narratives that push girls towards marriage as a goal, making them feel that they are in some way flawed and failing if they fail to achieve the goal of marriage.

I find these paragraphs the most interesting because they refer to the effects of gender divisions and oppression vis-a-vis marriage but you make it explicit later that you also believe these apply to gay marriage as well. In what way? I personally cannot see these things as a marriage problem, per se, as they apply to any cohabiting straight relationship. These relationships certainly tend to reinforce a lot of shitty gender divisions due to beliefs in 'how things are supposed to be', essentially forcing the woman into a position where they must work (seeing as single income families are largely unviable now) but cannot afford to aim for better positions due to being expected to run the household/raise the kids etc.

You're a little off about domestic violence I believe, as most of the recent stats I've seen has actually seen marriage reduce the levels of IPV between both men and women (also probably worth mentioning the increasing evidence of similar numbers of male and female IPV offenders). You may be right about entitlement and ownership being a motivator for IPV for male perps (stats for female perps give different motivations), but if marriage is a reinforcement of ownership of women, then why would many studies show reduced levels post-marriage? I suppose the stats for gay marriage could be different, but eh. In what way does the gendered division of labour or discrimination against women in general directly affect relationships in which both members are the same sex? Are you suggesting that we're all internalising the idea that someone has to act as the man and someone else as the woman for relationships to work? Because I can't agree with that shit at all.

In my opinion, excluding the sexism, the most compelling arguments against marriage stem from the idea that marriage and monogamy are constructed narratives that the government projects onto its citizens for its own purposes. These arguments have been made very well by Marx, Engel, de Beauvoir and Greer. If you want to read more about these go buy their respective books. Greer destroys marriage from about page 155 onwards here http://khurrambukhari.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/the-female-enuch.pdf and a nice summary of Marx and Engels is made here http://archive.csustan.edu/History/Faculty/Weikart/Marx-Engels-and-the-Abolition-of-the-Family.pdf . I could not recommend that you read these more.

The case against gay marriage takes all of that and adds two additional rejections. myzozoa outlined the first one well so I won't spend too much time on it. It is a criticism of the gay movement that relies on the existence of political capital. Given that any movement only has a limited number of resources, they can only achieve certain goals. Additionally, as jumpluff added earlier, the public has a very limited attention span, so each group or movement only has a limited capacity to enact change over a given time. Gay marriage is an institution that only benefits rich white gay men because it involves tax breaks. Given the plight of trans people and other oppressed queer groups, and given that that oppression is usually intersectional, the focus of the queer movement on gay marriage is abhorrent because we are literally leaving our ITQ brothers and sisters to die. If anything is homophobic, I think it is that.

Ugh Greer's writing style is shit and I could not get through more than 3 pages, so unfortunately I'll have to skip it. That said, I agree with political capital being limited, but I am inclined to agree with Kitten Milk re: it not being worth abandoning because the gay marriage fight is so close to over in much of the West. I can't agree with the gay white men being the only beneficiaries either, as I think that's a really damn shallow view of the whole thing. While tax benefits might benefit rich gay dudes the most (maybe? I would've thought monetary benefits would be most relevant for the non-rich), they add AT MINIMUM some benefits to poorer couples. As for the rest...

Firstly, regardless of the fact that we have largely moved on as a society from some forms of female oppression, particularly the view that females are property to be handed over by the institution of marriage, marriage remains as a coercive institution. Marriage is essentially coerced onto us by societal narratives that place enormous pressure on extra-marital relationships, particularly sexual ones. Outside of marriage, physical relationships lack legitimacy and recognition (both social and legal). This is really problematic for two reasons. Firstly, it socially delegitimises extra-marital relationships in a way that is really harmful to individuals who choose not to get married. Secondly, it creates coercive systems that actually force you to get married if you are in a stable relationship because in order to receive the tax benefits and other legal benefits that come with marriage, you need to get married. Everything else aside, given that you are always essentially coerced into marriage, marriage is a harmful social institution. This is problematic given the large barriers to separation that are enforced legally.
...But further, marriage is a bizarrely conservative goal for the gay movement to strive for. This argument is made very well here http://www.philosophersbeard.org/2014/03/gay-marriage-is-not-enough.html and I can't really be fucked typing more, so go read that.

Ugh responding to all of this shit is stupidly difficult since this whole thing is better suited to a discussion than any sort of point-by-point refutation by either of us... plus I think we actually agree on many if not most points, we just come to different conclusions. My attitude is this: we should've made more effort 20 years ago to focus on more important issues, but the machine is already running at full speed and telling everyone to stop essentially amounts to tucking our tails behind our legs and running. The fallout from that would probably be awful for the gay community. I completely agree with giving more recognition and legal protections to people in non-marital relationships and families, but this is something that has to be done from the ground up. There's been some progress re: single parents and all that shit, but it is much easier to fight for the right to raise your children in a non-marital relationship when you have the option of preventing the state from taking them away in the meanwhile because they think dating = no stability and EW HOMOS. Same deal with visitation and all those other more social benefits. I actually think tax benefits are the least important aspect of marriage rights, but then I'm a relatively rich gay white man so I can afford to go without tax breaks.

Basically, marriage is a clusterfuck of stupid problematic elements, but I feel that much of your and particularly myzozoa's argument seems to revolve around the idea that there's no point supporting anything that is problematic, and therefore your arguments have the most in common with conservative ideals (albeit from a different direction). 'Don't make progress with or engage with the system, it's fucked, just wait around for anarcho-socialist utopia, then we won't even have to worry about these things.'

Basically, it doesn't have a lot of real world application. We live in these unjust societies, and while our movements may have small to large amounts of problematic (hate using this word) elements, they can make way for better or more just systems later. More radical activism takes a long ass time to gain traction in mainstream culture and especially with lawmakers (and sometimes doesn't even get that far), so I personally would rather see gay marriage happen in the meanwhile and let the social implications of that assist with normalising better activism later.

Everyone loves TL;DR discussions.

 

[Myzozoa]

Disclaimer: In this post, I will be overtly theoretical. I'm going to make many theoretical claims without rehearsing the arguments for them. If this is a problem, I will just delete this post.


"You cannot not want rights."

I will examine this claim via a thought experiment.


Imagine that you're in a store, a Wal-mart (an appropriately evil MNC). The power goes out, the lights are off, no can see you. No one, including the state, could ever know if you picked up a bunch of things from the store and then left (this is hypothetical just run with it). This is your pure moment of resistance, do you live by the narratives of property rights/ownership that the forces of SOCIETY (!!!) have inculcated in you? Or do you walk out with a bunch of free things that you, as a poor person, need?



The goal of this 'thought-experiment' is to imagine a situation where it would be possible to resist 'culture' (in the broadest sense!) without being pacified, or compromised, by it's contradictory edicts (it's norms, procedures, laws, 'subject categories', available identities: all of these are internalized modes of surveillance).

In such a situation, one could imagine that it would be possible to not want 'rights'.

The confusion that I encounter:

What does it mean to 'want a right'?

Which is related to the most important question, which is, what do you mean by a 'right'?

A material, or concrete, understanding of rights, cannot distinguish between a 'right' to a thing and the potential to access it. After all what is the use of possessing this thing, called a right, if I do not have access to whatever object, service, or benefit that I am alleged to 'have a right to'? If I live in a podunk town in wyoming, the nearest abortion clinic might be 100 miles away, im poor and dont have a car, there are 'no' public transit services, guess it doesn't matter that i have a right to an abortion because I dont have access to one.


(What use is the right to marry who i want if i have no one who i want to marry)

If I do not want to marry, does it follow that I do not want the right to marry?


Many rights will not even be instantiated prior to your coming under the criminalizing gaze of the state apparatus. Most of the rights you have are only available to you after you have come to the attention of the legal system.



What we arrive at, in imagining 'wanting rights' or 'not wanting rights,' is litotes: a break down in meaning. To steal or not to steal in the thought experiment I wrote has no meaning as an act of resistance or as an act of complicity. 'pure' acts of resistance seem to be necessarily meaningless.

more theory:

when it comes down to it: property, rights, etc are all just internalized social narratives that we live by because we are criminalized or stigmatized for deviating from them (in the thought experiment, the situation is such that you will not be stigmatized or criminalized for taking the things). The codified enumerated juridical rights (like a constitution that says 'you got a right to x,y,z in s, r, t contexts') co-determine (with many other factors which I could not begin to examine) the socio-psychological constraints on an individual's ability to act, even in the absence of imminent legal threat. 'The state lies within us and acts through us'

Individual's 'rule themselves', but even as they construct narratives, which are the conscious 'unfoldings' of their experience, the process of narrative construction takes place through language, which imposes pre-determined meanings and possibilities on the narratives an individual will construct (see wittgenstein to complete this proof: that meanings and hence narrative possibilities are pre-determined by culture vis-a vis the process of language acquisition. Wittgenstein's private language arguments+Foucault/Nietzsche panopticon/ecco homo, a 'proof' from linguistics could follow from a rejection of linguistic structuralism, which is the belief that grammatical structures correspond to structures in the brain).


elcheeso My argument is even stronger than 'don't support problematic things.' At the very last, it shows that any act that could be imagined to be 'unproblematic' has no discursive meaning.

We must re-imagine the 'binary' that divides theory from praxis (activism).

This binary is, at last, the source of our confusion.

http://www.ucis.pitt.edu/asc/conference/alas/pdf/2010/Visweswaran.pdf

"Such a delusion (the binary) may lead to what she calls 'the [queer] [activist's] dilemma', in which the [activist] inevitably betrays (or, I might add, is betrayed by) some feminist principle."


Of course, in the specific instance of marriage equality, I think that the perpetuation of state sanctioned marriage is more problematic than not letting gay people get married. This is why I asked if anyone wanted to get married. The legal procedures and logics of marriage are really fucked up. I would feel bad if people, in their innocence, decided to go down to the court house and pick up a marriage license.

The problem of finite resources indicates that some prioritization of causes is in order. I do not prioritize marriage, in fact, it is not on the list of causes I will ever be giving my time and money to.

If it came to a vote, I would vote yes. But I would argue against supporting campaigns to get such an issue put on the ballot because that money could go to something that i care more about, such as 'the environment'

 

[Minwu]

I'm rather taken offguard by a few of the interpersonal aspects of Crux 's main post, particularly arguments against monogamy and barriers against separation from a marxist angle


1) while polygamy and/or polyamory are both impoverished in social legitimacy I have a strong feeling you're not versed in the history of Utah and other US states or are ignoring them, not to mention ancient middle eastern history and numerous countries you haven't been to

2) sorry if you think i am some kind of sheep but i totally believe in symbiotic cohabitating as an expression of love whether i decide to marry or not, and i think it's a psychological/emotional inclination a debate thread is not qualified to touch on rather than a classist conditioning and damn, i actually think it sounds rather socialist to boot