Can Marriage Be Queer?

By Alan Sears
The New Socialist Magazine, March / April 2001


Gay marriage is making front-page news. The predominantly gay Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) in Toronto married two same-sex couples using the ritual of wedding banns. The ceremonies were widely covered in the media. Not surprisingly, the marriage was not officially recognized by the Ontario government. A court challenge has now been launched to require the legal recognition of the marriages performed by the MCC.

There are now four cases heading to Canada's Supreme Court demanding the recognition of gay and lesbian marriages. There is important support for the recognition of same-sex marriages. One of these cases is being brought by the NDP government in BC, which responded to considerable lobbying within the party to take action to expand civil rights for lesbians and gay men.

At the most obvious level, socialists have to support these court challenges. The exclusive recognition of heterosexual marriage is one of the central features of the state regulation of sexuality. One specific form of relationship has been singled out and recognized, by implication delegitimizing all other relationships. A whole romantic ideology (and massive industry) has been constructed around marriage. Lesbians and gays should not be barred from this recognition. Legislation forbidding same-sex marriages is a noxious form of discrimination that must be eliminated.

We should start, then, with a standard liberal human rights defense of same sex marriage. Simply put, anything that chips away at the heterosexual monopoly is, at some level, a good step. The Chretien government included a clause about exclusive heterosexual marriage in the federal legislation that recognized same-sex relationships. The religious right has worked up a holy lather frothing at the mouth in defense of exclusive heterosexual marriage. A defeat for these forces is a good thing.

But that does not mean that lesbian and gay marriages are a step towards liberation. The recognition of same-sex ceremonies does not queer the institution of marriage. Gay and lesbian marriage does not challenge the right of the church and state to regulate our sexualities and intimate relationships. Instead, it falls into a larger pattern of recognizing 'good' lesbians and gays while demonizing 'bad' queers. This raises important questions about the future of queer liberation.

Since 1969, we have seen same-sex relationships decriminalized and then gradually recognized across the Canadian state. This relationship recognition is the result of a long struggle by lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgendered people. At its high point, this struggle produced a set of liberationist politics that emphasized visibility, militancy and the elimination of the compulsory family system through which the state and church validate some ways of life and restrict others.

Queer liberationist politics are very much marginalized in contemporary debates. The strongest voices for gay marriage are often conservatives like US journalist Andrew Sullivan, who argue that assimilation into the compulsory family system will give lesbians and gay men increased respectability and higher moral standards. These conservative voices represent a whole layer of lesbian and gay professionals and business owners, who have fashioned a lesbian and gay reformist politics that is completely reconciled with the world as it is. This layer of people are often treated as the spokespeople for all queer people, particularly in the absence of a real activist movement that can throw up its own militant voices.

There are some who challenge these reformist politics. The Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights in Ontario (CLGRO) maintains important elements of a queer liberationist politics, remaining an honourable exception to the rightward drift in the movement. Small clusters of queer activists can be found around ACT UP banners at anti-globalization actions in the United States. Other important pockets of liberationist activity remain. But many young, radical queers simply avoid the lesbian and gay movement and focus on other struggles.

The politics of lesbian and gay reformism leave vulnerable those who do not choose respectability or do not qualify for it. At the same time, we are seeing new forms of sexual policing that target queer activity that falls outside of the umbrella of respectability. Project Guardian in London, directed by Julian Fantino who is now the Toronto Police Chief, used child porn laws to arrest large numbers of gay men. Police claims of a "child porn ring" were never substantiated and the real target of the operation was gay sex. Many of the charges had to do with consensual sexual activities.

In Toronto, the last two years have seen a crackdown on sites of sexual activity unprecedented since a series of police raids on gay bathhouses in 1981. Last September, five male plainclothes officers raided a women's bathhouse night, on the pretext of enforcing liquor laws. The Bijou porn bar has faced repeated raids and shutdowns since June 13, 1999. Queer liberationist activism has helped open up a variety of sexual spaces, bringing sex itself out of the closets. It is crucial to defend these spaces and the idea of sexual liberation. Any attempt to restrict sexual activity to couples behind closed doors is a serious step backwards from the challenges that the radical lesbian and gay movement threw out when queers fought back after a police raid on Greenwich Village's Stonewall Bar.

The pro-sex politics of queer liberation have been a crucial challenge to the hypocrisy about sexuality that surrounds us in contemporary capitalist societies, where sex is everywhere (in every advertisement as an inducement to buy products) yet nowhere (the discussion and practice of real sexuality is completely shut down in public spaces).

Canada Customs received a slap on the wrist for their ongoing harassment of lesbian and gay bookstores, but their powers to do so remain virtually unabated. The Supreme Court of Canada decision on the Little Sister's bookstore in December 2000 concluded that Canada Customs had unfairly targeted the bookstore. Yet the Court reaffirmed Canada Customs' right to seize materials and the standards the agency had used to label materials as pornographic. Time will tell whether the routine seizure of materials going to lesbian and gay bookstores in Canada will continue after this ruling.

In short, we are seeing a polarization inside the queer world. While certain kinds of lesbian and gay relationship are receiving increased acceptance, we are seeing the emergence of new kinds of policing of queer sexuality. While gay and lesbian professionals and business owners experience a new respectability, street youth (who are disproportionately queer) face increasingly brutal policing. The recognition of same-sex relationships provides new access to benefits and security for some, especially the better-off, who can take advantage of joint RRSPs and income sharing. But at the same time, recognition has been used to crack down on queers with lower incomes by making partners responsible and cutting social assistance payments.

Any queer movement right now would have to defend the elimination of barriers that block lesbians and gay men from access to recognition and services that heterosexuals routinely receive. But let's be clear that gay marriage does not bring us any closer to real liberation. The system of sexual policing and relationship regulation continues, but now some lesbians and gays are moving to the inside. Real liberation means defending the queerest of the queers and the most vulnerable members of our communities.

The struggle is not over. It remains an open question what form the next struggles for queer liberation will take. The successes of the movement and the polarization of queer communities have combined to blunt the radical edge of queer mobilizing and AIDS activism. Many of the radical young queers who might breath new life into the movement are voting with their feet and choosing other battles.

One of the real challenges as the next new left emerges will be to define a radical liberationist sexual politics that points to real freedom and not simply to finding a place within the system of sexual regulation.

Alan Sears is a member of the New Socialist Group and a queer activist.