7 The Symbolic Power of Civil Marriage on the Sexual 146 Life Histories of Gay Men

Marital Monogamy as Ideal and Practice: The Detraditionalization Thesis in Contemporary Marriages

“…Much like his sister's heterosexual marriage, Robert and his partner have a monogamous arrangement, yet they are continually reevaluating this decision and allow for the possibility of a nonmonogamous option. This provides an opportunity to innovate their own marital arrangement by drawing on what Green (, ) called a queer meaning‐constitutive tradition that provides a range of choice in matters of sexual fidelity. Whereas Robert believes a conversation between his heterosexual sister and husband concerning nonmonogamy would be out of the ordinary, even surprising—“it would startle me to hear that my brother‐in‐law and his wife have a similar conversation”—he notes that this topic is a regular part of the conversation he has with his male partner.…”

“…Because of the historical exclusion of same‐sex couples from civil marriage and the queer, counter‐normative culture that developed in its place (Green ), same‐sex couples may enjoy greater freedoms to construct relationships outside norms that typically guide heterosexual relationships (Heaphy, Donovan, & Weeks, ). Green (, ), for example, collected U.S. data before civil marriage was available to same‐sex couples, finding that as children, straight and gay men shared ideas about monogamy and the characteristics of a “proper” relationship. However, as their respective sexual orientations materialized in adolescence and young adulthood, straight and gay men encountered distinct structural contexts that produced systematic changes in the directions of their sexual careers.…”

“You’re Really Just a Gay Man in a Woman’s Body!”

“…We argue that gay meaning constitutive traditions reshaped the sexual practices and possibilities for individuals in the Club and DBT in particular ways (Green 2012). By drawing on gay meaning constitutive traditions, as opposed to lesbian, butch/femme, or heterosexual meaning constitutive traditions, these two microcommunities simultaneously created new possibilities for sexual practice and subjectivity, and reinscribed androcentric hierarchies of desire and sexual agency.…”

“…Queer sexuality was drawn from (but not conflated with) gay male sexual culture. It was not merely an ''emulation of gay men'' (Wilkinson and Kitzinger 1996, 380), but rather a reliance on complex meaning constitutive traditions-linguistic and cultural frameworks for making sense of the world (Green 2012;Gross 2005)-about a certain type of gay male sexuality that was erotic, desirable, and valued. Broader and more ephemeral than sexual norms, these meaning constitutive traditions provided individuals with shared imaginative tropes for erotic subjectivities, touchstones for collective fantasy making, and the pleasures of valued but heretofore out-of-reach subjectivities.…”

The Deinstitutionalization of Marriage Revisited: A New Institutional Approach to Marriage

“…Where same‐sex couples previously had few institutional controls, by entering marriage, property, households, and relationships are regulated. Although these couples will undoubtedly have microlevel aspects of their relationships to negotiate within the context of marriage, they will be operating within the known institution of marriage (Green, in press). This is not unique to same‐sex couples.…”