Same Sex Marriages

New Generations, New Relationships

B. Heaphy, C. Smart, A. Einarsdottir

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137311061
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Studi di genere

Based on extensive couple and individual interviews with young same sex couples who have legally formalized their relationships, this book argues that same sex marriages as they are lived need to be understood in terms of interlinked developments in lesbian and gay life, heterosexual relationships and in personal life.

1

Ordinary Lives, Vital Relationships: Same-Sex Marriage in Context

In this chapter we consider some of the international, socio-historical and political contexts that are the backdrop to new generational claims about the ordinariness of same-sex relationships and marriages. Our aim is to situate these claims, and the relating practices they involve, in terms of developments in heterosexual and non-heterosexual cultures, in terms of political and academic debates about the significance of marriage, and in terms of the methodological approach of the study that generated these claims and accounts of practice. The chapter begins by situating same-sex marriages with respect to the diverse meanings and practices associated with relationships and marriages more generally today. It then considers developments in same-sex relational worlds that have facilitated a shift from being ‘other’ to ‘ordinary’ in some contexts, and links this to developments in heterosexual relationships and marriage. Both sets of developments can be linked to processes of social change that have been variously conceptualised as postmodernisation, individualisation or neo-liberalisation. However, rather than following the sociological scripts suggested by any of these frames, we highlight the important point that stems from these as far as our analysis is concerned: that relationships and marriages, both same-sex and heterosexual, have become intensely vitalised. This links to our approach to analysing the experiences discussed in the book, which is loosely based on interactionist ideas about how ways of doing – or scripting – relationships emerge through interaction.

Meanings of marriage

In October 2010, under the headline ‘Couples bid to overturn gay marriage law’ (24/10/2010: 25), The Observer newspaper reported on a campaign in Britain to overturn the restrictions that prevent same-sex couples from being formally married and heterosexual couples from entering into civil partnerships. The report quoted the campaign’s coordinator, the Outrage! activist Peter Thatchell, as saying that civil partnerships and civil marriage bans violated the Human Rights Act. As part of the campaign, eight couples filed applications at register offices for ceremonies that were forbidden. One applicant, who was in a same-sex relationship, was reported as saying ‘We want marriage – that is an institution we believe was divined by God and for me that’s important, and I don’t see why we should be denied it because of our gender […] Love is love at the end of the day and that should be honoured’. This is just one of the many media reports about couples seeking legal equality that have appeared for well over a decade in Western democratic countries. On the surface, it is just one more story about campaigns for same-sex marriage, but it touches on broader developments.

While the reported campaign advocates same-sex couples’ rights to marriage, it also supports heterosexual couples’ rights to civil partnership: to have their relationships legally sanctioned without marriage. Thus, the campaign points to how for both heterosexuals and sexual minorities alike relationship recognition can be a matter of life-politics: where people seek recognition for their relationships on the basis of the meanings they attach to them and not on the basis of definitions ‘imposed’ by the state and/or religious authorities. The meanings given to relationships are diverse, as is evident in how claims to recognition are currently framed. In this short article alone they include human rights, Divine rights, gender equality, the ‘chosen’ or ‘imposed’ nature of marriage, and the naturalness and universality of love. These claims point to how in contemporary contexts established frames for understanding couple commitments and their legitimacy intermingle and jostle with new ones. Diverse meanings are in turn linked to the range of opportunities that now exist for living and ‘doing’ relationships in practice.

However, amidst these developments, marriage continues to be central to cultural and political discourse about socially valued relationships. Whether people are in favour of it, opposed to it, or are ambivalent about it, marriage remains an ideological reference point in debates about how intimate and family relationships could and should be lived; how some relationships are or should be privileged over others; and how relationship commitments could or should be recognised at legislative and personal levels. These debates signal that marriage is no longer (if it ever were) a straightforward matter. They illustrate that marriage as a legal and social institution is radically contested, and that public discourse about marriage is, above all, contested discourse. However, the centrality of marriage to public debates about couple and family relationships points to its continuing salience as a touchstone for cultural imaginings of the relational order. This partly explains why same-sex civil unions, which are technically not marriage, are often represented in the media and public discourse as ‘gay marriage’. This is certainly the case in Britain since the Civil Partnership Act was introduced in 2005. The language of marriage has also been speedily absorbed into everyday life, not least by many of those who have entered civil partnership:

Robert got down on one knee and said, okay, I know we’ve sort of said this before but went down on one knee, ‘will you marry me?’ It was like ‘Absolutely. But I don’t want to wait a long time. Let’s do it now, let’s do it within six months’.

Daniel (202a)

Kamilia (103b):	Started to live together and the relationship just got better and better.
Radinka (103a):	Yeah.
Kamilia:	And then we decided to get married […] I think that’s about it, isn’t it? And now we are together, happy. I think, I hope.
Radinka:	Yes, definitely […] it feels different […] I’m not saying about security, because basically that’s what we shared before but the actual fact that we are committed to each other.

Stories like these, from people who were aged up to 35 when they entered civil partnership, point to a relative unselfconsciousness about the use of the term ‘marriage’ in same-sex relationships. They deploy the language of marriage with ease when describing their decision to formalise their relationships, the nature of their commitment and the everyday practices through which their relationships are embedded. They also tell culturally familiar stories of marriage as a key life event and as bolstering couple commitments. Many young couples in civil partnerships tell ‘ordinary’ marriage stories like these.

It would be surprising if some same-sex couples did not view marriage as an extraordinary way to discuss same-sex relationships, and studies have documented some same-sex couples’ opposition to and ambivalence about the notion of marriage (Hull, 2006, Mitchell et al., 2009). Prior to the availability of civil partnership, research by Weeks et al. (2001) on non-heterosexual relationships in the UK, undertaken in the mid-1990s, found high levels of personal discomfort with the notion of same-sex marriage. While those studied supported the availability of same-sex marriage, the majority recounted that they would not chose it themselves because they saw it as a heterosexual institution. Later, in the mid-2000s, a UK study of pre-civil partnership recognition arrangements found greater ease among same-sex couples with the notion and terminology of same-sex marriage (Shipman and Smart, 2007). A similar ease among same-sex couples undertaking do-it-yourself recognition ceremonies has been documented in US studies (Hull, 2006, Lewin, 1998), but also ambivalence and opposition among others (Hull, 2006). A more recent cross-national study (where LGB respondents were mostly from Australia, Canada, the UK and the USA) also found a range of views, but with significant support for the idea of gay marriage (Harding, 2011; see also Clarke et al., 2006). As marriage-like arrangements become a real possibility, it seems that people are more likely to support them and that couples more seriously entertain the idea of entering into them.

However, different attitudes remain that are partly rooted in different political and cultural traditions. These are partly reflected in different national responses to claims for same-sex relationship recognition. Discussing the latter, Weeks (2010: 130) argues that while the French PACS legislation follows ‘classic republican traditions’ by refusing to recognise the separate cultural identities of lesbians and gay men, the Dutch recognition of same-sex civil partnerships and after that marriage is a logical move in The Netherlands’ ‘institutionalised liberalism’. In the UK, he suggests, the Civil Partnership Act in 2004 continued a tradition of ‘liberalisation by stealth’ by reproducing marriage law but naming it something else, thus ‘avoiding much religious opposition […] a classic case of, and a very British compromise’ (2010: 130). In the USA, which Weeks sees as the most neo-liberal of cultures, with the most affirmative LGBT identities and communities, the intensity of debate about same-sex marriage is linked to its being ‘the most religious of Western societies’. This, he argues, can partly explain the degree of opposition from conservative Christians and why advocates for same-sex relationship recognition in the USA often hold out for full recognition of marriage ‘compared to the more secular British or Scandinavians’ (2010: 131). Where marriage is in decline, he suggests:

[T]he LGBT population seems more likely to be satisfied with less than marriage, because marriage itself is less sanctified. Where religious traditions remain strong, as in Spain and the USA, so it is likely to go for full marriage rights when same-sex unions are recognised.

Weeks (2010: 131)

Other differences in attitudes to same-sex marriage intermingle with and cut across national, cultural and religious ones. Chief among these are generational ones related to cohort differences and the historically situated nature of sexual identities and cultures (cf. Edmunds and Turner, 2002: 6). In this respect, different attitudes to same-sex marriage are likely to be related to when and how people formed their minority sexual identities.

Generationally situated meanings

Among many of those whose sexual identities were formed through an active engagement with lesbian, feminist, gay, bisexual and queer critical communities and cultures, there is likely to be an enduring reluctance to embrace marriage as a way of understanding or recognising their relationships (cf. Adam, 2004). This is linked to how such communities and cultures were often critical of marriage as the lynchpin of heteronormativity and of ‘homosexual’ oppression. Of course, it is also the case that people can review their opposition in light of changing legal, social, political and personal developments (see Kitzinger and Wilkinson, 2004).

Among younger cohorts, and especially those whose sexual identities were not formed through active engagement with critical cultures and communities, there can be more general comfort with the idea of same-sex marriage. This was evident in how the same-sex partners we spoke to view the marriage/civil partnership distinction (for socio-legal analyses see Barker, 2006; Harding, 2011; Stychin, 2006). The majority were untroubled with the legal distinction between marriage and civil partnership. They viewed themselves as married, and saw the distinction as a relatively insignificant technical one, even if some would prefer it to be dissolved. A small number who viewed themselves as married were more outraged by the distinction, as they saw it as an affront to their ordinariness. Others still were ambivalent about the issue. A small minority were keen to keep the distinction on the basis that they did not want to be married. Most of the couples we spoke to would have agreed with Doris (104a), who said: ‘it [is] a civil partnership and we feel it’s a marriage’. Even those who were wary of marriage as a heterosexual institution could describe themselves as married. This was the case for a couple we spoke as part of our pilot study (where one partner was aged over 35 when they entered into civil partnership) who were at the cusp of different generational experiences of same-sex relationships:

Sue (102b):	when we got married I was […] still not sure about using the terminology of marriage […] I did have quite big problems with the notion of […] marriage as an institution.
Beverley (102b):	Yeah, I’m not a big fan of marriage as an institution and I’d always sworn that I was never ever getting married. Of course, what I meant was to a man […] I’m not particularly keen on the implications. But we are just like a married couple really, aren’t we?
Sue:	[…] even though legally [marriage and civil partnership are] pretty much the same, it is the same, there wasn’t that baggage of what marriage should mean that you get with a heterosexual marriage.

While these partners are not technically married, they describe themselves thus and see marriage and civil partnership as ‘the same’. While they are familiar with, and espouse, political criticism of marriage as ‘an institution’, on the basis of the gender differences it has ‘traditionally’ assumed and the gender inequalities it promoted, they describe themselves as ‘just like a married couple’ in practice (Harding, 2011, also found a ‘major attachment’ to arguments about same-sex and heterosexual relational sameness among lesbians and gay men). Confused thinking? Perhaps. A more likely explanation is that this couple, like many others, are grappling with complex realities that stem from the changing possibilities that have opened up for some same-sex and heterosexual relationships. By formalising their relationships, couples like Beverley and Sue are engaged in new ways of conceiving and doing same-sex relationships, and are differently positioned in relation to marriage than they were previously (but see Adam, 2004, 2006). As opposed to viewing marriage in mostly institutional terms, as they imply they once did, Beverley and Sue also now see it from another perspective: from the perspective of life on the ground. This more multi-dimensional perspective is signalled by the complexity of their exchange. One the one hand they are keen to critically distance themselves from marriage as a heterosexual institution because of its baggage of gender and sexual differences and inequalities (its ‘shoulds’). On the other hand, they are keen to embrace the similarities between their own and others’ marriages on the basis that they are not necessarily subject to its institutional baggage in practice.

Another couple, Kevin (205a) and Jorge (205b), also touched upon the ordinariness of same-sex relationships and partnerships when discussing the similarities and differences between their partnership and their parents’ marriages. As opposed to identifying these as being intrinsically different on the basis of their gendered make-up, as older cohorts have done in previous studies (see Dunne, 1997; Sullivan, M. 2004; Weeks et al., 2001), they emphasised the commonalities. They saw them as rooted in the interpersonal challenges that all partnerships – whether married or not – involved:

Jorge:

I suppose because they’ve been together many years. They’ve had their up and downs but they always manage to pull through […]

Kevin:

I mean I think the key thing, I mean my mum and dad […] had difficulties throughout their marriage but I think the key thing is that […] being in a partnership is you’re a team and you kind of, deal with the good and bad stuff as a team and it’s kind of what it’s about really. And generally there’s more, you know you hope for more good than bad, but you know life’s a bit full of surprises, so […] the partnership thing is about working through stuff together and being a team really.

Some will be cheered, and others depressed, by same-sex couples’ stories of being ‘married’, of being like other married couples, and of the continuities between heterosexual marriages and their own. In sociological terms, these stories can be difficult to hear in their own right, without slotting them into existing frames that see marriage through the lens of gendered and (hetero)sexual domination and inequalities, and that see same-sex relationships in terms of gender equality and (non-hetero)sexual agency (see below). Thus, it may be tempting to see such stories as evidence of the undermining or the triumph of heterosexual norms, and to interpret stories of ordinariness as evidence for either side of the debates about the value or dangers of claims to normality and assimilation (Adam, 2004; Rauch, 2004; Sullivan, A. 1996, 2004; Warner, 2000). We will discuss the frames and debates in more depth in due course. For the moment, however, we argue that understanding these stories requires situating them generationally.

Unlike previous generations of lesbians and gay men who, because of the lack of cultural guidelines and social supports for their identities and relationships, had little choice but to engage in life experiments, the partners in our study neither claimed nor wanted to be at the vanguard of radical relational life. This does not mean that their relationships were not radical in practice. In some situations they clearly were, especially where their visibility as a ‘married’ couple disrupted the heterosexual assumption and where their very ordinariness troubled constructions of homosexual pathology and depravity. Nevertheless, the ways in which most modelled their relationships on the ordinary was linked to the broader ways in which they saw their lives as ordinary. This is not because they are the unthinking victims of heterosexual ideologies (cf. Warner, 2000), but because their generational circumstances made it possible to feel relatively ordinary compared to previous generations of lesbians and gay men. Young same-sex couples’ claims to be ordinary may well feed ‘the fears of queer critics that what same-sex unions are all about is assimilation into the status quo’ (Weeks, 2008: 792). However, Weeks argues that ‘we should never underestimate the importance of being ordinary. It has helped to transform the LGBT and broader worlds’ (2008: 792). A more important point, we suggest, is that there is the need to interrogate the ‘status quo’ as it is imagined and deployed by queer and other critics.

We aim to do this by putting personal stories of ordinary same-sex ‘marriages’ at the centre of the frame for comprehending developments that cut across the homosexual–heterosexual dichotomy. These developments are linked to the diversity and vitality of ordinary relationships, and trouble the notions of a simply given or universal status quo or set of relational values. To explain this, in the following sections we consider the historical, legislative and broader socio-cultural developments with respect to same-sex relating and marriage that are the backdrop to contemporary young same-sex couples’ experiences. We also outline the analytical strategy we deployed to explore these experiences.

From ‘other’ to ‘ordinary’

Modern histori...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Ordinary Lives, Vital Relationships: Same-Sex Marriage in Context
• 2 Relationships, Partnerships and Marriages
• 3 Relational Biographies
• 4 Forming and Formalising Relationships
• 5 Money, Couples and the Self
• 6 Sex and Security
• 7 Couple Worlds
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1 Researching Same-Sex Marriage
• Appendix 2 Biographies of Interviewees
• Bibliography
• Index