Gay Marriage And A Change Of Heart

When GLBT activists first began pressing for gay marriage, and when in fact many GLBT groups made gay marriage the top priority on their political agenda, I thought it was probably the wrong decision on their part, both strategically and substantively. It's not that I opposed gay marriage, but I thought that other concerns, such as the right to be free of discrimination in jobs and housing, and even the right to serve in the military, were more important.

I also thought that pushing for gay marriage was too radical. Face it, gay marriage is a lot of conservative folks' worst nightmare. Wouldn't it be better to work up to that gradually? To ease people into it by first advocating for less controversial measures, like a statute outlawing job discrimination against GLBT folks? Or by not asking for anything more, for now, than civil unions?

Gay marriage as an issue didn't sit right with me for another reason: it seemed not only too radical but also too conservative. There are radical traditions within the GLBT liberation movements that are sharply critical of marriage for being a conservative, bourgeois, heteronormative institution.

I always found those critiques useful, as I did the (similar) feminist anti-marriage critiques. I never entirely embraced the anti-marriage ideology, but I thought there was much truth in the anti-marriage arguments, and much reason, for me and other feminists, to be deeply skeptical of marriage as an institution, and and to view the romanticized portrayals of marriage that saturate our culture with a gimlet eye.

But then two things happened. One is, I got married. Ever since I was in my teens, I was never certain that I wanted marriage for myself, though I knew I wanted to be in a lifelong, committed relationship.