I believe in equal marriage rights for all – I am absolutely infuriated with the Obama Administration’s recent stunt defending the Defense of Marriage Act in federal court, and I cried like a baby when watching the Courage Campaign’s ‘Don’t Divorce Us’ video (come on, everyone did!). But something about the current same sex marriage debates is leaving me uneasy, particularly now that it is starting to hit close to home.

No sooner did New York Governor Patterson hold his press conference announcing a same sex marriage bill than did people start asking, ‘so when are you going to get married, then?’ Having been outside of the heterosexual societal expectation to get married for some time, it was shocking to have that pressure thrust back on me again.

The assumption that now that same sex couples could get married that we automatically should – or even want to – is presumptuous on many levels. And this is not to mention the language of “love” that’s been attached to the whole thing (an argument made by even the most well-intentioned hetero allies goes something like this: “Come on, how can we deny two people in love the right to get married?”) – as if two people can only express how much they love each other if they have a state-sanctioned document to prove it, a line of thinking which, in effect, invalidates many long-term, committed partnerships by both hetero and same-sex couples who chose not to marry.

The debates around same sex marriage are for me akin to some of the long-standing debates on feminist goals: should we be looking for equality with men (i.e. to be “just like everybody else”) or should we be trying to change the entire system? While I (and most feminist scholars) would probably argue that it’s the former “liberal” or “equality” feminist perspective that has been widely adopted in terms of fighting for policy and legal rights for women in the U.S., I’ve always been rather fond of the latter approach, even if the results might be a bit more difficult (and take much longer) to achieve. In any event, I think that it provides a useful lens though which to look at the current debates on same sex marriage. And I am not alone.

WOC, social justice, and other queer activists outside the “mainstream” gay rights movement have been talking about the same sex marriage issue through such a lens for a while now. In just one example, I went to a panel on same-sex marriage hosted by Queers for Economic Justice several years ago where panelists (including the amazing Lisa Duggan) discussed why state and federal benefits continue to be tied to the institution of marriage, and asked what this focus on marriage rights in the mainstream gay rights movement meant for non-white, poor and single-parent households, families without children, trans couples, and other “alternative” families. Makes you wonder – whose agenda is this anyway? (Hint: smells suspiciously white, male, and privileged.) Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore pretty much sums it up:

“Legalized gay marriage means only that certain people in a specific type of long-term, monogamous relationship sanctioned by a state contract might be able to access benefits.”

Therefore, as feministing.com blogger Miriam argues, the main problem with the current marriage agenda is: “[t]here are few people fighting to reshape the institution of marriage and the state benefits attached to it.” So why not take the opportunity of having the issue in the spotlight to start to reshape the institution of marriage itself? And while we’re at it can we please move beyond this old school husband/wife (or even wife/wife or husband/husband) thing???

(Just a few resources to get us started:

Queers for Economic Justice, Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision For All Our Families and Relationships www.beyondmarriage.org

Alternatives to Marriage Project www.unmarried.org)