Summary: Ettelbrick & FAQ

In “Since When is Marriage a Path to Liberation”, Paula Ettelbrick discusses the institution of marriage in relationship to the gay and lesbian community.  As a t-shirt that Ettelbrick once read, “marriage is a great institution, if you like living in institutions,” (Ettelbrick 305).  According to Ettelbrick, marriage is a form of self-affirmation in which one becomes a powerful insider, casting every other unmarried individual as a weak outsider.  It is a state regulated two-tier patriarchal system that makes gay and lesbian couples unimportant and invisible.  In turn, it relegates them to a lower status on the social ladder while those who are married move up the social ladder.  Despite popular belief, however, Ettelbrick notes that giving gays and lesbians the right to marry does not solve the problem of justice.  For justice to be achieved, the gay and lesbian community must be accepted in a society that challenges the current power imbalances.  By just associating marriage with rights, gays and lesbians who choose not to marry are at risk of being even more ostracized than before.  Ettelbrick believes that the domestic partnership movement is important because it affirms non-marital relationships and offers some, although not many, protections. 

What’s interesting about Ettelbrick’s piece is that she is writing in 1989.  Twenty-three years later, we are dealing with these same issues and many of us are convinced that marriage is in fact the answer.   The campaigns for same-sex marriage obviously have a lot of worth in our society, but Ettelbrick’s piece makes me wonder whether or not justice would be achieved if every state made it legal.  There would most likely still be the constraints that Ettelbrick discusses and patriarchal order would most likely prevail.  It is hard to imagine our society defined by such a rigid power structure being completely altered by extending the institution of marriage to all couples.  In a way, it seems like an attempt to curb liberation movements and an achievement to fall back on when those movements claim there hasn’t been much progress for gay and lesbian communities.  Ettelbrick is right that we can be deluded by the idea of marriage and that broader goals for liberation must be made if we want to see proactive change. 

The “Same Sex Marriage FAQ”, which can be found on the Human Rights Campaign website, answers questions regarding the differences between same sex marriage and civil unions.  According to the FAQ, same sex couples want to marry for a variety of reasons: love, safety nets for children, and the protections given to heterosexual marriages.  Some of these protections deal with taxes, hospital visitation rights, health insurance, social security benefits, immigration rights, and pensions, among many others.  While civil unions offer some protections, they are generally “second class” and not recognized across state borders.  If you were to be given civil unions in Vermont, for example, you may not be protected in other states or by the federal government.  Furthermore, religious institutions are not required to recognize these civil unions or perform any kind of ceremony.  What the FAQ makes apparent is that civil unions are both separate and unequal, and are not held at the same standard as marriages.