Gay Moral Discourse: Talking About Identity, Sex, and Commitment

Woolwine, David; McCarthy, E. Doyle

doi:10.1016/s0163-2396(04)28028-0

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…In its place, a queer meaning-constitutive tradition imparts an "ethics of relating" centred on the negotiation of sexual needs and wants (Weeks et al 2001:148) -or what Woolwine and McCarthy (2005:400) call a queer "moral pragmatism." Thence in their study of gay men, Woolwine and McCarthy (2005) find no single moral code around sexual fidelity, but rather, a kind of "morally pragmatic stand" (2005:400) arising in the historical context of antihomosexual sentiment and associated stigmatization (2005:399). Similarly, while most lesbian couples prefer monogamy, Johnson (1990) finds that it is not uncommon for lesbian relationships to enter into phases of negotiated nonmonogamy.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

QUEER UNIONS: Same-Sex Spouses Marrying Tradition and Innovation

Green¹

2010

Can. J. Soc.

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Same-sex civil marriage is a focal point of debate among social conservatives, feminists, queer critics and lesbian and gay assimilationists. In this paper, I draw on in-depth interviews of thirty same-sex married spouses to explore how actual same-sex marriages relate to these debates. Among these spouses, civil marriage is perceived to provide significant legal, social and psychological resources that, in effect, consolidate the nuclear family and the institution of marriage. Yet, conversely, these spouses do not uniformly embrace traditional norms of marriage, but, rather, adopt a range of nontraditional norms and practices that, in effect, destabilize the traditional marital form. In sociological terms, however, their complexity is not surprising, as contemporary lesbians and gay men are dually socialized in the dialectic of a dominant “meaning-constitutive” tradition (Gross 2005) that valorizes (heterosexual) marriage and kinship, on the one hand, but a queer-meaning constitutive tradition that promotes sexual freedom and nontraditional gender relations, on the other. In this sense, one important sociological question for the future is the extent to which the increasing availability of same-sex marriage will transform the dialectic, eroding the structural conditions that underpin a distinctive queer meaning-constitutive tradition and, in turn, same-sex marital innovation.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

QUEER UNIONS: Same-Sex Spouses Marrying Tradition and Innovation

Green¹

2010

Can. J. Soc.

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“…For these lesbian and gay spouses, openness to nonmonogamous marriage reflects an important feature of detraditionalization because although the gay male participants had more variety in sexual practices than their female counterparts, both gay and lesbian spouses emphasized a pragmatic approach to relationship satisfaction that hinged on the fulfillment of the desires of each partner, rather than a pre‐established orthodoxy (Woolwine & McCarthy, ). Contrary to a heteronormative tradition that frames marriage as a lifelong monogamous commitment, these individuals drew upon plasticity as an alternative relationship logic that encourages them to question whether and when monogamy is the right choice for them.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Green

Valleriani

Adam

2015

J of Marriage and Family

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Within the sociological literature on intimate life, a detraditionalization thesis outlines a marked shift in the construction of marriage in post‐World War II Western societies, suggesting a growing focus on emotional and sexual satisfaction within the marital dyad (Cherlin, 2004; Giddens, 1992). In this article the authors investigated one aspect of marital relations in light of the detraditionalization thesis: marital monogamy. Drawing from 90 in‐depth interviews with both heterosexual and same‐sex married participants in Canada, they found that the detraditionalization thesis appears to capture best the extension of multicultural norms to abstract ideals about marital monogamy, rather than an actual shift in marital sexual practices, particularly among heterosexual respondents. These data call out for greater attention to both the social mediation of Giddens's detraditionalization thesis and a more nuanced concept of marital fidelity than a simple binary axis of “monogamous/nonmonogamous” permits.

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Gay Moral Discourse: Talking About Identity, Sex, and Commitment

Cited by 2 publications

References 11 publications

QUEER UNIONS: Same-Sex Spouses Marrying Tradition and Innovation

QUEER UNIONS: Same-Sex Spouses Marrying Tradition and Innovation

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

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