It is impossible to ignore the classist, ableist and patriarchal forces at play when it comes to who can get married easily and what those marriages end up looking like.
The role that marriage plays in modern Western society is rapidly changing. Americans are getting married later and less often than they were a few decades ago. And changing societal views has made cohabitation a widely accepted and popular option for many couples who are interested in partnership but not a marriage license. We seem to be at a moment in time where younger generations in particular are wondering: Why bother to get married at all?
I spent the last few years trying to answer that question. Are the benefits of modern marriage really worth the risks? Research shows that people who are married are happier and wealthier than non-married people but is that just a self-fulfilling prophesy because happier and wealthier people are more likely to get married in the first place? Or is there something truly transformative about making a public—and legal—commitment to be together forever?
After talking with a multitude of experts including sociologists, financial advisors and couples therapists as well as dozens of real life people about their own marriages, I’ve come to the conclusion that the answers is yes to both questions. Modern marriage is both classist, and it can be incredibly rewarding. So, as we look toward the future, I believe we should consciously separate the potential of modern marriage from its patriarchal and harmful roots.
We finally have the opportunity to create a new type of marriage that is more equitable and individualized. But in order to do so, we can’t turn away from the insidious parts of marriage both past and present.
The following is an excerpt from Allison Raskin’s I Do (I Think): Conversations About Marriage, edited lightly for style and clarity.
For all its pro-marriage propaganda, the U.S. has a disgusting history of denying certain people what should be an intrinsic right. Yet this record of discrimination hasn’t stopped activists from fighting for that right.
The relatively recent legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States is a fascinating turning point for the role marriage plays in modern society, as it managed to both change and further cement marriage’s place as a coveted institution.
In simpler terms: If marriage is a thing of the past, why did people fight so hard to gain access to it less than 10 years ago?
To get a better sense of the history and perspective of this movement, I reached out to Christopher Riano, an attorney and co-author of the book Marriage Equality: From Outlaws to In-Laws. One of the reasons Riano decided to co-write his book in the first place was so people in the future didn’t think marriage equality just “happened” or was a natural progression of the times.
Activists fought for five decades to change laws, both on a state and federal level. And while though 50 years seems like a long time, in the course of human history, there are few social justice movements that were able to turn the tide of public opinion so quickly. According to Gallup, only 27 percent of Americans supported same sex marriage in 1996, but by the time the Supreme Court ruled in its favor in 2015, the national level of support was at 60 percent. By 2021, 70 percent of Americans supported same sex marriage.
This trajectory raises the question: Why did activists fight so hard for something that many people view as so overtly heteronormative?
The answer once again reflects how much significant value marriage still holds in society. If there wasn’t that big of a difference between being married or not being married, clearly fewer people would have mobilized around this issue. But there is—and the reality is that even in states where domestic partnership offers the same legal and financial benefits, it still didn’t have the same social legitimacy as marriage. Denying a large portion of the population access to a coveted and powerful institution sent a strong message that those populations are still viewed as “other” by the state. Not to mention the fact that certain areas of the country wouldn’t recognize your domestic partnership at all if you moved or even visited one of them.
Now, one could theorize that the relatively quick change in acceptance toward marriage equality was born from a patriotic desire to right a wrong. But one could also wonder, was legalizing same-sex marriage a way to “normalize” or even control queer relationships? If certain people had difficulty understanding or respecting a romantic relationship between two gay men, would that change once they became spouses because that arrangement comes within a known structure and set of expectations? Does legalizing same-sex marriage makes queer relationships potentially less threatening to certain people because they are now abiding by the historically heterosexual “rules” of matrimony? I’m not suggesting some grand conspiracy here, but I do wonder if this type of thinking had a subconscious effect on changing people’s views.
One researcher I spoke to for this book said the fight for marriage equality “is still based on a set of laws that are legitimizing one type of relationship over all others”—thereby forcing many dynamic, diverse relationships to fit into single norm. For example, marriage requires people to pair off in twos in order to get legal recognition, even if they are part of a larger, polyamorous relationship structure.
“What we’ve tended to do with marriage is allow more people access to it, whether it’s interracial couples or same sex couples,” the researcher reiterated. “What we’ve tended to do less is have a larger, more robust effort to make our family laws and our family policies depend less on marriage as the kind of that relationship we hold above all others.”
This elevation of marriage is a problem for multiple reasons, because not everyone has the same level of access to it—legally or financially. The fight for true marriage equality didn’t end with the federal legalization of same-sex marriage, and it is impossible to ignore the classist, ableist and patriarchal forces at play when it comes to who can get married easily and what those marriages end up looking like. By protecting and promoting marriage above everything else, we are continuing to create unfair divisions amongst the population and prevent people from prioritizing other relationships.
Although it is rarely talked about, there also remains a sizable portion of the population who still don’t have equal rights when it comes to matrimony. While the option may not have been outlawed for disabled people in the same way as it was for other populations, for a significant number of them, getting married would ruin their lives. (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, prepare to be outraged.) To this day, there are discriminatory laws in place that financially penalize certain disabled people if they get married. Many kinds of disabilities or circumstances qualify adults to receive federal benefits including Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and need them all to help cover living and medical expenses. But if a disabled adult marries, they could lose some—or all—of these monetary benefits because their partner’s income is now taken into account as well, and you have to be below a certain (extremely low) income threshold to remain eligible.
Ultimately, these absurd laws and regulations result in a lot of people not being able to marry their partners even if they want to, because they can’t risk a loss of or reduction in their Social Security stipends and healthcare.
Fortunately, there is an active fight to change this major inequality both by disability activists and some members of government although it has yet to catch the same national attention as other movements.
The fact that these barriers exist in the first place, though, further proves that marriage currently functions more like a privilege in this country and not as an equal basic right like it should. We all need to come together to take down these draconian policies.
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