Jan Bianchi isn't happy.
In carefully measured tones, the president of the gay advocacy group Hands Off Washington says "You know, marriage has not been a wonderful institution for women." Yet when Christian Right Republicans in Olympia started pushing a bill to prohibit same-gender marriage, Hands Off felt compelled to fight it. It was discriminatory legislation, after all.
And they won. The bill passed out of the Republican-controlled House, but died in committee in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
But wait a minute. Isn't it illegal for two queers to get hitched in Washington already?
For now, yes. But a court case pending in Hawaii could legalize same-gender marriage in that state as early as August. And by legal precedent the other 49 states would have to recognize gay marriages performed there. Visions of queer couples flying to Hawaii to get lei'd and tie the knot have travel agents running for their calculators and state lawmakers dusting off their marriage statutes.
Both the mainstream and gay media have painted the same-sex marriage debate in black and white. If you oppose homosexuality, you oppose gay marriage, and if you support gay rights you support gay marriage. But the controversy has turned many assumptions on their heads.
Many gay and lesbian activists see gay marriage as another step toward the "mainstreaming" of the movement by emphasizing the similarities between gay and straight people rather than the differences. If gays and lesbians are perceived as suburban parents struggling to raise children while making car and house payments, it becomes harder for the dominant society to demonize them as hedonistic "others." This "virtual equality," as activist Urvashi Vaid disparages it, is a far cry from the emphasis on sexual liberation and deviation which characterized the movement in the '70s.
But to Sam Woodard, same-sex marriage is the latest assault in a radical gay-rights agenda. Woodard, who spearheaded a failed anti-gay adoption initiative last year, says "in the '70s I myself supported the gay movement as far as leaving people alone [but] you put it to the point now where you're teaching it in our schools, to our children, you're demanding that it be given the same status as heterosexuality, the marriages, the adoptions of our children, and so on."
In fact, same-sex marriage has generally not been on the agenda of gay and lesbian activists and organizations. While same-sex couples have sued for the right to marry 11 times since 1970, it was not until it looked like the three couples who sued in Hawaii would win that activists began jumping on the bandwagon.
To John Wilkinson, coordinator for the Legal Marriage Alliance of Washington, they'd better start jumping on soon, because he thinks the idea of gay marriage is widely popular among gays and lesbians.
"This is a true grassroots movement, like the issue of gay people in the military," Wilkinson says. "It has not been on a national gay agenda, whatever that might be. It was driven by the people who were directly affected, the people who were being dumped out of the military, who were suing. When the issue reached the courts then the national organizations became interested. The same thing has happened here. Initially, especially activists at the local and national level are fearful of this issue and reject it. They may still have intellectual and social arguments against marriage, but in terms of an issue that has to be dealt with they come around very quickly."
The Legal Marriage Alliance is advocating for the legalization of same-sex marriages by holding forums and meeting with potentially sympathetic groups around the state. Wilkinson was inspired to organize the Alliance after he heard Evan Wolfson of Lambda Legal Defense speak at a gay business luncheon. "He made it very clear that the issue was coming our way whether we wanted it or not and whether we were ready or not, so that definitely caught my attention," Wilkinson said. "Something that the [gay activist] opponents of marriage need to explain is why they should be the ones to speak for what we think is the majority of lesbian and gay people who think that they should have the choice to marry."
But before activists had a chance to do that, the backlash of anti-gay marriage legislation forced them into a defensive position. At a town meeting in February, gay state Rep. Ed Murray said, "It's really weird to go down [to Olympia] and have people tell you you're demanding something, as I heard from the Republicans. When I introduce a same sex marriage bill, then they'll know we're demanding something."
Rolling the Dice
Meanwhile, opponents of same-sex marriage are trying to pass bills in a number of state legislatures to negate the effect of the Hawaii decision. Gay legal advocates compare this to the patchwork of state racial miscegenation laws that were not overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court until 1967. But whether more conservative courts will overturn anti-gay marriage laws in the '90s and beyond is hard to predict.
If the courts uphold these laws instead, the gay and lesbian movement will suffer a heavy blow. Bianchi is skeptical of the current legal marriage movement and advocates a more incremental approach: "I think to try to pass some kind of affirmative legislation would be taking a step bigger than we're capable of, and the result of that would not only be the defeat of that step, but also would preclude us from taking the steps that we really could achieve."
And some gay couples do not see the issue as urgent. Wilkinson uses one couple he knows as an example: "They're almost upper middle class, but they're still a solid middle class white male couple who have been able to use their education and their financial means to protect themselves. What they need to understand, one, is that they haven't fully protected themselves to the extent that marriage would, and second, that they are privileged in a way that people without the education and without the means are not and cannot be. People who haven't been educated to protect themselves, who don't have the means to seek out attorneys and financial advisors, they aren't able to construct those protections for themselves. They could marry and instantly gain all of those protections at no extra cost."
But would legal same-sex marriage actually advance the goals of the gay and lesbian movement? Many benefits would certainly be gained, from immigration to adoption, from health care to Social Security. But access to those benefits would still depend on wealth, class and education, as well as marital status, just as it does for straight people. If middle class gay and lesbian couples could legally marry, would they still want to fight for universal health care, for example? Or would the class divisions that keep Wilkinson's friends complacent be intensified?
Bianchi says, "Wouldn't it be nice if we didn't have to get benefits by virtue of getting married? To get benefits by virtue of being citizens would be a more appropriate way of trying to deal with economic issues."
But in the meantime, gays and lesbians have to decide if the potential benefits of legalized marriage outweigh the risks of a right-wing backlash. It would be nice if all people had the choice to create and formalize their relationships however they wanted. But in a society where marriage is so privileged that some want to withhold its benefits from those they see as inferior, that freedom of choice may be more theoretical than real.
Richard Jackman is a former AIDS activist from New York
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