Same-Sex Marriage Revived: Feminist Critique and Legal Strategy

Abstract

In June 2003 the UK government published proposals for a civil partnership registration scheme for same-sex couples that would confer almost all the legal rights and responsibilities of marriage. The paper discusses its provisions in the context of the debates on same-sex marriage over the past decade and argues that they hardly represent any advance on existing rights and that same-sex marriage will inevitably be won in the UK. The author herself is unenthusiastic about marriage, and concludes that lesbians and gay men should not let themselves be assimilated into a heterosexual model, but should draw attention to the potential for our relationships to act as better models for all relationships, inside or outside marriage.

Love and the State: Gay Marriage in Spain

“…Most political actors -including feminists who were active in the political transition from the Franco regime and who debated the impact of heterosexual marriage on women -have strongly supported same-sex marriage as a symbol of formal equality, presenting the demand for same-sex marriage as unanimous and universal. However, vital feminist perspectives on the impact of marriage on women, which could have been usefully incorporated into the debate, have been absent (e.g., Auchmuty, 2004). The context around same-sex marriage also in Spain, led to binary standpoints, in which there was little room to problematise the institution of marriage (Butler, 2002): those organisations and individuals that have been critical of same-sex marriage, such as the Lesbian Feminist Group of Catalonia 23 and queer activists, have failed to create mobilisation to displace marriage from the centre of the debate, and they themselves have remained largely marginalised.…”

‘It's Made a Huge Difference’: Recognition, Rights and the Personal Significance of Civil Partnership

“…It is this element of the Government's policy that many critics (Stychin, 2003;Auchmuty 2004) see as a strategy for 'co-option' of gay men and lesbians rather than a simple extension of rights to a previously disadvantaged group. In effect, the recognition comes with strings and the contract that the Government appears to want to strike balances rights against 'good behaviour'.…”

Sir Mark Potter And The Protection Of The Traditional Family: Why Same Sex Marriage Is (Still) A Feminist Issue

“…A significant proportion of (lesbian) feminist engagement with the issue of same sex marriage has been focused on trenchant critiques of marriage as a (hetero)patriarchal institution oppressive to women, undesirable, possibly dangerous, and fundamentally not the sort of institution that lesbian feminists should support (see, e.g., Robson 1998;Polikoff 2003;Auchmuty 2004). These critiques are convincing, and I am personally persuaded by many of them, but the exclusion of same sex couples from marriage also has implications for feminist engagements with marriage and the family, as evidenced by Potter J.…”