From Public Debate to Private Decision: Marriage and the Suppression of Critical LGBQ Voices

• In Event: 059 - Regular Session. Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies

Abstract

The fight for marriage-equality has raised and exacerbated a number of concerns about the future of LGBQ culture and communities. Many of these concerns center on the possible consequences of normalization. This paper investigates one possible consequence of normalization – the suppression of critical debate within LGBQ communities. I base the analyses on in-depth interview data collected from 116 married and unmarried LGBQ individuals in Massachusetts in 2012-13, eight years after same-sex marriage became legal there. First, I examine the role that marriage plays in normalization. I show how marriage contributes to a process of normalization by changing the lifestyle possibilities LGBQ people feel are open to them and by providing an easier template for how to organize their relationships. Next, I use the data to explore what happens to LGBQ people who held critical views of marriage, and to shed light on the mechanisms through which marriage suppresses and softens critical voices within LGBQ communities. I find that having access to legal marriage suppresses critical perspectives by making critiques of marriage seem more like “personal” criticisms of friends and acquaintances, and therefore less appropriate, and by shifting the focus away from an intellectual level of analysis toward the emotional experience of marriage. It also softens critical perspectives through mimetic processes, which make people who were once critical of marriage more desiring of it for their own relationships. Together, the findings further our understanding of the connection between marriage and normalization and the processes through which it impacts LGBQ communities.

Author

• Abigail Ruth Ocobock, University of Notre Dame