The fight for gay marriage is only the start of a long struggle
TWO ideological positions currently dominate the public debate on gay marriage.
The first is conservative opposition. Consistent with values of support for tradition and commitment to ‘natural’ hierarchy, authority, and property, conservative critics of gay marriage have portrayed it as a symbol of a permissive society. They have also depicted it as a mortal threat to one of the most venerable social institutions (‘traditional’ marriage and family) stemming an historical post-religious tide towards individualism and moral relativism.
The second is liberal support. In response to conservative arguments, and consistent with the liberal values of individual liberty and rights, toleration, and pluralism, liberal advocates of gay marriage contend that it should be understood as a civil liberties issue and a matter of equal protection under the law. Some, particularly in the gay community, have claimed it is also about respect for an individual’s right to love whomever they choose.
Notwithstanding the many differences between these apparently opposed ideological positions, they share at least two significant features. First, they both reinforce the legal links between access to social supports and the institution of marriage.
Second, they close, rather than open broad-minded democratic dialogue about the rich diversity of intimate relationships that exist in contemporary Ireland, and the pressing social need to provide for the wellbeing of all our citizens regardless of their marital status.
With respect to the first point, both the conservative rhetoric of moral peril and the liberal rhetoric of equal freedom and freedom to love obscure the fact that marriage is a state- and church-sanctioned institution that elevates some household forms and intimate relationships over others.
Marriage offers a cornucopia of legal, financial, and social benefits from inheritance rights to tax breaks to social security and respectability. Both conservative opponents and liberal supporters of gay marriage wish to preserve the privileged social status of the institution. The latter simply wish to extend its exclusionary privileges to same-sex couples. Whatever else it may be, marriage is at root a state-conferred legal partnership status. While this feature of marriage does not necessarily preclude loving relationships, nor does it require them.
One can be wed without love, and love without a wedding. Nor is marriage necessary for the public recognition of love. Lovers can organise a public commitment ceremony without signing a legal contract.
The second point is related to the first, insofar as a blinkered focus on the pros and cons of extending the privileges of marriage to same-sex couples may deflect attention from the needs of those living in domestic arrangements outside its protected circle. As was the case in the US, it may also reinforce a neoliberal agenda of privatising care for the elderly, the sick, children, and the dependent, and thus foreclose possibilities of moving beyond the limits of marriage as the primary structure for ensuring care.
Some conservative critics of social welfare have even welcomed gay marriage as yet another means of shifting the costs of care from society as a whole to private households.
Fortunately, though marginalised in the current public debate, there are alternatives to conservative opposition and liberal support for gay marriage. One thought-provoking and legitimate alternative is radical gay opposition to gay marriage.
However, while this position has the merit of broadening public debate, it fails to address the question of why LGBT people should be denied a right open to their straight peers. It also assumes, falsely in my view, that it is impossible or contradictory to advocate for both marriage equality and a vision of society which celebrates rather than regulates the rich diversity of human sexual and intimate relations.
This leads me, finally, to my own perspective on the gay marriage debate. Informed by a long history of grassroots social movement struggle against domination in all its varied and interconnected forms, and a range of more radical ideological perspectives from anarchism to utopian socialism to ecologism, anti-racism, radical feminism and lesbian and gay and transgender liberation, the core of this position is what I call ‘revolutionary love’.
Rooted in the recognition that inequalities related to love and sexuality cannot be meaningfully addressed in isolation from wider considerations of social, economic, and ecological justice, revolutionary love entails among things organising for universal equality and respect for the diversity of loving relationships and household forms, as well as collective responsibility for care of the most vulnerable in society.
From this perspective, the fight for marriage equality, which I support, must not be construed as an end in itself, but only the beginning of a much longer struggle for a more deeply egalitarian and loving world in which there are many socially recognised and supported ways to organise one’s intimate life.
Dr Laurence Davis lectures on government at University College Cork and chairs the university’s LGBT Staff Network.
