Hugo Schwyzer

In my Intro to Lesbian and Gay American History class, we talked a bit about gay marriage yesterday. The course is structured chronologically, and as we approach the middle of the term, we’re just now getting to the 20th century. (I’ve been lecturing on the likes of Karl Ulrichs, Karl Benkert, and the great Magnus Hirschfeld.)

But a rigid attachment to chronologies is a dangerous quality in a history teacher. And though the outline of the class dictates we shouldn’t be talking about gay marriage until the final two weeks of class, the upcoming vote here in California on Proposition 8, which would ban same-sex unions, is a good reason to fiddle with the time-table for my lectures.

We don’t get into much discussion in class about our own sexual identities. Some of my students are “out” to me, others aren’t, and others are presumably heterosexual. But almost to a man or a woman, they’ve followed with deep interest the current struggle to protect marriage equality in California. I see “No on 8″ buttons and bumperstickers on notebooks and bags and shirts. When I brought up the subject of the election yesterday, the sense of excitement and anxiety was palpable.

I didn’t turn the lecture into a political sermon. Instead, I asked a question that a great many folks in the gay and lesbian community once asked — but ask more rarely now: Why marriage?

I asked my students what other major pressing issues faced the LGBTQ community besides marriage equality. Even my students who are out and proud and actively involved in campus organizing looked blank. For young gay and lesbian activists, lately it’s been “all marriage, all the time.” An entire movement has poured virtually all of its financial resources and political energies into winning one particular issue. And I suggested, gently but firmly, that there is a cost to such singlemindedness.

One bright young man asked: “But what other issue is there?” I get why he asks. Visit the webpage of the Human Rights Campaign, the best-known and best-funded gay and lesbian rights organization in America. On the front page, what other issue appears? If you click on the issues button, other topics (health care, ageing, the military) pop up — but you’ve got to do a bit of hunting about to find anything beyond “marriage, marriage, marriage.”

I teach women’s history classes too. Every semester, inexorably, the number of young women in that class who say that they never want to get married, or imagine that it is likely that they will never marry, increases. Demographers tell us that record numbers of Americans are turning 30, and 40, without being wed. And as countless radical activists in the GLBTQ community have pointed out, it’s more than a little odd that same-sex marriage has become the be-all and end-all of contemporary gay activism. Just as heterosexual Americans, perhaps particularly young women, become increasingly cynical about marriage as an essential component of future happiness, gay and lesbian Americans are told that winning “marriage equality” is more important than fighting workplace discrimination, getting better health services, immigration and tax issues, and so forth.

My students, of course, are not all eager to marry. But like most idealistic young people, they worship at the altar of “freedom of choice.” They say things like, “It’s not that everyone needs to get married, it’s that everyone should have a choice.” What inflames them about opposition to gay marriage is a sense of inequality — and many of the most inflamed are often those who say that they “can’t ever imagine” getting married themselves.

The problem is, of course, that rights have a funny way of turning into obligations. Many of my heterosexual female students who come from traditional families feel enormous pressure to get married, and to get married young. They have the freedom to marry, but not the freedom from the cultural obligation to wed. Many would dearly like to have the latter. “Gay conservative” is not an oxymoron today, though it might once have been so in the past. If marriage were to become legal for gays and lesbians, I asked my students (in the role of the devil’s advocate, as if he needs more), what’s to stop the queer community from setting-up a rigid two-tier structure for relationships that mirrors “straight society”? What happens to those gays and lesbians who believe, for many good reasons, that marriage is a problem rather than a solution? What happens to the polyamorous, the non-monogamous, and those who see marriage as less a romantic fantasy or a vehicle for growth and more of a prison? Will they be judged by more conservative queer folk, in much the same way that my Latina and Armenian students who bravely resist parental pressure to wed early are judged and nagged? I said it a second time: if we’re not careful, the rights we fight for become cultural obligations very, very quickly.

My students were stirred up, excited, and a bit confused. I made it clear I stood with the dominant voices in the GLBTQ community in support of marriage equality. When asked (and I was asked), I assured them I would be voting a determined “No” on Proposition 8. But I implored them to consider the possibility that their single-minded focus on winning the right to marry might be blinding them to two key considerations: one, that other equally pressing issues also need attention; two, that marriage is at best ideal only for some, not for all. We must be very careful, I admonished gently, not to marginalize those in the broad and diverse queer world who feel called to make other arrangements and other choices for their sexual and romantic lives. We’ll talk about it more next week, once some of this has sunk in.

My students also expressed worry about losing this ballot initiative. “What if Prop. 8 passes?”, one asked. Another asked, “If it does pass, could we bring it up again?” The anxiety in the class felt strong. For some of my gay and lesbian students, Prop. 8 feels less like a ballot measure about marriage and more like a referendum on their very lives. For some, a “no” vote is as much about a demand for acceptance as it is about acquiring one specific right. Indeed, most of us on both sides will likely interpret the outcome in that light, using the vote on Prop 8, not unfairly, as a yardstick with which to measure California’s willingness to accept gays and lesbians as fully equal.

If Prop 8 is a yardstick to measure the drive towards full acceptance of gays and lesbians, then the outcome is bound to be good. Eight years ago, with Proposition 22, more than 60% of Californians voted to ban gay marriage, a ban that was overturned by the state Supreme Court this past June. Even the most optimistic proponents of Proposition 8 do not predict that they will reach 60% again. I think Prop 8 will fail and gay marriage will stay intact; I’m predicting a close 51-49 win for those who support equality and inclusion. But — heaven forbid, but — if the measure passes by, say, a 53-47 or even 55-45 majority, there will be clear evidence that we are “moving in the right direction.”

In the short run, a loss on Prop 8 would be hugely disappointing. I don’t want to minimize that. But we all know the MLK line: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” It’s a nice and oft-misquoted remark, but the key word for me as an historian is not “justice” but “long“. As students of civil rights history know, nearly a century passes betweeen the constitutional enfranchisement of African-Americans with the Fifteenth Amendment and the effective enfranchisement of blacks with the Voting Rights Act. We need patience as well as passion. And the roots of both patience and passion lie in the Latin word for suffering.

Battles will get won, and battles will be lost, and November 4 will be just one battle in a very long struggle to build a more moral universe. And though the right to marry has become, in the minds of many, the sine qua non of gay and lesbian liberation, it is worth reminding folks that there are other issues worth fighting for as well. And it is worth reminding all of us, married and unmarried, queer and hetero alike, that not all of us are called to make public professions of lifetime monogamy and to seek state sanction for them. We who long for marriage equality must be careful to ensure that in our passion to gain a right for all, we don’t inadvertently turn that right into either a virtue or an obligation.