The Controversy Surrounding Fighting for Gay Marriage Rights

I enjoyed reading these articles because the three presented the benefits and pitfalls of obtaining marriage rights for gay and lesbian individuals and I felt that I was able to learn about both sides of the debate.

The Same Sex Marriage FAQs sheet and the Soldier in a Long White Dress chapter explain the honor, safety, and protection associated with the right to marry, which could be bestowed upon gay and lesbian individuals. In Soldier in a Long White Dress, Andrea Vaccaro writes that “a marriage certificate costs only twenty-eight dollars, yet it provides 1,138 federal benefits and responsibilities” (Trigg ed., 2010, p. 30). She advocates for taking advantage of the possibilities for equality by engaging in activism and leadership, fighting for the rights deserved by all partners who wish to marry. Vaccaro was involved in her high schools Gay Straight Alliance, interned at a nonprofit working toward marriage rights for gay and lesbian individuals, became co-president of her college’s Bisexual, Gay, and Lesbian Alliance as a first-year student, organized campus-wide events, interned at GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) in NYC, and formed a satellite group for Marriage Equality USA in New Jersey (p. 32-35). These roles and commitments allowed Vaccaro to display her passion for striving for the acceptance of LGBTQ individuals in marriage and in life more generally.

Certain advantages currently possessed by heterosexual married couples such as the ability to visit spouse in the hospital, receive spouse’s Social Security benefits, inherit property/estate without paying taxes, inherit retirement savings, utilize unpaid worker leave time to care for an ill spouse, petition for the immigration of a same-sex partner from another country, live together in a nursing home, pay lower tax rates, and receive pension benefits, should be rights of all citizens in partnerships and therefore should be conferred to individuals in gay and lesbian partnerships as well (Same Sex Marriage FAQs). Civil unions are not good enough because they are not recognized by other states or the federal government and do not receive federal protections under the law. This sheet focused on the rights that gay and lesbian individuals would receive if they were permitted to participate in the institution of marriage.

Vaccaro refers to individuals like Ettelbrick as those “who feel the fight for same-sex marriage is too heteronormative for our community” (Trigg ed. p. 31). Paula Ettelbrick takes a radical stance and argues that focusing on rights alone obtained through marriage is an incomplete view. She begins by presenting the premise that everyone wants to be accepted and how marriage as an institution could bring gay and lesbian individuals from the “outside” to the “inside.” However, that should not be the goal. Gay and lesbian individuals should celebrate the uniqueness of their partnerships without succumbing to patriarchal institutions which Ettelbrick argues “constrain us, make us more invisible, [and] force our assimilation into the mainstream” (Ettelbrick, 1989, p. 306). She cautions against elevating the status of some individuals who are married over the relationships of those who are not (whether they are not permitted to marry or choose not to). Rights and justice would create an accepting society, where differences in identity would be valued as differences and would not be expected to conform to the sameness advocated for in most social institutions like marriage.