An Entry from My Writerly Morgue

Well, readers, I think it's safe to say that we've entered the rejection portion of my writing career, where I plan to stay until the day I die. I'm definitely not bitter. Thanks to 21st century self-publication, I can pawn off my failed writerly projects on you folks! WHO NEEDS AN EDITOR?! (Answer: Me. I need an editor. Always and desperately.)

The following isn't an overly original marriage piece, but it looked like it was going to run in a certain Washington periodical that shall remain nameless, until they pulled it at the last minute. Since the piece's relevance pretty much expires on election day, I thought I'd post it here. There are a few lines/strains of thought that I want to see the light of day, in one form or another. I hate writing about my own writing, but I'd hoped this might help make the terms of the marriage debate a little less self-evident and start to get at the larger stakes of marriage equality, especially for collective citizenship.

 /commence

For those of you living in a hermetically-sealed bubble for the past several years, I bring breaking news: there’s a marriage debate being staged across the nation concerning the rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender people to marry. The right exists in a small number of states (plus one district), and a few additional states now recognize the same-sex marriage certificates issued by other states. This election season, though, the question is appearing as a ballot initiative in four states – Maryland, Washington, Maine, and Minnesota. It seems timely, then, to take a moment to root around a little in the business of both marriage equality and state-sponsored love in 21st century America.

Perhaps we should stop swaddling ourselves in inherited marriage bullshit, whether religious or cultural. Let’s be clear: Marriage, within the realm of government legislation, isn’t about love. Marriage isn’t about creating healthy environments for children. (After all, America’s ever-expanding foster care system suggests that nuclear families fail their children every day.) Present-day marriage doesn’t have anything to do with Jesus either, much though that diva would like it to. The nuclear family, crafted in the furnace of marriage and government-sponsored love, is a technology by which the state organizes and exercises power over its citizens. Through the institution of marriage, the state acknowledges specific kinds of relationships, glues in place patriarchal gender relations, and fortifies the structural economic inequality that has become the calling card of 21st century America. Marriage is more about the selective distribution of privileges than it’s ever been about love.

In light of my emerging cynicism, maybe you won’t be surprised to learn that there are divergent strains of thought within the LGBT community about whether or not the ability to marry is even a desirable right. After all, marriage is a deeply sexist institution that has a long history of overt racism. Plus, many LGBT people have spent years, sometimes generations, forging unconventional community ties whose perceived legitimacy hasn’t a single thing to do with one-on-one marriage. We also might wonder if the enormous resources spent passing marriage legislation, by organizations like the Human Rights Campaign, might be better spent on more pressing issues like healthcare and workplace discrimination. Does the fact that in 2012, LGBT rights automatically equals civil marriage keep us from recognizing both the landscape of possibilities that LGBT politics might present to the American imagination and the larger economic problems that make marriage a necessity in the first place?

But if we’re going to have the marriage conversation, and by now it’s very clear that we are, none of this is really the point. That isn’t what is at stake for either the state-specific ballot initiatives or the larger campaign for marriage equality. The black-and-white reality is that one set of American citizens can achieve a basic set of rights and privileges that another cannot. Denying LGBT citizens the right to marry creates a system of tiered citizenship that values certain Americans over others. The fact that Sharon Stone can marry, but Sharon Needles can’t means that Sharon S. has access to fuller citizenship than Ms. Needles, having absolutely nothing to do with whether or not either has any business getting married at all. Flat-out, this is not the democracy on which America prides itself.

What’s more, this debate has an effect on our collective citizenship. Where you, good fundamentalists of the world, love to argue that homomatrimony would weaken the value of your “traditional” marriage, I’m going to suggest that denying a specific group of Americans the right to marry cheapens your citizenship. And honey, in most cases you’ve been American much longer then you’ve been husband/wife.

Will marriage be good for LGBT people? Sorry, the cynic in me started laughing before you even finished asking the question. However, at this particular political moment, it’s possible to be against marriage, but for marriage equality. Hell, it’s even possible to be against LGBT people, but for marriage equality, because voting for equality doesn’t have anything to do with marriage. It isn’t even a statement about how you feel about homosexuality. Fundamentally, it’s a vote in favor of democratic equality for all citizens.

Discuss. Oh, and vote. Be as hipster-trendy as you want, there’s nothing cool about not voting.

/end

Now, Will Danger, your questions are irksome and perhaps you should take your furs and your literal interpretations to the other side of the river. Sashay away.

When is a Queer Critique of Marriage Not a Queer Critique of Marriage?

Answer: When it's ajar!

I've been, as usual, infinitely lax in my blogging responsibilities. In the spirit of yesterday's National Coming Out Day, the obnoxiously unfurling election season, and Will Danger's secret desire to be a bridezilla, let's talk about marriage.

There's an especially relevant conversation unfolding over on The Madwoman with a Laptop about marriage equality.  Check it out, I'll wait for you to come back. In the specific context of Will Danger's former home state (home is, after all, where you hang your hat and I don't have a single hat rack left in MD), Madwoman's "Terps Against Marriage for Marriage Equality" addresses the marriage conversation in a way that is responsible, nuanced, and generally awesome.

The fact that in 2012, when a politician says "LGBT rights," they really mean "gay marriage" says a lot about the way we think, sure. Nonetheless, the mainstream LGBT movement's matrimonial tunnel vision is toxic for a poop-ton of reasons. In a practical sense, it keeps us from mobilizing political energy on other issues, many of which are more pressing that my right to bear wedding dresses. But in a more fundamental way, the focus on marriage is limiting the way we think about so-called "LGBT issues" and indicates a national refusal of more complex, messy political thinking. After all, in neoliberal America we love the supposed clarity of identity politics. Our inability to think and legislate sexuality alongside, within, or even as race, class, and gender continues to cripple our ability to address the structural economic inequality in which marriage obviously participates. It also hampers the cultivation of an American political vision that might actually start to earn the increasingly tired label "progressive."

Lately, I've been all about plunging headlong into possibility. I think then, what I find most fascinating about homomatrimony is that it contains the possibility to fracture the stability of our gender relations. Marriage remains, after all, public enemy number one in terms of gross medieval gender dynamics and is also a primary organizing framework for American culture. So an invasion of "traditional marriage" might be exactly what the doctor ordered in terms of finally letting American gender off the leash. What happens to our sense of culture when gender runs wild, queers leading the charge? Can we start to imagine male spinsters or female lotharios or chick flicks for men? Do many/most of our cultural assumptions become deservedly denaturalized, and might this mean that we can finally start thinking beyond gender? Letting loose the reigns on marriage could reorder our culture in some really thrilling ways, and might open up some exciting and startlingly queer horizons of possibility.

And I suppose that this cultural reordering is exactly what opponents of marriage equality are afraid of. They worry that enabling the gayz to marry will unravel the fabric of society. On this particular rainy Friday, I'm sort of inclined to say, "Duh." But that's exactly the point. Sorry [insert dummy Republican], but legalizing gay marriage might actually help dismantle, or at least de-privilege an institution from which you draw a lot of smug/undeserved economic and cultural capital/superiority/privilege. [This is probably the point at which you realize I will never be a political figure, if you've even managed to make it this far with that delusion in mind]. If I allow myself to loosen my white-knuckled grip on the queer critiques of marriage for which Madwoman spectacularly calls my generation out, marriage equality might create a political environment that finally forces our political thinking to evolve, in which we can finally think about race and class alongside and in place of LGBT issues. [Quick aside: Isn't your run-of-the-mill queer critique of marriage almost as privileged and culturally specific as the institution of marriage itself?]

I'm certainly not saying that there is no trouble with normal, just that it's become obnoxiously hipster-trendy to think that marriage equality is stupid. An aversion to marriage has achieved common sense status in many queer circles (circles that, perhaps ironically, claim to resist common sense in most other contexts). I just wonder if anyone's pausing to wonder what might be queer about voting for marriage equality, and about the important ways that achieving marriage equality could reorient and expand the American political imagination.

At any rate, folks, votevotevote. Vote. Vote. Be as brilliantly queer and subversive as you can, there's still nothing cool about not voting.

The Days When Birds Come Back

I'm back, folks, after a long bout of the flu that has left me looking rather like Kate Moss. This week has been sort of nuts, as the week before spring break often is, and I hope you have all been riding out the chaos well enough. Despite all the craziness and anxiety about impending graduation and my less than lucrative career goals, there are some mornings, when I have time to get up and do some writing and purchase a new book, with springtime-appropriate weather streaming in through the windows. These are mornings of optimism for me, that leave me feeling as though maybe we can all plug onward. To paraphrase E.D, these are the [mornings] when skies resume/The old-old sophistries of June-/A blue and gold mistake.

I want to take a blog moment to examine both the project I have set forth in this blog and my own commitment to that project. As you may be realizing, two things are occuring with regards to my writing habits: 1) I am not updating as frequently as I'd like and 2) I have made some blog promises on which I have not followed through, mainly in the form of promised follow-ups. I imagine these writerly habits are quite frustrating for you, as readers. All I can really say on this front is that I will try to play a better host to the handful of you who visit this cozy pocket of the internet.

Onward and upward, though. All the hubub which has been taking place at and around this queer turtle's university (Anna Deavere Smith, Selly Thiam, the recent marriage debacle, the many documentaries I spent my sick days watching) have left me wondering about the political and cultural weight of testimony. On the one hand, I think lots of scholarship out there (with some notable exceptions) teaches us that personal testimony is to be avoided. It is purely affective and therefore has very little critical appeal. And yet, with the recent MD marriage disappointment, we cannot discount the political importance of testimony, even if it seems a strange data source, in a number of ways. How do we read a partially affective data source? Do we attempt to draw any sort of objective conclusion from such a subjective construction? Finally, why do we find personal testimony so compelling?


Of particular interest to me is the ex-gay presence at the hearing (Its use of the word "homosexual" should gesture toward my feelings about that particular post, however I find its videos and commentary to be useful). In the spirit of the archive, I'll try to offer this evidence sans commentary, and let you readers draw your own conclusions. However, I can't pass up the opportunity to ask about the myth of the "Homosexual Lifestyle." This seems to sort of undercut the diversity of the gay community. Implicit in such phrasing is the idea that, though there are many different kinds of straight people, the gay doctor. lawyer, and blogger are all the same, which is a pretty silly idea. Returning to the evidence at hand though, why do people find ex-gay testimony so effective? Is it the narrative of redemption that attracts them?

To round out some of the last posting I play to make about marriage for a good, long while, Gender and Sexuality in Law has some great postings on marriage stuff. Check it out and tell me how hard you laughed at this video. Because srsly folks. It's good.

Things to think about:  Why didn't the marriage bill go to vote? What do we make of politicians who are willing to make such a political maneuver? What does this mean for future ventures in the realm of marriage equality and gay rights, more broadly? And, as always, where do we go from here?

Finally, we all need to get our kumbaya-yas out in one form or another:

I'm surprised it's taken Buffy this long to surface 'round these parts.


 (Dickinson image thieved via)

Effie White's Big Fat Gay Wedding

Happy Wednesday, dear readers. If your Hump Day has been anything like mine, a deep breath and a short break is in order (If your Wednesday was awesome, frankly, the rest of us don't want to hear about it). Such a break seems like the perfect time to invoke some Effie White-style masochism (the real masochism/face-melting/jaw dislocating begins around 3:28). I considered doing an entire post as Effie White, but frankly, I just don't have the soul for it (or the lung capacity, for that matter).

And so, having enjoyed that short break, let us all take a Jennifer Holiday-sized deep breath and plunge onward.

As promised, I'm back for some long-overdue mouthing off. Gay marriage is something I've generally refrained from blogging about, for a number of reasons. For one, it has never struck me as a particularly complex issue: all we want to do is have some Big Gay Weddings (oh, and I guess maybe it'd be nice to have some state sanction and cultural capital invested in our relationships, too). Secondly, people always seem to have very clear ideas regarding where they stand on the issue of gay marriage, so that I'm not sure how much an only-moderately-informed blogging undergrad can hope to bring to the table. This South Park Clip seems to sum up the whole thing pretty nicely (Apologies for casual throwing around of the word "faggot," which is one of the few places where South Park and I diverge). Finally, and I am aware that this is a pretty stupid reason, but marriage has always felt like an issue that was pretty far removed from my own life and, as such, I have refrained from weighing in.

The current U.S. political landscape, however, is making it all but impossible to avoid talking about the M-word (which raises its own set of questions). On a national level, Barack and his administration have (finally) recalled their support of the Defense of Marriage Act (For all intents and purposes, they might have called it the Keep the Homos Out of Here Act. I think they went with DOMA for acronym purposes). Barack has always been downright infuriating in his continually delayed action regarding LGBT policies, so I'm borderline giddy to see him finally taking some action, even if that action seems like something that should have been undertaken ages ago. Barack, I'll be honest: I voted for you and now I'm thinking Hilary (who is just kicking ass and taking names as Secretary of State) might have been a better choice. On a more local level, Maryland is close to joining DC and the cadre of other smarter-than-average states in passing legislature that enables Big Gay Weddings.

I've tended to tell anyone who will stop and listen how problematic I find the "mainstream LGBT movement's" focus on marriage. Many organizations seem to focus on marriage, eschewing all else. Marriage is by no means the bottom line of LGBT rights, and it is far from the most pressing matter facing LGBT identified people (a lesson that people hopefully learned from the horrendously tragic events of this past fall).

But this still doesn't quite answer the question of how we are supposed to feel about marriage. Are we supposed to understand marriage as a simple celebration of love (I can barely get that sentence out without vomiting all over my keyboard)? Or is it an outdated and grossly sexist institution that should be quashed, and that we queers have no business further enabling? The truth is, it might be both, but I think marriage, in its current incarnation, is best understood as something that straight folks can do, but gay folks are not allowed. Marriage, for better or worse  is a right we are denied (Anyone mentioning the phrase "civil union" in response to this point is going to get the dirtiest look I can muster, by the way. And gay men are genetically predisposed to dirty look-giving). As such, I am firmly in favor of gay marriage, even if I might never get one myself.

Of course, there are all sorts of strange cultural implications to consider: If gays can get married, does this mean that when I am in my forties and own thirty-seven cats, all named Emily Dickinson, I will be a spinster? If I'm in my mid 30s and I've been divorced three times, is it time to pack it in and commit myself to a life of prostitutes and platonic friendships? And, of course, there are all the grotesque Romantic Comedies that are just begging to be written about the subject. While I mostly kid, I do think that this changing political tide with regard to gay marriage also gestures in the direction of shifting cultural scripts, though as to what form this shift might take, I haven't the slightest.

Have a good rest of the week folks.

Will Danger

(Jennifer Holiday screen cap courtesy of Vincent Allport)