“SAME-SEX” OR “GAY” MARRIAGE

“Same-Sex” Or “Gay” Marriage

“Same-Sex” Or “Gay” Marriage

By the 1980s? gay studies came to a critical turning point. Its achievements were clear: A body of theory had emerged that legitimized nonreproductive sexualities? locating sexual desire in politically marginalized yet physically expressive bodies? and exploring how those bodies operated? or were operated upon? within repressive political climates. But if positioning gay and lesbian people in place of marital and economic norms given to the pleasures of subversion and righteous indignation? it may even damned them to permanent pariah status. (Boswell? 2006) Moreover? there was a growing awareness that gay studies? like the earlier disciplines it critiques? risked producing its own essentialized core gender identities? based upon a naturalized gay identity that still perceived anatomy and biology as inescapable.

There were few of the polymorphous forms of gender identity and polyamorous quality of desire, which were actually missing from these formulations. The AIDS crisis? which took its toll throughout the 1980s to Reaganite-Thatcherite indifference? also fueled calls for a new? more radical politics. Queer theory responded by abandoning the neo-Marxism and social activism of gay rights? and built upon Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality (1978-1984) and literary poststructuralism to argue that both sexuality and gender are social constructions produced within specific historical contexts. Queer social constructionism decouples sexuality from gender? abandoning any notion of sexual orientation as biologically determined. Male and female are no longer biological polarities but malleable constructs? and thus gender and sexuality (straight or gay) no longer automatically follow from one another. Sexual desire is not perceived as fixed and inherent in the body? but as a culturally created response that may or may not be related to a fixed social identity. Incorporating all categories of gay? lesbian? bisexual? transgender? transsexual? and even voluntary heterosexual desire? "queer?" by having no definitive "Other" to mobilize against? represents everything and nothing? and posits a suprademocratic category through which identities—of class and race as well—can radically hybridize and transform. “The constructivist understands that identity more thickly as a deviant way of sexually being in the world that has its historical origin within the medical discourse of the late nineteenth century.” (Cheshire 1993? p.2)

Many religious and social conservatives disagree completely with professional mental health organizations and believe that homosexuality is abnormal? unnatural? chosen and changeable. Most disapprove of equal rights for gays and lesbians? including the right to marry the individual that they love. Many think that homosexual attitude is disliked by God. The word homophobia? for example? came under new scrutiny in the mid-1980s. Though it astutely characterized sexual bigotry as a passively received mass neurosis and not a moral choice? Weinberg's term was now seen as etymologically illogical? literally meaning a fear of sameness but figuratively suggesting a fear of otherness. Homophobia was replaced with heterosexism? emphasizing not a special "phobia" but a chauvinism as banally evil as sexism or racism. Heteronormative? popularized by queer theorist Michael Warner in the early 1990s? moves beyond heterosexism's critique ...