No Satisfaction in Same-Sex Marriage

Friday, June 24, 2011
Kevin Staley-Joyce

It’s no secret that one major undercurrent of the same-sex marriage movement is the desire to change the marriage culture—family and childrearing norms, for instance—not simply to realize the practical benefits of marriage. But once a redefined marriage culture is in place, one wonders whether marriage will continue to matter at all to those who at one time touted it as the panacea for same-sex woes.

In yesterday’s Times, Columbia Law School professor Katherine M. Franke opined that, while some gay couples may wish to get on board with marriage, others don’t see the “one-size-fits-all rules of marriage” as the ideal setup for the kinds of arrangements some same-sex relationships demand. She goes on,

Here’s why I’m worried: Winning the right to marry is one thing; being forced to marry is quite another. How’s that? If the rollout of marriage equality in other states, like Massachusetts, is any guide, lesbian and gay people who have obtained health and other benefits for their domestic partners will be required by both public and private employers to marry their partners in order to keep those rights. In other words, “winning” the right to marry may mean “losing” the rights we have now as domestic partners, as we’ll be folded into the all-or-nothing world of marriage.

After “winning the right to marry,” Franke argues, couples uninterested in marriage risk being “forced to marry” in order to keep their domestic partnership rights. She wonders further why couples should have to seek marriage at all if they seek mainly to have their relationships “recognized and valued.” the rest