Main Post for 10/14/2010

Privileges or Conception Rightness?

In Since When Is Marriage a Path to Liberation? , Paula Ettelbrick, as a lesbian, expresses her objection to the movement of seeking same-sex marriage rights. Because she thinks that same-sex love is totally different from heterosexual love while seeking the same rights for same-sex marriages as that for heterosexual marriages is actually undermining the differences between same-sex and heterosexual marriages. In addition, Paula also indicates that asking for same-sex marriage rights deviates from the original goals of gay liberation. According to Paula, gay liberation can only be said as succeeded after the society really accept and respect people of “abnormal” sex-orientation. However, seeking same-sex marriage rights is a process of making gay people invisible by trying to assimilate them and make them invisible in the “normal” society organization. To her, it is kind of conception falseness to seek same-sex marriage rights before gay people are fundamentally treated equal by the majority.

However, in both Queer Parenting In The New Millennium and Same Sex Marriage FAQs, I am presented with exact routine situations in which same-sex couples are suffered from. For example, same-sex couples face long processes in adopting children, they cannot receive payments upon the death of their partners, and they are not even justified to leave from work to care their partners.

Because of all these problems same-sex couples facing everyday in routine lives, I think it is impractical for Paula to oppose the movement of seeking same-sex marriage rights by talking about “Conception Rightness”. Because the fact is, people can gain a lot of privileges by marriage. And, it is quite clear that the gay liberation movement may cannot celebrate its success at least for the next tenth of years. Just as the feminism movement is still on its way after hundreds of years. While the ultimate goal for feminism is to make women be treated and respected as equal to men and providing women with the same rights is far from enough, the rights that women gained during the feminism movement can in turn force the society to respect and treat women as equals. So is the situation with gay liberation; same-sex marriage rights can also force the society to respect and understand gay people more. As mentioned in Queer Parenting In The New Millennium, “queer parenting can destabilize gender essentialism and other taken-for granted assumptions about gender, sexuality, and family as well as pose challenges to regimes of normalization that shape contemporary institutions(Sullivan 2001)”. Nancy suggests that more and more children will grow up without being suggested that only heterosexuality is normal because of queer parenting. By this, the society will become more open to people with diverse sex-orientation. Civil unions may be not enough now but people may cannot talk about same-sex marriage rights now without civil unions. So if gay people can gain their marriage rights now, the people born after this social change will be provided with various options and they will learn to respect gay people just as they will learn to respect other people while growing up. Thus, the ultimate goal of gay liberation can be achieved. Moreover, we cannot expect gay people to still endure the pain of living away from their partners in nursing homes because they are not legal couples for another decades simply because the conception about same-sex marriage is wrong.