Performing the Nation: Contesting Same-Sex Marriage Rights in the United States

Abstract

Public opinion polls, Supreme Court decisions, and changes in federal and state law suggest that the United States is witnessing a support for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights today that few would have predicted five years ago. This article offers a critical assessment of that growth as it is manifest in the context of marriage equality. It shows that efforts to advance same-sex marriage rights, while offering an important challenge to oppositional arguments, actually rely on norms quite similar to those of marriage equality opponents. Both advocates and opponents envision and enact the kind of citizenship appropriate to national health and identity in surprisingly similar ways. Both reinforce a set of norms, laws, and practices that make the right to marriage almost synonymous with family and responsible parenting. Such a consolidation of repronormativity may have troubling consequences for efforts to advance LGBT rights at home and abroad.