Assimilation or Digestion?
Gay marriage, respectability politics, and the repression of Gay liberation.
ESSAY 4: (In a series) Links to other essays in the series are at the end of this essay.
In the beginning of this essay, I wish to acknowledge that I am going to draw heavily from this essay, “The Same-Sex Marriage Campaign in the Age of Neoliberalism,” by Ayumu Kaneko, professor at Meiji University in Japan. The URL to it is the following:
It is well worth downloading and reading. It largely points out what I have already observed about the same-sex marriage campaign and provides additional information of which I wasn’t aware. Rather than trying to remember the entire campaign and track down sources which made similar observations regarding same-sex marriage that Dr. Kaneko does, and write up a paper myself, I am going to use this single article as the source for this paper.
As well as discussing same-sex marriage and respectability politics I am going to include with it other repressive actions of Gay respectability politics, such as wanting to ban leather from ‘Pride” parades and other actions such as banning the throwing of condoms at a Houston ‘Pride’ event.
Before proceeding further in this essay, I would like to say that I support entirely the right to have a same-sex marriage. I do joke, “We have a right to be as miserable as everyone else.” In some cases, I agree with a friend that some Gays who get married want to be just like the straight people. However, it is an option and Gays should have that option as much anyone else in terms of equal rights. It also is a choice for individual couples to decide. However, it should remain a choice and also same-sex marriage should not preclude us imagining other possibilities for Gay relationships.
Marriage rituals are supersaturated with archaic heterosexual ideas of gender and dynastic ideas. In these rituals the father gives away the bride. Marriage will not be analyzed here, but it is oriented around an archaic idea of heterosexual marriage and its customs are largely irrelevant to homosexual men. That doesn’t mean marriage rituals can’t be changed or adapted, but many of the enthusiastic proponents of same-sex marriage don’t even recognize that there is an issue, except maybe at a very superficial level, so the need to be reconstructing same-sex marriage around the lived lives of Gays is not even imagined.
Marriage as a practice in the United States is in decline. The percentage of persons getting married is trending down very significantly over time and continuing to trend down. How much of an accomplishment is it to be part of a declining social practice whose future is very questionable? The divorce rate is very high, it perhaps can’t trend higher since it is already high. How much of an accomplishment is it to be part of a social practice that is decaying rapidly?
Further marriage is increasingly becoming primarily the social practice of middle and upper-class Gays, in an American society that has seen a tremendous increase of economic inequality and a huge shrinkage of the middle class over the last decades due to neoliberal economic policies. It is not surprising that the Alphabet Soup primarily comprised of middle and upper-class gays would push an institution that is practiced by upper- and middle-class straight people, but of little use to those Gays who aren’t benefited by the new neoliberal order.
The institution of marriage even with straight people has been a subject of debate as to its value going back to the 19th century and some choose it and some don’t, so should it be for Gay people. Similarly for Gays marriage shouldn’t be automatically assumed to be a good thing and it is a topic for debate as to its value. For Gays there is the additional topic for discussion whether an institution devised for heterosexuals and created by often homophobic religious groups has issues and problems in its application to Gays. Is it a good fit is the question? In some cases, it might be very strategic or a necessary solution to a couple’s situation. I other cases it is what a couple wants and again it is their choice. However, the question is whether same-sex marriage meets the needs of Gay couples in general and in some cases is contrary to their needs and whether the Gay community should be pressured or lectured to get married.
Priorities and Potential Negative Impacts
The are some issues with same-sex marriage for Gays which are largely contingent on the current situation in society in 2021 and are not necessarily permanent in both the importance or the number of the issues.
There isn’t at this time any national civil rights legislation for housing, employment, and public accommodation in the United States, something which would be of real benefit to working class gays. When applying for an apartment, a mortgage, a job, or filling out forms at a doctor or hospital there is the question regarding marital status. So, a Gay couple is releasing their status as Gays prior to getting the apartment, being asked to interview for a job, and in a great many other situations. The control of the management of when to disclose full identity as a Gay person is taken from the Gay person. Even if there was legislation against discrimination it is obvious that in many cases on some pretext or another would be used so that the Gay person won’t get the apartment, wouldn’t be called in for an interview, or be subject to discrimination in some other way. For a small minority group in a society where there is a large fraction of the population that is hostile not being able to manage disclosure has significant and extensive negative consequences.
In effort to get same-sex marriage there doesn’t seem to have been any consideration whether other alternatives might work better for Gay people. Now that same-sex marriage is legal, it is assumed that is the only possible desired goal and alternative arrangements are not discussed. Also, not discussed, and this very surprising given how these impacts could be severe, are the potential negative impacts that could happen to a Gay person with a same-sex marriage and so there isn’t a discussion even of eliminating or alleviating them. Certainly, advocating a less prejudiced society is one way of reducing negative impacts, but Gays live in the here and now, and a society in which there isn’t an impact is likely generations away.
When Gays get married, they also become subject to a legal system designed to regulate marriage in regards to heterosexuals and taking care of children.
If a Gay couple gets divorced their marriage it could come under the judgement of a straight judge or a jury of straight people who will judge matters as heterosexuals. Given the assimilationist politics of many supporters of same-sex marriage they don’t see this as a problem.
Alphabet Soup, Queer and Same-Sex Marriage
Once you conceptualize the members of the Alphabet Soup as individuals who are “queer,” that is the not-straights, and only different from straights as individuals with some personal difference from straights you set an agenda to make sure they can have the rights of straight people. To lump wide variety of different sexualities together necessarily precludes them as being significantly different communities and histories and that makes sense only if they are seen as just individuals with personal minor differences form straight people. With that conceptualization the needs the individuals in the Alphabet Soup becomes the need of civil rights and a legal system where they can do what straight people can do, be just like the straight people, such as marriage and adoption.
As Kaneko points out the advocacy of same-sex marriage was done by making it a part of the popular narrative of American history which is supposed to be progressing towards greater equality. The issue becomes how the institutions and customs of heterosexuals can be adapted to the Alphabet Soup, or how the Alphabet Soup can be adapted to these institutions and customs. Kaneko points out that one of the arguments for Gay marriage is that it would modify the behavior of Gays to be more respectable in the eyes of the general society.
What isn’t considered is what institutions and customs might be created designed around the needs of Gay people and the practical issues they face. When the narrative is equality and inclusion for members of the Alphabet Soup, the question becomes how much the other meaning of equality, two things being the same, becomes the underlying idea of conceptualizing the needs and expected behavior of the members of the Alphabet Soup. Also, if the narrative is equality as being the same, the civil rights agenda and the expected direction of the Alphabet Soup is assimilation. Gay people are really just like straight people, except they use their plumbing differently, confined to the bed room. Hopefully circuit parties can be ignored.
Kaneko explaining how neoliberalism has become the dominate ideology of society in the 1980s and states in the introduction of his paper the following:
I elucidate the ways in which America’s mainline marriage-equality campaign has acted in complicity with the forces promoting and legitimizing neoliberalism at the turn of the twenty-first century.
It has to be asked why the dominance of neoliberal ideas isn’t a concerned in ‘queer” studies in regards to its influence on all the reigning ideologies of the Alphabet Soup. (Yes, Kaneko exists, but it should be noted that he is in Japan and outside of the American Alphabet Soup.)
In the section in his paper, “From Revolution to Assimilation,” Kaneko states:
The same-sex marriage campaign is a relatively new movement. When the gay liberation movement emerged in the late 1960s, activists did not seek the right of legal marriage but rather the subversion of heterosexist social structures, including the institution of marriage. In 1969, immediately after the Stonewall protest, the influential Gay Liberation Front declared themselves “a revolutionary group of men and women formed with the realization that complete sexual liberation for all people cannot come about unless existing social institutions are abolished.” Their goal was to create “new social forms and relations, that is, relations based upon brotherhood, cooperation, human love, and uninhibited sexuality.” It was natural that the idealized “existing social institutions” the radical activists desired to “abolish” included the institution of marriage. Many of their liberation efforts were successful through the coming out of individuals and direct protest actions.
Kaneko points out the advent of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the 1980s “deeply influenced gay and lesbian movements.” Kaneko describes the influences as follows:
Explicitly sexual gay subcultures relatively declined, while nonsexual social, cultural, and political institutions in gay communities gained momentum. Gay sexuality was reconfigured to conform to that of the heterosexual majority of Americans, and many gays and lesbians came to emphasize “dating” and “weddings” as their own expressions of intimacy. Many came to prefer mutual commitment to casual sexual relations, which might be seen as promiscuous by mainstream heterosexuals. In the 1990s, having children through adoption or reproductive technology became popular among gay and especially lesbian couples. Consequently, these couples came to confront various types of legal discrimination such as denial of inheritance rights and custody, and they thus became more eager to marry. From this background emerged the same-sex marriage campaign.
Kaneko in reviewing and 1989 essay by Andrew Sullivan, gay conservative, in the magazine, New Republic, states that Sullivan was basically arguing, “Once same-sex marriage was legalized, gays and lesbians would become the same as straight citizens except for their sexual orientation.” Kaneko quotes Sullivan, including Sullivan’s statement, “It could bring the essence of gay life—a gay couple—into the heart of the traditional straight family in a way the family can most understand and the gay offspring can most easily acknowledge.”
Kaneko points out that some organizations replaced the idea of rights to have marriage with the idea of duties and to avoid the idea that “gay couples are seeking a different kind of marriage.” Assimilation is to be absolute.
Kaneko points out that supporters of same-sex marriage rather than challenging marriage as an institution did the opposite. Kaneko states, “Advocates are insistent that same-sex couples would neither destroy or radically change the institution of marriage but, rather, sustain an energize it.” The Gay movement has moved from its revolutionary roots to instead embrace a counter-revolutionary agenda.
Of course, this whole idea precludes that there are Gay communities with potentially separate paths or opportunities or cultural forms different from straight society. Or even the concept that there could be a Gay life outside of an all-inclusive neoliberal society. It doesn’t recognize that assimilation can be another name for digestion.
It can be seen then that the lumping together of different sexual minorities into an Alphabet Soup is central to the neoliberal strategy of assimilation. For if these different letters are different from each other, if a transman isn’t the interchangeable equivalent of a “cis” gay man, that is a gay man that is biologically a man, and they can’t be assimilated together, that it brings into question whether sexual minorities can be assimilated into heterosexual society as essentially interchangeable units with just private differences. If the individual letters of the Alphabet Soup are different from each other, then that suggests they are to a significant degree different from straights and hence assimilation is not possible. It calls into question lumping the letters into a ‘queer’ classification. The neoliberal agenda of assimilation requires that the individual sexual identities not be communities separate from each other for that would mean they are communities separate from the dominate neoliberal society which would be then not an everyperson society but a straight society with minority inclusions. The project of assimilation would collapse as a concept. The whole long historical narrative of America as a melting pot where all elements are fused together is called into question.
The assertions by members of the Lesbian and Gay communities that transwomen as translesbians are not equivalents to Lesbians and they won’t consider dating them, and similarly Gay transmen are not equivalents to biological Gay men is an inherent threat to the neoliberal agenda of assimilation. It is not surprising that the academic departments concerned with sexuality and gender in the neoliberal university should develop ideologies which condemn this dissent and develop narrative languages with dissenting members of those communities not being academics would find hard to counter. It is not surprising that the political institutions of the Alphabet Soup already adjuncts to the neoliberal order and their media would align with this assimilationist politics and be unanimous in stifling dissent.
It should not be surprising that in the universities that Lesbian and Gay studies has vanished to be replaced by Gender studies.
Genderqueer, a concept where it is possible to have heterosexuals be part of the Alphabet Soup, has the utility to blur the boundaries of between straight and the Alphabet Soup and drive definitions that assimilate by definition. Though it might have the reactionary consequence of defining straight as some caricature, like a cowboy in a Western movie. Now there is the classification of super straight which somehow is straighter than straight. We plunge into the vortex of collapsing word meanings. It needs to be considered how many Alphabet Soup ideologies are reactionary concepts repackaged, but that won’t be done in this essay.
The issues of differences and potential conflicts between other letters of the Alphabet Soup also need to be squashed. It isn’t just issues regarding transgender, though currently that is the issue most prominent.
It also suggests why the feminist movement, a movement with significantly more power than the Lesbian and Gay movements, also have had their dissent regarding transgender ideology squashed.
Kaneko in his paper points out how marriage is part of the larger neoliberal project in the advocacy of the neoliberal agenda in which marriage solves social problems rather than government welfare. Also, how neoliberal politics regarding marriage are to make some issues of poverty a matter of personal failure and not that of the neoliberal economy with its rising inequality and decreasing government support for the victims of that inequality.
In his conclusion, Kaneko states:
Mainstream same-sex marriage advocates have been complicit in this blaming-the-victim dynamics of the neoliberal marriage project. But it is not fair to call gay and lesbian proponents of same-sex marriage the leading victimizers, for they two have been victims of the heterosexist society. Same-sex marriage may be one of the few realistic ways for gays and lesbians to improve their conditions and hedge their risks in neoliberal, post-industrial America. Still, we have to pay attention to and critically inquire into the mechanism encouraging minority groups to conform to the very system that marginalizes them.
As I said in the beginning of the essay, same-sex marriage may serve a useful or strategic purpose for Gay couples, but also, as Kaneko says it asks them to “conform to the very system that marginalizes them.” Neoliberal assimilation for Gays is also a repression of Gays to conform to a certain respectability lifestyle and not find alternative ways of existing.
It also drives the Alphabet Soup politics of flattening community identities and atomizing those same communities to prepare, digest, them for assimilation.
It is interesting how much of Queer studies doesn’t recognize the neoliberal context within their topics exist or how they might be advancing a neoliberal agenda.
Suppressing Sexual Liberation.
Another aspect of a neoliberal politics of assimilation in which the normative Gay is to be the Gay couple, with children, living lives very similar to straight couples, is that some of the aspects of sexual liberation which used to be core values of the Gay movement are now embarrassing and subject to suppression.
Given the urgency of encouraging safe sex in the Gay community it is criminal that in 2013 the organizers of the Houston ‘Pride” parade banned the distribution of condoms.
https://rewirenewsgroup.com/article/2013/06/28/how-houstons-pride-parade-almost-became-condom-free/
As pointed out in Rewire and by others the banning of the distribution of condoms was to make what the Houston Pride organizers that was more “family friendly” and “marriage minded.”
Another group that embarrasses the Alphabet Soup and is a risk to Alphabet Soup respectability and hence the project of Alphabet Soup assimilation are leather groups. Hence, the Alphabet Soup has sought to ban them.
In 2014 the Oakland ‘Pride” banned leather groups. How much ‘Pride” leather individuals felt when they were banned is not known. Inclusion for the Alphabet Soup establishment is very much dependent on the neoliberal agenda.
Pansexual Vaush in 2021 denounced participation of “Kink” in ‘Pride’ parades which got a lot of backlash.
https://www.dailydot.com/irl/kink-at-pride-vaush/
Here we have a person outside the Lesbian and Gay community which must constitute at least 80% of the participation in a ‘Pride’ parade if not 95%, dictate to the Lesbian and Gay community what their ‘Pride’ parade should be. This aggression is enabled by Alphabet Soup concepts of “queer” which defines him as a member of a community such that he can dictate to Lesbians and Gays what they can or cannot do.
It isn’t only some transgender which are upset with drag queens. Since the beginning of the modern Lesbian and Gay liberation movement there has been Lesbians and Gays embarrassed by drag queens. What better way to repress them than to utilize some complaints by some transgender activists? Though with RuPaul going mainstream in America, respectability politics isn’t so concerned anymore.
Finally, though Gays as a whole consume pornography and often have it incorporated into sexual activities either by themselves or with others, and Gay liberation was a movement of sexual liberation, the Alphabet Soup establishment is not involved with pushing back against repressive measures against it. Respectability politics would prohibit defending pornography. The Human Rights Campaign, a group whose name itself is closeted, one of the assimilationist middle class respectability Alphabet Soup groups, doesn’t have any position on pornography at its website.
The Alphabet Soup concept of grouping of sexual minorities, the concept of “queer,” are concepts in service of the neoliberal establishment and are concepts that work contrary to the interests of many if not all the groups lumped together in the Alphabet Soup.
For so-called social justice warriors or persons who think they are radical or left or liberal need to re-examine if some of their advocacy is not so cutting edge, is not so “woke,” or radical, but actually service in support of the neoliberal establishment and suppressive of a true radical agenda. They might examine if they are not supporters of narratives that are a part of American exceptionalism.
It is hilarious that the radical Gay movement gets alarmed by a corporate float in a ‘Pride’ parade, but otherwise are fully harnessed and pulling for the neoliberal agenda without any awareness that they are so used.
Essay 3:
ESSAY SERIES: Links to all the essays in the series at the following page.
Some of my substack postings are very specific or response to some developments in the news or some special issue. However, there is a series of essays I am doing which are building up a coherent Gay Centric thinking to respond to the Alphabet Soup ideology. In my postings on Substack I am going to refer to this list so a person can read the whole series of the essays.
TOPICS
NEWS
For all the Internet Gay Partisan Sites and IDs.
Other locations on the web:
As a strategy to avoid being repressed by being banned I have set up other places on the Internet. I strongly recommend joining the groups and following me on Twitter so that if Substack shuts me down we don’t lose touch. I was getting a following on Medium and they just shut me down with some vague statement.