WHY WE'RE NOT GETTING MARRIED: Martha Ackelsberg and Judith Plaskow

WE LOVE EACH other, and we've been in a committed relationship for nearly 20 years. We are residents of Massachusetts. But we're not getting married.

We fully believe that gay and lesbian couples should have the right to marry, and we celebrate the fact that a significant barrier to our full citizenship has fallen. In not taking advantage of this new right, however, we can more comfortably advocate for the kind of society in which we would like to live.

Those who have fought for gay marriage have made clear that, in the U.S., important benefits are tied to marital status. As the judges of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court noted in the Goodridge decision, "Marriage provides an abundance of legal, financial, and social benefits." ...

Opening up this status to gay couples makes an enormous difference to those in committed relationships in which at least one partner has access to benefits or resources to share.

BUT FOCUSING ON the right to marry perpetuates the idea that these rights ought to be linked to marriage. Were we to marry, we would be contributing to the perpetuation of a norm of "coupledness" in our society. This preference for couples marginalizes those who are single, single parents, widowed, divorced or otherwise living in non-traditional constellations. ...

The Massachusetts decision argues that gay marriage is good for society because children ought to be raised by two parents. The judges stated, in fact, "It cannot be rational under our laws to penalize children by depriving them of state benefits" because of their parents' sexual orientation.

But why is it any more rational to deprive children of state benefits because their parents are not married? Yet, precisely such arguments tying benefits to marriage are being used to justify repressive "marriage promotion" policies that pressure single mothers receiving welfare benefits to marry, and deny them (and their children) significant benefits if they do not marry.

A focus on marriage and familial status also leads us to neglect our social responsibilities to provide adequate child-care, day care, elder-care, etc., that would allow all adults who want to work to be able to do so.

Similarly, a focus on increasing the numbers of people who can get access to health or retirement benefits through their spouses can easily lead us to ignore or deny our societal responsibility to provide basic health care and old age security to all our citizens, regardless of marital status. ...

At this moment, when there is so much focus on celebrating the right to marry, we want to hold up a vision of a society in which basic rights are not tied to marriage, and which there are many ways to organize our intimate lives, marriage being only one of them.

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posted by Eve at 3:03 PM | link

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