In-Queer-Y: The Argument Against Marriage Equality

In my junior year in high school, I used to believe that people who didn’t choose to come out to their friends and family were part of the problem. Their “being in the closet” was detrimental to the visibility of LGBT+ people in the world and, therefore, was slowing down the biggest challenge for all queer folk, marriage equality. I, too, used to believe that marriage equality was the most pressing gay issue. Making myself visible to the public and striving for marriage made me one of them. I was playing up to hetero-ideals of success in life and relationships. Now, I see how this desire to assimilate is presented in today’s politics and my personal dialogue about the importance of coming out.

Recently, the Obama administration formally supported nationwide gay marriage, and President Obama included gay Americans in his speech at 50th Anniversary of ‘Bloody Sunday’ in Selma Alabama. He says, “We are the gay Americans whose blood ran on the streets of San Francisco and New York, just as blood ran down this bridge.”  I cannot help but tear up. Our President was claiming my gay identity as both American and his. I found this part of his speech remarkable and daring. How would the American public respond? How could anyone possibly disagree?

Working under the model “the personal is political,” it would make sense why the concept of being out is such a public (read: straight) affair, when in reality “being in the closet” is a private (read: queer) affair.  In order for there to be political progress, a population of people need to first identify as LGBT+. The little Harvey Milk in me wanted to believe that all struggles for the LGBTQ community would disappear if we were out and about and proud. But also I’ve begun to see violence in having people come out in order to gain these human rights because “out-ness” comes with privilege. Even though Obama’s speech made me want to stand up with him and own my American-ness and sexuality in the same sentence, I was exercising a type of privilege and putting myself into a box. I found myself becoming “normal” to the American public. Is that the point of marriage equality? To normalize queer folk?

A part of marriage equality is having queer people assimilate to heteronormative standards of relationships. There is no more room for sexual liberation at the center of queer life. Instead, marriage equality shows that we are just like them when, in fact, we aren’t. We should not be fighting for the very institutions that uphold heteronormative values against us. Marriage shouldn’t be the sacred center of equality for the LGBT community. We do not have to tone ourselves down. We do not have to get married in order to have meaningful relationships. We do not have to oppress ourselves for who we are.

This argument obviously becomes more complicated when presented with same-sex couples adopting children and hospital visiting rights, but I believe that those issues can be solved without marriage equality. Politics aren’t being changed in our favor; instead, we are becoming the exception to the rule, our rights and perspectives are still being marginalized as a whole. This obsession with coming out and claiming marital rights is contradictory to the diversity within the queer community. Queer people endure all types of job, education, medical and housing discrimination before they can even start to worry about marriage. Some can’t even come out without fearing for their lives.

These aspects of the queer community put in perspective how marriage equality and coming out are issues that are too caught up in marketing our identities to the public than catering to the actual people affected.  So now I find no importance in coming out or marriage equality. There must be other ways in which we can educate the American public about us without perpetuating our own oppression. There must be other ways for our same-sex relationships to hold their importance on paper without assimilating to marriage.