Negotiating Marriage Equality: Common-law Same-sex Partners’ Understandings of Societal Expectations and Relationship Legitimacy

• In Event: 222 - Student Forum Paper Session. Boundaries, Inequalities and Standards: Marriage, Race, Ethnicity, and Sex

Abstract

Now that same-sex marriage has been legal in Canada for a few years, it is essential to consider how same-sex common-law partners are negotiating the meaning of marriage and their decision to abstain from joining this institution. These negotiations have implications at the individual, societal and theoretical level, and they bring a particularly interesting perspective to debates within the queer community about the significance of same-sex marriage, and its relationship to questions of normalization and marginalization. In this paper, we draw upon 22 in-depth interviews with participants in common-law same sex relationships in Toronto, Canada. We explore the way that respondents explain their decision not to marry by drawing upon their individual history, social contexts stressing marital legitimacy, and the broader legacy of same-sex marriage struggles. We show that in the process of positioning themselves within the context of newly acquired marriage rights, individuals concurrently resist and reify normative meanings of marriage. We end by examining these spaces of contradiction and highlighting what they accomplish for the people who embody them.

Authors

• Katherine Lyon, University of British Columbia

• Helene Frohard-Dourlent, University of British Columbia