What Happened to the Marriage alternatives? Same-sex Marriage and Domestic Partnership in the US

• In Event: 20226 - Marriage, Civil Unions, and Cohabitation

Abstract

The achievement of marriage equality is one of the most important expansions of rights in the 21st century US, but the goal of marriage equality was controversial from the start. We compare the arguments of movement lawyers, scholars and gay rights activists for and against marriage to the behavior and motivations of people with same-sex partners. We find that despite critiques of marriage as a patriarchal and corrupting institution (consistent with Critical Legal Studies) from movement lawyers, scholars, and activists, same-sex couples often chose to marry. We analyze administrative records from California comparing the uptake of same-sex domestic partnerships and same-sex marriages showing same-sex couples overwhelmingly chose marriage over domestic partnership starting in 2013 when both options were available. The debates around marriage equality within the gay rights movement have focused on the ideas of the movement lawyers and prominent scholars. We use survey and administrative data to show that preferences of U.S. adults with same-sex partners were more conventional and traditional towards marriage than the views of many movement lawyers, scholars and activists. Studying social movements through the behaviors and attitudes of rank-and-file populations yields a broader perspective compared to studying social movements through the words of movement leaders alone

Authors

• Michael J. Rosenfeld, Stanford University

• Alisa Feldman, Stanford University