THE POLITICS OF SAME-SEX MARRIAGE POLITICS

What we are witnessing in the gay community, I would argue, is a radical substitution or transformation of the nature of homosexual dosire. Into the psychic space created by decriminalization has rushed a desire for governance, a desire for recognition -- recognition by legal and state authority. The de jure refusal to all gay people to satisfy this desire has formed the basis of the new civil rights claims made on behalf of "the community." Take, for instance, the complaint filed in the case challenging New York's marriage law. Lambda Legal -- the preeminent gay and lesbian rights legal organization -- argued on behalf of the five same-sex couples who sought to be married that the marriage law denied Lauren Abrams and Donna Freeman-Tweed's right of "their families to have the recognition...that heterosexuals have. They want to be able to say to their children, `Your parents are married.'"(6) Plaintiffs Douglas Robinson and Michael Elsasser, a male couple who have been together for seventeen years and have two sons, "want the public recognition of their commitment...that comes with legal marriage."(7) Mary Jo Kennedy and Jo-Ann Shain "want to express their love and commitment through civil marriage... Their daughter, too, wants to see her mothers marry and for their loving relationship to be accorded the same respect and recognition as those of her friends' married parents."(8) could legitimately create the institution of opposite-sex marriage, and all the benefits accruing to it, in order to encourage male-female couples to procreate within the legitimacy and stability of a state-sponsored relationship and to discourage unplanned, out-of-wedlock births resulting from "casual" intercourse... [E]ven where an opposite-sex couple enters into a marriage with no intention of having children, "accidents" do happen, or persons often change their minds about wanting to have children. The institution of marriage not only encourages opposite-sex couples to form a relatively stable environment for the `natural' procreation of children in the first place, but it also encourages them to stay together and raise a child or children together if there is a "change in plans."(19) This form of recognition the community now craves exacts a dear price. As lesbigay people are herded into a particular form of sociability -- a narrow conception of family -- we have lost an interest in, if not now disavow, other forms of sociality that a generation ago we celebrated. The queer cri