the sky hasn’t fallen!

Marriage: totally fucked, or something to extend to couples of all persuasions?

The feminist response to equal marriage has produced many interesting chats with fellow activist friends. Some feminist activists find marriage so repulsive they’d like to do away with the institution altogether. They cite things like the way marriage can cement an abusive relationship, and the legal roots of marriage which defined a wife as property of her husband. They talk about the cultural stuff surrounding marriage for women, the way pressure remains for women to get married in the first place in a way it does not for men.

On the other side, some feminist activists cite the more than 1,000 federal protections not awarded to couples without a legal marriage certificate in hand. They acknowledge that while marriage isn’t always perfect, there is no good to be found in “separate but equal” solutions, such as civil unions.

I’m proud to be staunchly pro-equal marriage, meaning full marriages rather than civil unions or pretending like lesbians and gays don’t deserve to commit to each other legally at all. For marriage is essentially a state institution, a way to communicate property laws and a way to share legal benefits between two parties. What happens in a church (for those kinds of marital ceremonies) has nothing to do with what marriage legally is.

It’s been interesting to watch how the sky hasn’t fallen since California began granting legal marriages to lesbian and gay couples in the state. Tomorrow morning my own friend is getting married -something she couldn’t do weeks ago. That amazes me and gives me chills.