Why Same-Sex Marriage Now?

Abstract

Why Same-Sex Marriage Now? David R. Shumway (bio) In the recent U.S. election, one could hear both Republicans and Democrats declaring their opposition to gay marriage by asserting, "I believe marriage is between a man and a woman." Such a linguistic construction sounds awkward, as if a word were left out, making marriage into a place located between two other places. The sentence would be less awkward if it told us what a marriage was; for example, "a contract between a man and woman." But the politicians didn't seem to want to characterize marriage in any way except as heterosexual. A more accurate statement of the position would have been, "I believe marriage should be restricted to heterosexual relationships," but such a phrasing would have admitted the unpopular truth that a restriction was being sought and it would have introduced a word (heterosexual) that some voters might not have understood—or worse, might have been offended by, given the mere mention of "sexual." Then there is the matter of the phrase being a statement of belief. The politicians might have said that in our culture marriage has been a union between one man and one woman, but that would have raised the question of why such a definition should continue to be observed. In the United States, appeals to the rule of tradition have not been common or notably persuasive. Of course, opposition to gay marriage does rest significantly on an appeal to the common sense view that marriage has an essence: that it rightly has only one form, heterosexual monogamy. Thus, the politicians' statement asserts that essence, while avoiding [End Page 73] mention of the theological or metaphysical underpinnings essences require. The need for such an awkward statement as "marriage is between a man and a woman" derives from the fact that the definition of marriage has undergone enormous changes during the past 100 years, thus making an appeal to a single shared conception of marriage highly problematic. It is my argument that the very salience of the issue of gay marriage has been made possible by the rise of a new discourse of love in which marriage is rendered only one among many different forms that sexually invested relationships may take. Gay marriage could become thinkable only when marriage stopped being primarily about the accumulation, preservation and transmission of property—its traditional function prior to the twentieth century. Once freed from these social functions, however, marriage could become what it is for most Americans—in red and blue states—today: a relationship that exists for the benefit of the two individuals involved. And if marriage is so defined, then there is no obvious reason why those individuals must of be of different genders. My goal in this essay is not to argue the case for gay marriage, but rather to show why this idea has become acceptable to many Americans and why it is likely that its support will grow rather than shrink. While opponents of gay marriage seem to have had an unbroken string of successes at the ballot box, the premise of this essay is that the degree of support for gay marriage is more in need of explanation than is opposition to it. While it is true that a majority of Americans oppose legalization of same-sex marriage, more than 40 per cent favor it (ABC News/Washington Post). That is remarkable, considering same-sex marriage wasn't a significant part of public debate until 1993, when the state supreme court in Hawaii held that the state constitution required same-sex partners to be afforded the same rights as heterosexual partners. A search of the usual databases showed no articles on the topic of gay marriage in mainstream popular magazines prior to 1993. Moreover, public opinion on the issue has shifted significantly in recent years. A Field Poll of California adults shows that the percentage who approve of same-sex marriage has increased from 28 in 1977 to 42 in 2003. Why has same-sex marriage gone from a non-issue to major issue and, in the process, achieved increased support in public opinion polls? The answer has as much to do...