Marriage, Civil Unions, Domestic Partnership- Cohabitation-The New Smorgasbord Intimacy

The big flare up at the Miss USA contest over gay marriage has got me thinking again about social change and intimacy. Miss California ticked off Pageant judge Perez, a gay man, by answering a question on gay marriage in a way that was certain to antagonize him. It did, big time. He probably gave her a big zero for a score, and she went right into Miss Runner Up. What did she say? She stated that in her view marriage was between a man and a woman and not between same sex partners. I am sure she is now the darling of people who adamantly reject gay marriage, but I was thinking, if social conservatives really thought through what their opposition to gay marriage is doing, they might want to reverse their stance-- and pick another heroine. After all, as I understand it, one of the main reasons people oppose gay marriage is because they want to preserve the sanctity of marriage. Many of them believe that by letting gay people in, everyone else is going to rush out. They believe that marriage will lose its institutional power by expanding it to include same sex couples.

But from my vantage point, excluding gays and lesbians has done exactly the opposite. While a majority of Americans do not approve of gay marriage, most approve of giving some rights to gay and lesbian unions if they don't call it marriage. So what has happened in response to that position, is the rise of all kinds of marriage surrogate statuses-- civil unions, domestic partnerships- all variously described with some rights but not others of marriage. To me, this has created a smorgasbord (kind of a huge deli spread) of choices for everyone - including heterosexuals. No longer is there marriage --and everything else. Now there are all kinds of marriage-like labels and statuses- so that if living together heterosexual couples want to legalize a serious relationship without getting married, they can do it by choosing one of various iterations of state ratified unions. So, I think that one of the consequences of conservative opposition to enfolding gay people into traditional marriage has been the proliferation of all kinds of alternative intimate relationship structures. Each legislature has it's own take on what is "almost marriage" so my guess is that many more of these quasi marriage models will evolve as each state wrestles with some kind of equitable but parallel form for committed same sex couples.

So here's my bottom line- if you want to elevate and support marriage - make it available to everyone. However, if you want boutique style unions- something we can tailor to our personal level of commitment or appetite for legal fusion, then sure, keep gays out of marriage--but a whole lot of the rest of us will stay out too. We might like one of the alternatives better! The legal evolution of options for committed relationship may have some positive aspects--but somehow I don't think that this proliferation of various types of civil unions and domestic partnerships is supporting the institution of marriage as we have known it. The anti gay marriage movement certainly did not intend to diminish marriage by excluding gays-- but that is what I think is happening.

Pepper Schwartz, PhD