I wrote this blog post before I saw Holly’s entry on cheating, but this is a nice companion in the discussion of marriage.
In quite a few of my classes this semester, the concepts of marriage and monogamy have come up quite frequently. I was greatly intrigued by John D’Emilo’s article “Capitalism and Gay Identity”, which is primarily about the ways in which the rise of capitalism facilitated the emergence of a gay identity and community, but the article also makes interesting arguments about the place of marriage and the family within capitalism. Basically, D’Emilo argues that capitalism has weakened the tangible necessity of the family as work and livelihood is made available outside of the family context, but capitalism has at the same time made the family into a place of emotional and ideological necessity, thereby reproducing children and reproducing heterosexism and other reinforcing morals within these children. Of course, there is a plethora of other arguments about the ways in which marriage and the family create and continue oppression, but D’Emilio has stuck with me.
I have found myself conflicted between understanding and agreeing with, in many ways, the arguments of this work that I have been reading about marriage specifically but sexuality and monogamy more generally, and my beliefs and my experiences. I have definite changed my opinions about marriage as a legal institution, and I feel myself questioning things like the implied sexual intimacy in a legal marriage or the financial benefits of legal marriage, leading to an interesting discussion with my mother over spring break about my feelings on marriage that I am pretty sure left her very nervous for my future. Fret not, mother, because there remains something so compelling to me about the stability and the trust inherent, or supposedly inherent, in a successful marriage or long term relationship. Of course, some of this is my youthful naivety, but I hate the idea that monogamy is somehow wrong or outdated. I suppose I am simply having a difficult time reconciling my problems with the legal institution of marriage and my recognition of my personal desire to one day find someone who I could spend the rest of my life with, as disgustingly sappy and ridiculous as that sounds.
I am in the same position you are. I have a surpressed desire to get married, but conceptually I find marriage a drastic tactic of forced monogamy despite the umpteen examples of how that’s not working. We also have to factor in the need to cement one’s financial security and the need to love and be loved, and then a whole slew of factors when children come into the mix, as you say. Marriage is also a way to create outsiders and others: those who cannot legally marry and those who don’t want to, the heathens of our society. Marriage seems also to serve as a sort of rite of passage (there’s a ceremony and everything) into a privileged, heteronormative adulthood because once you get married, there’s no longer any doubt as to your sexual orientation, right?
I think marriage definitely has a place or some and not for others. I just depends on who you are I guess. I have a problem with the idea of marriage and monogamy and their being so interconnected. Many times youth are told to abstain from sexual encounters until marriage, but this presents a problem for LGBTQ youth who still often don’t have marriage as an option for them in a same-sex relationship. How are LGBTQ youth supposed to abstain until marriage if they aren’t given the ability to do so? Again, I feel this is an example of how LGBTQ youth are left out of the conversation.
Furthermore, I would definitely applaud those LGBTQ youth that are monogamous and abstain from sexual encounters until they find “the one.” I think that it’s hard to do that seeing the connection people put on promiscuity and LGBTQ individuals, especially gay men.