Queering Marriage

Unsure about that the rush to the altar? Read Katrina Kimport's Queering Marriage: Challenging Family Formation in the United States [Kindle] for an analysis of how same-sex marriage cuts both ways: subverting the heteronormative institution while propping it up. Or, as the flap copy says, simultaneously "entrenching and contesting heterosexual privilege." Here's more:

"During her deeply personal conversations with same-sex spouses, Kimport learned that the majority of respondents did characterize their marriages as an opportunity to contest heterosexual privilege. Yet, in a seeming contradiction, nearly as many also cited their desire for access to the normative benefits of matrimony, including social recognition and legal rights. Kimport’s research revealed that the pattern of ascribing meaning to marriage varied by parenthood status and, in turn, by gender. Lesbian parents were more likely to embrace normative meanings for their unions; those who are not parents were more likely to define their relationships as attempts to contest dominant understandings of marriage."

This may be the best time to revisit Against Equality: Queer Critiques of Gay Marriage edited by Yasmin Nair and Ryan Conrad.

Walter Benn Michaels wrote, "Against Equality makes the powerful argument that same-sex marriage is an essentially conservative cause, an effort to prop up a fundamentally unfair system. As an alternative, it offers us the inspiring vision of a truly radical queer politics, devoted to attacking injustice, not just allowing a few more gay people to benefit from it."

Jessica Max Stein said, "Rather than being merely anti-marriage, the book deliberately articulates multiple alternative visions - such as building and valuing our own grassroots familial 'networks of accountability' - thus edging us closer to true 'equality,' or dare I say liberation, celebrating our differences as queers."