Same Sex Marriage

10 Key excerpts on "Same Sex Marriage"

• 

  No longer available |Learn more

  Know All About LGBT Culture

  • (Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • The English Press

    (Publisher)

  ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ Chapter-3 Same-Sex Marriage Same-sex marriage (also called gay marriage ) is a legally or socially recognized marriage between two persons of the same biological sex or social gender. Same-sex marriage is a civil rights, political, social, moral, and religious issue in many nations. The conflicts arise over whether same-sex couples should be allowed to enter into marriage, be required to use a different status (such as a civil union, which either grant equal rights as marriage or limited rights in comparison to marriage), or not have any such rights. A related issue is whether the term marriage should be applied. One argument in support of same-sex marriage is that denying same-sex couples legal access to marriage and all of its attendant benefits represents discrimination based on sexual orientation; several American scientific bodies agree with this assertion. Another argument in support of same-sex marriage is the assertion that financial, psychological and physical well-being are enhanced by marriage, and that children of same-sex couples benefit from being raised by two parents within a legally recognized union supported by society’s institutions. Court documents filed by American scientific associations also state that singling out gay men and women as ineligible for marriage both stigmatizes and invites public discrimination against them. The American Anthropological Association avers that social science research does not support the view that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon not recognizing same-sex marriage. Other arguments for same-sex marriage are based upon what is regarded as a universal human rights issue, mental and physical health concerns, equality before the law, and the goal of normalizing LGBT relationships.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Philosophy, Ethics, and Public Policy: An Introduction

  • Andrew Cohen(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Of course, not all marriages involve the same specific commitments and the same shared understandings. By marrying, however, partners typically signal to one another and to their community a commitment to some enduring form of mutual care. People seek such relationships as a unique source of special value for themselves and their partners. The controversy here is about whether to restrict such benefits to male/female couples.

  Context matters. History is marked with institutionalized oppression and violence against gays and lesbians. Indeed, in many countries, being gay is still an offense punishable with imprisonment or death (Human Rights Council, 2011 ). For many gays and lesbians, protecting the opportunity to marry is important as an expression of their equal legal, civic, social, and moral status.

  The definitional approach

  Many discussions of same-sex marriage start by exploring definitions of marriage. After all, it seems we should know what we are talking about before tackling the hard work of exploring appropriate applications of a concept. Perhaps the very idea of marriage can shed some light on whether there can be such a thing as same-sex marriage.

  Some writers argue that marriage has a fixed meaning that cannot be changed by wishing or legislation. As Maggie Gallagher writes, “Politicians can pass a bill saying a chicken is a duck and that doesn’t make it true. Truth matters” (Gallagher, 2009 ). Critics of same-sex marriage argue that marriage simply is a certain union between a male and a female.

  This is what John Corvino calls a “definitional objection” (Corvino, 2012 ). This objection basically runs as follows. Marriage is a relationship that is valuable for what it brings about (such as improving the partners and contributing to children’s welfare). Marriage is also good in itself: it involves a special unity of two persons, ordered to a shared biological goal, namely, procreation. The only sort of union that can be directed toward that end is one including only a male and a female; only a male and female pair is capable of becoming a special whole whose activity together can solidify and express their union. (See, for instance, Girgis, 2014

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Applying Political Theory

  Issues and Debates

  • Katherine Smits(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  109 ● SAME-SEX MARRIAGE AND GAY AND LESBIAN RIGHTS ● THE FREEDOM OF CONTRACT ARGUMENT ● LIBERAL ARGUMENTS, RIGHTS AND THE ROLE OF MARRIAGE ● COMMUNAL VALUES AND MORAL ARGUMENT ● CONSERVATIVE OPPOSITION ● RADICAL OPPOSITION TO MARRIAGE ● CONCLUSION While historians of sexuality have traced back ceremonies uniting homosexual couples for most of recorded history, in both Western and non-Western cultures, the demand that same-sex couples be allowed to formally marry emerged only over the past couple of decades. Same-sex marriage has come to be one of the most controversial and divisive social policy issues in Western countries, as in the second decade of the twenty-first century, Western democracies have begun to shift to legalization. Same-sex marriage raises questions concerning not only the rights of gay and lesbian people and what is required for their equality, but also the status of marriage – an institution declining in popularity in many countries – and the relationship between the state and the institutions of civil society. Although public debate centres on rights to marriage, there have also developed a range of different types of legally recognized and protected relation-ships which various countries have adopted for same-sex couples, as a substitute for marriage, and which have often been precursors to full legalization. (The first country to adopt such an arrangement was Denmark in 1989.) Often called civil unions or domestic partnerships, these officially recognized relationships offer many of the same legal and economic rights and benefits that accompany marriage, including rights to property and inheritance, hospital visitation rights, rights to housing and insurance benefits and in some cases the right to adopt children together. In some cases they are also open to heterosexual couples who do not wish to formally marry. These parallel institutions make this a complex 6 Should Same-Sex Marriage Be Legal?

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  The Politics of Same-Sex Marriage

  • Craig A. Rimmerman, Clyde Wilcox, Craig A. Rimmerman, Clyde Wilcox(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • University of Chicago Press

    (Publisher)

  Of this we can be certain: it will continue to remain on the policy agenda until it is either widely accepted or durably proscribed. This chapter proceeds in four major sections. In the first I consider the broad trends in the social environment. Two major trends are espe-cially noteworthy: the changing conceptions of marriage and the shift-ing views regarding homosexuality. In the second section I provide a preliminary assessment of the advocacy groups and their efforts to define and promote answers to the questions concerning marriage. The third section outlines the most important political actors and their role in the debate.  Finally, I trace the major developments concerning same-sex marriage, showing how environment, advocates, and offi cials interact to place marriage on the agenda and address it once it is there. T H E S O C I A L E N V I RO N M E N T marriage It is possible to view marriage as a monolith: a single, immoveable struc-ture. It is possible but unwise. Marriage is an enormously malleable insti-tution that varies across place and time (Coontz 2005).  Marriage is also, like love, a many-splendored thing, its splendor having sacred, social, and political dimensions. Marriage involves a set of legal rights and obli-gations, a way of living and, for many Americans, a consecrated vow. The sacred and secular elements of marriage are conceptually distinct. A society could exist in which marriages are blessed but the blessing has rom 4 no secular consequences. Alternatively, a nation could confer legal rights and obligations upon couples through contract (that is, “civil marriage”) without reference to religious authority. If either of these conditions pre-vailed, then the disputes about whether same-sex couples could marry would likely be muted. If marriage were purely a religious matter, then same-sex couples, like many opposite-sex couples, could simply find a church that would marry them, or they could simply live together.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Public Practice, Private Law

  An Essay on Love, Marriage, and the State

  • Gary Chartier(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  The account of marriage I have sought to defend in Chapters 1, 2, and 4 is not gendered; and this is not a consequence merely of a commitment to the moral equality of same-sex and different-sex relationships but also of a general sense of what marriage is and why it matters. Marriage as I con- ceive of it is essentially a we solidified by commitment, and there is no reason to think that same-sex partners are any less capable of participating in and sustaining this kind of union than different-sex partners. Same-sex partners love; they form we relationships; they commit to each other, they remain together through thick and thin. Their relationships exhibit 215 Same-Sex Marriage, with or without the State the same relevant characteristics as those of married different-sex couples. Same-sex marriage happens all the time. Despite these realities, however, same-sex marriage opponents seek to prevent state and communal authorities from recognizing these marriages and from according married same-sex partners the opportunities that flow as a matter of course to married different-sex partners. At least some oppo- nents of affording communal recognition to same-sex marriage take the position they do because they would like to see state power and communal influence used to foster moral excellence; 1 they embrace what we might call “the politics of virtue.” 2 Many of those who believe government should be in the business of “making men moral” 3 regard same-sex sexual conduct as morally wrong and imagine that it should therefore be discouraged, or at least that it shouldn’t be encouraged. 4 Further, the recognition of same-sex 1 Given my understanding of marriage, it will be clear that marriages may be recognized by governmental or ecclesial authorities but that marriages are not created by these authorities but by the partners. Thus, I refer throughout to the recognition of same-sex marriage rather than to same-sex marriage, per se.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Handbook of Lesbian and Gay Studies

  • Diane Richardson, Steven Seidman, Diane Richardson, Steven Seidman(Authors)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  As Hunter (1995c: 101) points out, the politics of the family have become ‘a newly identified zone of social combat’, central to agitations for lesbian and gay equality and citizenship. In a sense, marriage is a useful cypher for the whole citizenship debate, since it is seen as a cohesive element of social life, strad-dling the public and the private, containing a mix of rights and duties, and occupying a central position in political, legal and popu-lar discourses of radically different orienta-tions – from the petitions for the recognition of ‘families we choose’ to campaigns for a reinstatement of ‘family values’ as the heart of Christian-democratic political and moral culture. Agitation in the USA for the rights of ‘queer families’ enable us to witness these competing discourses enacted on the political and legal stage. Like citizenship, then, marriage ‘does not exist without the power of the state … to establish, define, regulate and restrict it’ (Hunter, 1995b: 110). Hunter suggests that same-sex marriage could potentially ‘alter the fundamental concept of the particular institution of marriage’, also sending out shockwaves that may shake the foundations of other social institutions that are presently loci of discrimination (ibid.: 112). Part of Hunter’s argument rests with the potential of same-sex marriage to destabi-lize the gendered structure of marriage, frac-turing discourses of dependency and authority. It serves, then, to denaturalize marriage, to reveal its constructedness, and thereby to ‘democratize’ it. Paradoxically, however, it seems that such a move could have the function of reaffirming marriage as an institution. There are a number of strands to this counterargument. First, by further marginalizing the unmarried, it perpetuates a two-tier system in the recognition of rela-tionship status. It also maintains the (long-term, monogamous) bonds of coupledom as the most legitimate form of lovelife-choice.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  After Welfare

  The Culture of Postindustrial Social Policy

  • Sanford F. Schram(Author)
  • 2000(Publication Date)
  • NYU Press

    (Publisher)

  As a result, federal legislation has defined marriage for purposes of federal law as limited to unions between a man and a woman, preempted state powers to define marriages for purposes of federal law, and interfered with the process by which one state recognizes the marriages of another. In the end, after intense political debate and extensive campaigning by fundamentalist groups from outside the state, the voters of the state of Hawai’i passed a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to a man and a woman and the state legislature enacted a limited domestic partnership law. 1 In this chapter, I argue that in addition to the rights of gays and lesbians, DOMA raises the issue of how the family is the assumed basis for social policy. In the process, the question of Same Sex Marriage has highlighted the problem of federalism. The analysis below details how in both cases a politics of metaphors is at work to decide the terms of effective participation in the public sphere. I suggest that this use of metaphors reflects a “politics of incorporation” whereby marginalized persons or places are shown to be not really different from those that are legitimated. This politics of incorporation uses what J. M. Balkin calls “cultural software.” 2 Cultural software refers to the way ideology articulates affinities between the familiar and the unknown by using existing metaphors and models available in society. This ideological process makes ostensibly different things alike. In fact classic civil rights strategy has been to use the available “cultural software” so that the marginalized are incorporated into the public sphere by showing how they are not really different from those who have already been included

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  The Challenge of Same-Sex Marriage

  Federalist Principles and Constitutional Protections

  • Mark Strasser(Author)
  • 1999(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  IMPLICATED INTERESTS IN MARRIAGE While the state has an interest in promoting morality, it has a number of other interests that must be considered when marriage laws are at issue. State interests in the recognition and promotion of marriage include the promotion of stability, the limitation of the disorganized breakdown of relations, and the provision of a home for the production and rearing of children. 101 All of these interests would be promoted by recognizing samesex marriages. It should be noted, for example, that samesex couples are having and raising children, even if those children are not produced through their union. Indeed, some states recognize both members of samesex couples as the legal parents of the same child, precisely because this will promote the best interests of that child. 102 Thus, some commentators’ claims notwithstanding, the state’s interest in assuring that children will have a healthy, supportive environment in which to thrive militates in favor of the recog Page 176 nition of samesex marriage rather than against it. 103 Indeed, a court in Hawaii has already recognized that many individuals in samesex relationships have good parenting skills. 104 Ironically, just as the state’s interests would be promoted by recognizing samesex marriages, various individual interests would also be promoted by affording that recognition. The United States Supreme Court has articulated some of the individual interests that are implicated in marriage. Marriages are ‘‘expressions of emotional support and public commitment.’’ 105 They have spiritual significance and are the precondition to a variety of government benefits. 106 These interests are implicated whether one is discussing samesex or oppositesex couples. Indeed, although the Supreme Court of Hawaii denied that there is a fundamental right to samesex marriage, 107 the fundamental right to marry arguably should include the right to marry a samesex partner.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Global Perspectives on Same-Sex Marriage

  A Neo-Institutional Approach

  • Bronwyn Winter, Maxime Forest, Réjane Sénac, Bronwyn Winter, Maxime Forest, Réjane Sénac(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  © The Author(s) 2018

  Bronwyn Winter ,

  Maxime Forest and

  Réjane Sénac (eds.)

  Global Perspectives on Same-Sex Marriage Global Queer Politics https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62764-9_5

  Begin Abstract

  5. Understanding Same-Sex Marriage Debates in Malawi and South Africa

  Ashley Currier

  1   

  and

  Julie Moreau

  2   

  (1) University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

  (2) University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

   

   

  Ashley Currier  (Corresponding author)

    Julie Moreau

  Keywords

  Same-sex marriage Malawi South Africa Discursive anxiety LGBTI rights

  Ashley Currier

  is an associate professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Cincinnati, USA. She is the author of Out in Africa: LGBT Organizing in Namibia and South Africa (2012). She is working on a book manuscript about the politicization of homosexuality in Malawi and another project examining mobilization around marriage equality in Kentucky (USA).

   

  Julie Moreau

  is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto, Canada. Her research interests include transnational queer studies, social movements, and citizenship. She is currently working on a book manuscript that explores the concept of queer citizenship and the construction of collective sexual identities in contexts of legal equality and another project that examines the diffusion of same-sex marriage norms in Latin America.

   

  End Abstract

  Introduction

  Taking a discursive institutionalist approach, we explore the connection between dominant discourses of same-sex sexuality and institutional outcomes around same-sex marriage in Malawi and South Africa. We compare two different country cases to understand regional variation in same-sex marriage policy and the interaction of discourses about same-sex marriage and social and

  political institutions. Beginning in the mid-2000s, politicians in Malawi began politicizing and maligning same-sex sexualities, whereas in South Africa, lawmakers, at the behest of the judiciary, investigated legalizing same-sex marriage. Most Malawian

  political elites regard same-sex marriage negatively, but many South African political elites and activists favorably view same-sex marriage as a right in this postapartheid

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Queer Argentina

  Movement Towards the Closet in a Global Time

  • Matthew J. Edwards(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Because of its epistemological significance, the debate on same-sex marriages in the Argentinean Congress provides a helpful point of departure from which to reflect upon the implications and con- sequences of interest in and engagement with queer communities across the Americas. 8 M.J. EDWARDS CALLS IN THE DARK: INTERPELLATING EPISTEMOLOGICAL DIFFERENCE Social engagement has always been marked by the negotiation of power relations between different systems of knowledge and modes of cul- tural identification. The congressional debate on same-sex marriage in Argentina, which culminated ultimately in a vote in favor, represented a willingness to expand the etymological significance of “marriage” (includ- ing both the term itself and its institutional qualities) and signaled a coming together of otherwise divergent discourses to (queerly) engage issues concerning LGBTTIQ communities. However, it may be argued that the actions of Argentina’s public and political leaders in this case did not represent a true move toward social and sexual equality, but simply called attention to the traditional status of marriage and other dominant institutions. The malleability of our definition of marriage in recent years suggests a need to better understand the framework behind ideological flexibility as a whole and to examine the significance of the increasing vis- ibility and influence of queer culture within society. Although the congressional debate demonstrated a clear push to include LGBTTIQ communities in dominant discourses, it also (ironi- cally) underscored the enduring association between queer subjectivity and notions of difference and alterity.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book