The Miscegenation Analogy Revisted: Same-Sex Marriage as a Civil Rights Story

Abstract

Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People's Right to Marry. By Evan Wolfson. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004. $22 (cloth). $13 (paper). Why Marriage: The History Shaping Today's Debate Over Gay Equality. By George Chauncey. New York: Basic Books, 2004. $22 (cloth). The raging debates over same-sex marriage have dispersed the subject of homosexuality across the terrain of American culture with unprecedented force, but the pundits and politicians are still debating its impact not only on the recent national elections but in configuring the next battle in the culture wars. Meanwhile, many insiders in gay and lesbian political circles foresee a long uphill battle before we see the dawning of full sexual equality. And a leading legal historian, Hendrik Hartog, recently predicted that not in his lifetime would the Supreme Court overturn a defense of marriage statute in the states.1 Despite all the commentary on the obstacles to a compromise, few observers convincingly explain why the marriage issue practically overtook the gay and lesbian agenda or why the conservative opposition so powerfully prevailed against it. In both of the books reviewed here, however, why is the first word in the title. Evan Wolfson, a lawyer and architect of the legal movement, titles his elegant treatise Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People's Right to Marry. Another leading expert, George Chauncey, author of the landmark historical study Gay New York, titles his new short book Why Marriage? The History Shaping Today's Debate Over Gay Equality. Both authors believe that their books will advance the cause of equality by appealing to readers in the public sphere, and both clearly develop historical, political, and philosophical arguments against conservative opponents. For the record, I also believe that same-sex partners deserve the option of legal marriage on the federal level, but [End Page 523] I feel alternately disappointed and angered by the narrowness of the vision that the movement and its leaders feel compelled to offer us. This review therefore takes a hard look at the arguments in these books, not to betray my comrades in the struggle for gay liberation, but rather to help myself reimagine a wider spectrum of possibilities for social change in American culture. In engaging prose and bullet points, Wolfson surveys the definitions and remunerative benefits of marriage, demonstrating an impressive expertise in relevant legal cases and social policy. He effectively mixes a liberal interpretation of the legal history, which he projects as a triumphal story of progress interrupted only by the denial of marriage to gays, with anecdotes of committed gay couples frustrated by prejudice and nonrecognition. Wolfson ranges from ancient Rome to the Bible, from medieval society to modern America, including a foray into the evils of antebellum slavery, to refute conservative arguments that define marriage by the gender of its partners, a transcultural, timeless dyad of man and woman. By contrast, Wolfson emphasizes the affective qualities of marriage and effectively builds a rapport with his readers based on shared understandings of the particular marital values "of love, equality, and inclusion" (6). What becomes clear along the way is that Wolfson understands marriage like a lawyer, both as a contract and as a matter not only of obligations but also privileges. In the same way, historian George Chauncey devotes his first chapters to a summary of the recent burst of historiography on marriage by leading scholars such as Hartog, Nancy Cott, and Peggy Pascoe. Their work sometimes conceives of marriage less as a personal relationship than as a sort of social institution, which serves larger systems of patriarchy and citizenship. But historians demonstrate that marriage steadily improved in the 1920s under the pressures of a modernist gender revolution that emphasized personal satisfaction for spouses. Marriage improved again in the 1960s, under the combined pressures of legal reformers, the sexual revolution, feminism, and the courts. By now, historians and lawyers alike speak of marriage as...