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Marriage, Gender Justice, and Children’s Well-Being

Stephen Macedo

in Just Married: Same-Sex Couples, Monogamy, and the Future of Marriage

This chapter examines conservative arguments from the gendered nature of marriage as a relation of husband and wife, and others based on children's interests. It first considers the conservatives' ... More

This chapter examines conservative arguments from the gendered nature of marriage as a relation of husband and wife, and others based on children's interests. It first considers the conservatives' idea of marriage as an essentially gendered relationship of husband and wife before discussing the debate in the U.S. Senate in 2004 over a Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) to the Constitution. In particular, it explores two main claims advanced by Republican supporters of the FMA on the Senate floor: first, that traditional heterosexual marriage tends to promote children's wellbeing (which is true), and, second, that same-sex matrimony would damage or destroy heterosexual marriage. The chapter proceeds by reviewing the evidence regarding the impact of same-sex marriage on children's welfare and concludes by asking whether greater acceptance of marriages between gay males could contribute to the weakening of marriage.Less

Opening up Marriage: Married Lalas in Shanghai

Kam Yip Lo Lucetta

in As Normal as Possible: Negotiating Sexuality and Gender in Mainland China and Hong Kong

This chapter is based on in-depth interviews with twenty-four lalas in Shanghai and it politicizes the discourses of standing up (zhan qi lai)/coming out (zhan chu lai). It also explores the ... More

This chapter is based on in-depth interviews with twenty-four lalas in Shanghai and it politicizes the discourses of standing up (zhan qi lai)/coming out (zhan chu lai). It also explores the negotiational conflicts between the desires for familial recognition of one's personal life and the aspiration for social recognition and political collectivity. In addition, it argues that the “politics of normalization” could be seen as a political strategy for maintaining sexual dissidence, earning visibility, recognition and potentially more freedom for a self-identified community in the long run. Married lala informants in this research show how sexually nonnormative women in China actively struggle for spaces between the two worlds of heterosexual marriage and same-sex relationship. Lala women who feel trapped in heterosexual marriages seek asylum in a foreign city that is away from their conjugal homes and familial obligations.Less

What Are We Waiting For?

Amanda H. Littauer

in Bad Girls: Young Women, Sex, and Rebellion before the Sixties

This introductory chapter traces the rise of sexual autonomy among young American women. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, urbanization presented opportunities for many young women to pursue ... More

This introductory chapter traces the rise of sexual autonomy among young American women. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, urbanization presented opportunities for many young women to pursue sexual relationships outside of heterosexual marriage. This further developed in the earlier half of the twentieth century when immigrant and working-class young women explored the amusements and commercial opportunities of city life, often on the arms of young men who paid for sex. Younger girls joined in despite scrutiny from the new juvenile courts. The rise of dating practices eroded parental and community control, and prostitution lost ground to taxi dancing, stripping, and erotic dancing. The period also saw the legalization of contraception and birth control which accelerated the separation of heterosexual sex from reproduction. In all of these ways, the sexual culture before World War II was already shifting and changing, opening up certain possibilities for sexual independence.Less

The Impact of Gay Marriage on Heterosexuals

M. V. Lee Badgett

in When Gay People Get Married: What Happens When Societies Legalize Same-Sex Marriage

This chapter examines the possible relationship between the marriage choices of gay couples and the decisions about marriage made by heterosexual couples. More specifically, it considers whether ... More

This chapter examines the possible relationship between the marriage choices of gay couples and the decisions about marriage made by heterosexual couples. More specifically, it considers whether same-sex couples have somehow changed heterosexual marriage choices. It first comments on Stanley Kurtz's claim that “gay marriage is both an effect and a cause of the increasing separation between marriage and parenthood” because it accelerates the separation process that had already begun as a result of other causes. It then addresses the argument that the “experiment” with same-sex marriage in Europe was a disaster by analyzing the evidence on what heterosexuals do with respect to marrying and having children. Focusing on measures of heterosexual marriage and divorce behavior, the chapter suggests that nothing much changed as a result of the recognition of same-sex couples. It also shows that there is no correlation between changes in ideas about marriage—mainly a belief that marriage is an outdated institution—and the granting of legal rights to same-sex couples.Less

My Unconventional Marriage or ménage à trois in Beijing

Xiaopei He

in As Normal as Possible: Negotiating Sexuality and Gender in Mainland China and Hong Kong

This chapter provides a narrative of the author's performance and retraces her unique tactics of setting an admirable example in turning the institution of heterosexual, monogamous, and monosexual ... More

This chapter provides a narrative of the author's performance and retraces her unique tactics of setting an admirable example in turning the institution of heterosexual, monogamous, and monosexual marriage inside out. It also shows the vitality and pleasure of a possible queer politics and counter-public which prioritizes non-normative intimacies, coalition building, sex education, and advocacy over love, privacy, and the life-long couple form of marriage. Together with some other gay activists, she decided to organize a fake wedding to encourage further thinking about and discussion of the issues of marriage. She proposed to a gay activist who was a long-time friend, and a lesbian woman whom she had just met. There would be three of them in a marriage: one gay man and two lesbian women. The wedding ceremony was to claim that bisexuality is not a crime.Less

The Symbolic Power of Civil Marriage on the Sexual Life Histories of Gay Men

Adam Isaiah Green

in Sex for Life: From Virginity to Viagra, How Sexuality Changes Throughout Our Lives

This chapter analyzes how gay and straight men's sexual life histories are powerfully shaped by the combination of early-life expectations about marriage and social structures that make marriage ... More

This chapter analyzes how gay and straight men's sexual life histories are powerfully shaped by the combination of early-life expectations about marriage and social structures that make marriage differentially available. Both access to and exclusion from civil marriage have powerful effects that resonate throughout the life course of heterosexual and homosexual men, respectively. Heterosexual access to and homosexual exclusion from civil marriage have produced the institutional backdrop against which a gay sexual subculture has emerged with a value system concerning intimate life forged in direct opposition to its heterosexual counterpart. Whereas the predominant, heterosexual, romantic meaning-constitutive tradition is anchored to the institution of heterosexual marriage, the queer meaning-constitutive tradition is anchored to the institutions of sexual sociality, including bars, nightclubs, and bathhouses.Less

Contesting Native American Marriage

Melanie Heath

in One Marriage Under God: The Campaign to Promote Marriage in America

This chapter looks at the marital politics among Native Americans as an example of the importance of race and culture to understanding marriage ideology. In contemporary “Indian territory” (now the ... More

This chapter looks at the marital politics among Native Americans as an example of the importance of race and culture to understanding marriage ideology. In contemporary “Indian territory” (now the state of Oklahoma), Native American tribes have sovereignty to decide their own marriage customs and rituals, which are today more likely to share mainstream understandings of heterosexual marriage. Reflecting national dynamics, tribes confront the debate over marriage's meaning and purpose. On the one hand, the federal government seeks to promote marriage among Native Americans, instituting a Native American Healthy Marriage Initiative and offering federal grants to tribes and Native nonprofits. On the other hand, tribes are dealing with the question of same-sex marriage; a battle has been staged in Oklahoma over a Cherokee lesbian marriage that turned the national spotlight on who is allowed to marry and why.Less

Conclusion: The Power of the “M-Word”

Melanie Heath

in One Marriage Under God: The Campaign to Promote Marriage in America

This chapter concludes that while the leaders of the marriage initiative were incredibly enthusiastic about helping people improve their relationships to get and stay married, these efforts can ... More

This chapter concludes that while the leaders of the marriage initiative were incredibly enthusiastic about helping people improve their relationships to get and stay married, these efforts can contribute to perpetuating social inequalities. The ideologies and cultural repertoires that motivate marriage promotion have social and economic consequences that cannot be ignored in discussions of policy. Indeed, from a social justice perspective, the ideological project to uphold the heterosexually married family will no doubt create more inequality for families across the nation—for gay and lesbian families and for poor women—in its attempts to create a hierarchy with marriage at the top. Thus, the book suggests that Americans must find a different way to think about families in the twenty-first century.Less

Unite!: Marriage and American Identity

Melanie Heath

in One Marriage Under God: The Campaign to Promote Marriage in America

This chapter presents the ideological connections between campaigns against same-sex marriage and marriage promotion initiatives. These two phenomena connect in their shared perception of marriage as ... More

This chapter presents the ideological connections between campaigns against same-sex marriage and marriage promotion initiatives. These two phenomena connect in their shared perception of marriage as the “building block” of the nation and as an essential component of American identity. Sociologist Andrew Cherlin points out two ideologies that motivate marriage advocates. Some take a moral position that marriage provides the best kind of family, while others favor it because research proves that children are better off when their parents are married. Those motivated more by moral justification also support efforts to ban the legalization of same-sex marriage. They argue that marriage must remain heterosexual because kids need both a mother and a father; same-sex marriage does not offer this normative configuration, and is thus detrimental to society.Less

Negotiating the Public and the Private

Lucetta Yip Lo Kam

in Shanghai Lalas: Female Tongzhi Communities and Politics in Urban China

Chapter four discusses the strategies of lala women to cope with the pressure of family and marriage in their everyday life. The first part focuses on the interactions between lala women and their ... More

Chapter four discusses the strategies of lala women to cope with the pressure of family and marriage in their everyday life. The first part focuses on the interactions between lala women and their natal family and the second part discusses specifically the situation of married lala women and how they accommodate their same-sex relationship and their heterosexual marriages.Less

Widening the Marriage Gap

Melanie Heath

in One Marriage Under God: The Campaign to Promote Marriage in America

This chapter explores the marriage initiative's strategies to preserve a boundary of heterosexual marriage through practices that paradoxically do more to sustain or widen it. Marriage advocates seek ... More

This chapter explores the marriage initiative's strategies to preserve a boundary of heterosexual marriage through practices that paradoxically do more to sustain or widen it. Marriage advocates seek to close the marriage gap between poor and middle-class families, especially between black and white families. In an article appearing on the conservative Townhall.com website, Maggie Gallagher points to marriage as a reason behind the increasing income gap in America. Thus, a new antipoverty policy solution has been called the “marriage cure,” shifting attention to marriage promotion rather than on other structural factors that perpetuate poverty. However, even as the marriage initiative introduced an antipoverty agenda for poor women, it prioritized the more high-profile workshops offered to the general population that draw a predominantly white, middle-class crowd.Less

Where Does Oppression End and Pleasure Begin? Confronting Sexual and Gender Inequality in HIV Prevention Work

Héctor Carrillo

in Sexual Inequalities and Social Justice

Two general strategies inform contemporary progressive HIV prevention work: first, greater promotion of sexual and gender equality, with the end of reducing the power gap between partners and hence, ... More

Two general strategies inform contemporary progressive HIV prevention work: first, greater promotion of sexual and gender equality, with the end of reducing the power gap between partners and hence, enabling sexual empowerment to adopt cautionary measures; second, to construct a “sex-positive” space in order to remove sexual taboos and promote greater acceptance of sexuality and sexual desires. This chapter seeks to identify the extent of compatibility/incompatibility of these strategies with the lived experiences and erotic sensibilities of the people whose health AIDS educators seek to promote. Initial efforts in Mexico concerning proliferation of AIDS awareness commenced in a social space that excluded open discussion of sex-related issues. As such, the efforts met stiff resistance from conservative religious groups strongly opposing governmental promotion of contraception. They came out with an alternative stating that intercourse among heterosexual marriages and abstinence outside of it are the only morally valid ways of fighting AIDS.Less

Legitimizing the Deviant Family: Loving v. Virginia and the Moynihan Report

Habiba Ibrahim

in Troubling the Family: The Promise of Personhood and the Rise of Multiracialism

This chapter discusses how two important state documents of the 1960s—Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” and the U.S. Supreme Court decision of Loving v. ... More

This chapter discusses how two important state documents of the 1960s—Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” and the U.S. Supreme Court decision of Loving v. Virginia—together mark the historical basis for the multiracial movement’s preoccupation with the family. These two significant documents reveal a seemingly contradictory national stance on the American family. Both were state initiatives to reinforce heterosexual marriage, and by extension the heteronormative family, as private units that fortify national well-being. The combined legacy of these state documents figured so largely within discourses on the multiracial family that one could trace it through the key components of movement: the legitimization of multiracial families, the primacy of (white) maternal love for multiracial children, and suburbanization as the racially normalized condition of family development.Less

Dumb and Doma: Why the Defense of Marriage Act Is Unconstitutional

in The Gay Rights Question in Contemporary American Law

The widely publicized Defense of Marriage Act (“DOMA”), which passed both houses of Congress by huge margins and was signed by President Clinton, has two provisions. One of these defines marriage, ... More

The widely publicized Defense of Marriage Act (“DOMA”), which passed both houses of Congress by huge margins and was signed by President Clinton, has two provisions. One of these defines marriage, for federal purposes, as exclusively heterosexual. When same-sex marriages are eventually recognized, this provision's impact on same-sex couples is likely to be harsh, since at a stroke it deprives them of all the federal benefits to which other married couples are entitled. Its constitutionality however seems difficult to challenge. The other provision authorizes individual states to ignore same-sex marriages when they are performed in other states. This chapter argues that this second provision injures the targeted class of persons so broadly and indiscriminately that it gives rise to an inference of unconstitutional intent. This inference contaminates the first section as well, and so it invalidates the entire act.Less

Straight versus Gay

in Us Against Them: Ethnocentric Foundations of American Opinion

This chapter investigates the role of ethnocentricity in the politics of morality, focusing on the struggle over gay rights in the United States. Ethnocentric Americans tend to disapprove of gays ... More

This chapter investigates the role of ethnocentricity in the politics of morality, focusing on the struggle over gay rights in the United States. Ethnocentric Americans tend to disapprove of gays serving in the military and of laws designed to protect gays against discrimination on the job, oppose same-sex marriage, and stand against allowing gay couples to adopt children. The chapter argues that the campaign to defend heterosexual marriage appears to have increased the importance of ethnocentrism for opinion and for action alike.Less