With all the rose-colored musings on the wonders of marriage
that have arrived with our newly acquired, still limited marriage rights, you’d
think that all the problems of the LGBT community had just been solved with one stroke of
a Supreme Court Fairy’s pen. But this flurry of excitement, while contagious, obscures the
fact that the institution of marriage is woefully inadequate as a panacea to remedy even the challenges of
our personal lives, not to mention our political ones.
I remember, in the seventies, being totally perplexed when
the boyfriend of politician Harvey Milk committed suicide. Someone who was part
of a couple offing themselves? How could that be possible? What does this mean?
In my own fantasies the idea of finding a girlfriend would put all my
existential angst to rest.
Marriage is part of a canned, lobotomized
prescription for”
happiness,” and in reality not much more than a massive advertising
campaign. Americans tend to worship the philosophy of “rugged
individualism.” Within this doctrine, all
formulas for a productive life begin and end with you and yours. The
acquisition of wealth is but another of these personal solutions.
Reproduction
is fundamental as well. Babies are just a commodity created by the
family.
In this world view, poor, minority, female, queer babies all
have their roles to play whether it is as a target for
police, cashier for a convenience store, CEO for an internet giant, or doctor
for the upper crust. Whatever their future role, babies keep their parents in
line financially and help disseminate this “capitalist mystique.”
At my old librarian job, access to system-wide emails was
strictly limited. Yet, we all received announcements of a co-workers marriage
or birth of a child. Never did we get information about an employee who’d
written and produced a play, an art gallery opening featuring someone’s work or
a mountain successfully climbed. In fact, those accomplishments were seen as
threatening, taking away from our “real” work in the service hierarchy of the
library.
Why are we encouraged to retreat into a universe of
marriage, babies and private life? The answer seems obvious. Together,
questioning, participating, exploring greater community issues is too
threatening to the powers that be. We might grow to see and understand things that would make the
crumbs they throw us harder to accept, one that could jeopardize their
dominance and hegemony.
It is absolutely necessary that queers have the civil right
to marry, to adopt children, to join the military and share every single right
that heterosexuals possess. But to elevate marriage to the highest, most noble
fulfilling goal is to perpetrate a lie. Each of us is a member of a larger
community, beyond the nuclear family and its rigid boundaries. We must make
political sense of our shared circumstances and rise and fall together
