on marriage, hetero-privilege and solidarity

[exterra]

d and i have been talking, over the last year or so, of our desire to have a ceremony in celebration of our relationship and committment to each other. as a queer and feminist woman, i have many critiques of the institution of marriage. however; one aspect of marriage that i do embrace is the social and public ritual of recognizing a relationship

Comments

[angryasiangrrl]

i really respect that you and d are grappling with this. my mind is a bit too muddled to contribute anything constructive to this conversation, but as a woman in a same sex relationship who is moving out of the u.s. next week because i can't marry my immigrant partner, i thank you for choosing to struggle with this issue.

[exterra]

congrats on canada, btw... i've been following, on and off, the immigration saga. when i was talking w/ queer women in pakistan, canada was the country of choicef or many when dreaming of emigration (even if it seemed impossible) cuz it's one of the few that offers more rights to same sex couples.

[angryasiangrrl]

while immigration to canada does have restrictions, i bet it is a much more viable option for many compared to the u.s. i really wish i could warn every person who wants to come to the u.s. to go to school, etc. to consider canada instead. the u.s. makes it so hard for people to stay here.

[exterra]

so very hard. in canada, if you are privileged with higher education, it's so much easier... from the little i know.

[angryasiangrrl]

to answer your last question, hetero couples over 62 are included to account for the many elderly folks who don't want to get married at that age at the risk of loosing pensions, etc. from deceased spouses. i think they have been added to a lot of DP bills with the hopes that this will improve the chance of getting DP bills passed (increased support from an unlikely group, the elderly).

[exterra]

aah, thanks! i had a sense there was some legalistic/strategy issues related to this.

[saltbox]

Oh boy, do I relate. Well, not completely. To say I relate completely would mean that I would be ignoring my own set of privileges, which includes being in a relationship where both partners are financially well-off and able to work full time (and, if anything, more than full time.) So in a sense, it's a lot "easier" for us to eschew legal marriage, and I worry that our protest (feeble,[*] as it is) minimizes the economic privileges that we have. On the other hand, our state is far more hostile to same-sex marriages than yours, and so our desire to protest its lack of availabilty feels greater. I'm not sure, for example, what we'd do if we lived in Seattle, where at least there are domestic partnership benefits (as opposed to here, where even the legality of those are occasionally in question).

[*] Not only because we are feeling very little hardship from our lack of marriage at the moment, but also because we, at heart, are lazy people, and couldn't imagine getting around to getting married anyway.

[gordonzola]

The best thing I saw was a het couple (who needed to marry for immigration reasons) including it in their vows. Something like, "we appreciate all of our friends/famkily attending our ceremony, including the ones who, because of societal predjudice, are not legally allowed to right to marriage" ya know, something like that.

[softanimal]

i, too, appreciate that you're grappling with this issue. to be completely honest, i'm politically against queer/conscious people in the US marrying a partner of the 'opposite sex' (for lack of a better term); but being someone who lives with a chronic illness, i waive my judgment when it comes to marrying due to health issues/health insurance coverage (and possibly immigration, too). i have many healthy queer friends who are, or plan to be, heterosexually hitched, and though i support them personally and in no way love them any less, i must admit i am disappointed in their decisions, at least on a political level.

best of luck with whatever you decide to do.

<3