INTERVIEW WITH WHY MARRIAGE? AUTHOR GEORGE CHAUNCEY: From the Windy City Times

...OK: I found it fascinating to learn in your book how much of this anti-gay and lesbian legislation was put into place relatively recently, mostly in the 1920s-1950s.

GC: It's really dangerous and it hurts us that we are so unfamiliar with this history because the opponents of gay rights and certainly same-sex marriage like to claim that history is on their side and that discrimination and hostility against gay people is age old. It's important to note there's been a long history in the regulation of sexual acts of various kinds, not just homosexual acts but many acts that happily married heterosexual couples engage in as well. The history of the systematic discrimination of gay people on the basis of their status as homosexuals is really a product of the 20th century. Most of it was put in place between the 1920s and 1950s and most was dismantled between the 1960s and the 1990s so that the right wing is simply wrong when it calls on its theories of millennium world teaching against gay people. ...

OK: So what factors prompted this seemingly sudden push for gay marriage?

GC: Marriage has always been a contentious issue within the gay movement. Many people have been opposed to pursuing marriage rights for a variety of reasons though it's also important to note that even many early gay liberation activists thought gay people should have access to marriage like they should be able to do anything else that heterosexuals do. But clearly, the terrible impact of AIDS on people and the way it confronted people with the fact that all sorts of powerful institutions did not recognize their relationships--hospitals, funeral homes, insurance companies, and so forth. All that really brought home to people how vulnerable our relationships were. Also the lesbian baby boom did too. People want to provide as much security to their children as possible and it's very difficult to do if the relationship of the two mothers or the two fathers is not recognized. So this sort of searing mass experience of death and childbirth in the 1980s and '90s really made many of us think much more seriously about marriage.

But I am also interested in looking at the history of the opposition to the same-sex marriage campaign. It's clear that the opponents of same-sex marriage are the same people who have opposed every advancement of gay rights be it domestic partnership or increased gay visibility in the media. Even though they often claim they respect gay people and their relationships and they just want to save marriage for heterosexuals, they have in fact opposed gay people in every stage of the game. They are also the people who are most opposed to changes in marriage in heterosexuals as well. Part of what I try to do in this book is show how marriage itself has changed as an institution for heterosexuals. The old strict division of labor between husbands and wives has given way in the past century and especially the last several decades so that roles aren't just prescribed to people the way they used to be--which makes it easier to imagine people of the same sex getting married. Also for many of the opponents of same-sex marriage this is an important source of their hostility to all changes in gender relations between men and women.

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