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This chapter argues that religion and state are “isomorphic,” that is they mirror, react, and respond to each other. Each shapes group identities and each mobilizes group action and thus, they inevitably move in relation to each other, sometimes in tandem and sometimes antagonistically. The chapter then compares to the two groups on issues of abortion, environment, gay marriage, and the Iraq War. There is some agreement on abortion, and little or no difference on the environment. On gay marriage and the Iraq War differences are pronounced and strongly held.

This chapter uses the framework developed in Chapter 3 to examine same-sex marriage. Topics discussed include same-sex marriage litigation, the nature of marriage, and how same-sex marriage litigation strategies produce and partake of a self-governance project that not only confines unruly sexuality to binary sexual categories but also works to erase and disparage gayness itself.

This chapter describes the main discourses articulated by young and old cohorts to talk about gay marriage and isolates the effect of cohort on discourse. Discourses are a product of cohort and ideology, such that the culture war discourses of support and opposition were produced primarily by young liberals and older conservatives. Young conservatives and older liberals produced “middle-ground” discourses that show the tension created by the polarized discourses: their ideology pushed them toward one position on gay marriage, while their age cohort pushed them toward the other. Controlled comparisons of the discourses of ideologically identical parents and children show that cohort affects discourse via the attitudes they express about lesbians and gays. This chapter shows that the dynamics of the culture war should be measured dialogically in communicative interaction, not monologically in public opinion surveys.

This chapter examines how access to marriage might change lesbian and gay identities over time in ways that are stressful for lesbian and gay people. Drawing on interviews with gay couples from the Netherlands, it considers the debate over the consequences of same-sex marriage for the gay community itself. In particular, it analyzes the fears and claims of those who oppose gay marriage in order to better understand what is behind the emotions. It also explores whether marriage will lead to the end of gay culture, whether the marriage campaign will impede progress on other important political issues such as health care, and whether marriage will marginalize unmarried lesbians, gays, and bisexuals.

Christian Klesse engages with the experiences, narratives and viewpoints of British South Asian Men who participated in a study on discourses on non-monogamy in gay and bisexual male social movement spaces (1997-2003). Focusing on British Asian gay and bisexual men’s criticism of white British lesbigay racism and cultural hegemony the chapter calls into question one-dimensional discourses on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer communities. The analysis draws on queer diaspora perspectives and public sphere theories to understand lesbian, gay male, bisexual, transgender and queer spaces and networks as a source for a rather troubled experience of ‘multiculturalism’.

This concluding chapter returns to the history of family law and the changes it has undergone throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Traditional morality has suffered serious defeats. Living in sin is no longer a sin for most people. Illegitimacy has lost its bite. Sodomy laws are history. Tough divorce laws have given way to no-fault. Gay marriage seems to be just beyond the horizon. All of this, in hindsight, has the smell of the inevitable; of course, no legal change occurred without a battle, sometimes a bitter one. Moreover, the chapter cautions against speculating on the future of family law, emphasizing that, as the history of family law shows, the future is not often as inevitable or predictable as one might think.

This book examines how media coverage helped to define and shape the gay marriage debate as well as gay rights activism during the period 2003–2012. Through an analysis of media reports and in-depth interviews with leaders of the modern gay rights movement, it investigates how media frames and activist discourses evolved surrounding the issue of same-sex marriage. It looks at the aims and challenges of leading gay rights activists who sought to harness the power of mainstream news media to advocate for their cause and reform images of their community. It also considers how gay and lesbian rights groups attempted to shape coverage of the same-sex marriage debate, and what images and narratives about gay and lesbian life activists foregrounded. Finally, it discusses ways in which media attention surrounding the gay-marriage issue reshaped the structure, organization, and goals of the contemporary gay rights movement. This introduction provides an overview of the legal and political contexts of gay marriage in the United States, the rise of gay-themed media, and the research approach and plan of the book.

This chapter examines how leading gay rights activists staged the issue of gay marriage for mainstream media audiences, and particularly how they developed narratives about same-sex marriage as well as gay and lesbian life. It first puts the U.S. gay rights movement and the media in perspective before looking at the internal struggle over marriage that has been at the center of debate within the gay community. More specifically, it explores how the movement split over competing definitional strategies—whether to define marriage as a package of rights and responsibilities or as the ultimate expression of love and commitment. It also considers how activists crafted their strategies to “do battle” over marriage in the mainstream press and concludes by explaining how the gay marriage debate increased the visibility of a number of LGBT concerns, provided a space for new, “reformed” images of the community, and boosted mobilization efforts of the gay rights movement.

This chapter examines the interests of states that have strong public policies against recognizing same-sex marriages. It discusses the two debates about same-sex marriage; attempts to separate normative from administrative issues in the same-sex marriage debate; and the power and limits of the racism analogy.

This chapter examines the extent of gay rights activists' success in framing the gay marriage debate and in producing their preferred images for the news media. It first describes the linguistic and visual devices that news entities relied upon to represent gay and lesbian couples as “deserving” of marriage. It then explores how markers of gender, class, race, lifestyle, and sexuality were deployed to construct the human face of gay marriage and goes on to discuss the ways in which gay marriage ceremonies were ritualized and symbolized in news narratives. It also shows how “poster couples” selected by news producers and gay rights activists were legitimated in news narratives, but were also cast as “different” from the more “radical” community of non-married gays, relegating particular LGBT and queer identities to the margins. The chapter concludes by considering how news stories and images work together to produce new forms of gay desire.

This chapter examines the storytelling techniques that were used by journalists to produce the gay marriage issue for prime-time news audiences in 2003–2004, including labeling, framing, sourcing, imagery, and graphics. It discusses the discursive strategies employed by mainstream media to create conflict in the news; how sensationalist labels and descriptive language were used in news stories to validate historic homophobic discourses; and how privileging dominant political and religious sources worked to dichotomize the debate and silence moderate perspectives. It also explores how standard journalistic frames organized the same-sex marriage debate within “official” institutions of power. The chapter argues that journalistic definitions of authority, expertise, and “balance” created an uneven playing field, often pitting gay and lesbian spokespersons against unequal sources of influence from legal, medical, religious, and political authorities. It also shows how media coverage reduced the broader gay rights agenda to a single-issue movement and rarely gave gays and lesbians—almost always shown as couples—the opportunity to offer their own perspectives on this important issue.

This chapter examines how media narratives and activist strategies for representing gay perspectives in news discourse evolved over time. Drawing on activist interviews conducted in 2010 and 2011 as well as sample of news stories from 2008 through 2010, the chapter considers the journalistic devices that produced dominant meanings of the gay marriage issue, including the prevalent frames, sourcing patterns, photographic and graphic images, moving images, voice-over narration, and visual representations of married couples and the LGBT community more generally. It shows that, despite an overall more favorable tone and nuanced coverage of the debate, gay rights activists struggled in dealing with journalistic frames that resorted to the “God vs. gays” argument and played the race card. Mainstream media outlets continued to look to religious leaders as “obvious” oppositional sources on gay rights, while the movent's leaders faced internal conflicts over how best to represent pro-gay perspectives in media discourse and gain support from the “moveable middle.”

This book has explored the debate over same-sex marriage in the United States and whether marriage as an institution would be damaged by allowing same-sex couples to marry. Drawing on the experience of the Netherlands and other European countries, it has argued that marriage poses more of a challenge to gay people than gay people do to marriage. It has cited evidence based on the actions of same-sex couples in the Netherlands suggesting that gay people are interested in marriage for the same reasons that heterosexual couples are, such as the desire to have a child or to affirm and express their commitment to each other and to the world. It has also discussed the arguments against gay marriage as well as the positive gains that marriage can provide to gay couples, along with alternatives to marriage.

Based on in-depth interviews with two former Mormons, Cecilia and Andrew, this chapter presents the life stories of two apostates, exploring the personal reasons and circumstances behind their rejection of religion. While their stories are very different, they also have some matters in common. Both strongly reacted to the Mormon Church's opposition to gay marriage. Cecilia is very supportive of gay rights, and she found herself alienated from her religious milieu. Andrew is a gay man and was forced to choose between his religion and his sexuality.

This chapter introduces the concepts of generational change, generational theory, and the social imagination, and it describes how they can help us understand the evolution of public opinion about gay marriage in the United States and the role that public opinion played in the legalization of gay marriage. It introduces the thesis that the changing social imagination was the key cultural and cognitive development that led young cohorts to develop more supportive attitudes about gay marriage while also causing older cohorts to rethink their prior opinions. It explains how the imagination both produces and draws from the cultural schemas that we use to make sense of the world and why different groups can develop different cultural schemas. It concludes by describing the overall plan of the book and the author’s standpoint.