Queer Tensions: The Cultural Politics of Belonging and Exclusion in Same Gender Marriage Debates (original) (raw)
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Introduction - Queer Theory After "Marriage Equality"
"South Atlantic Quarterly" Volume 115, Issue 2. pp.400-404, 2016
Same-sex marriage rights have now been won in twenty-one countries, parts of Mexico, and in the autonomous territory of Greenland, all since first being granted in the Netherlands in 2001.1 In many places, support for “marriage equality”—as it has become known in the United States—has grown across both the political spectrum and demographic groups. Throughout this period, however, numerous queer theorists have stressed the dangers and difficulties entailed in these struggles for recognition, rights, and citizenship. Intimacies and relationships that neither desire nor lend themselves to inscription within the institution of marriage can become obscured, binarized notions of gender identity are reproduced, and an institution looks set to be rescued after decades of feminist critique. Indeed, calls for marriage equality have often been posited as a quintessential form of “homonormativity”: depoliticized, assimilationist, and potentially effecting new forms of exclusion marked by both race and class. Alternative, “queerer,” struggles are frequently invoked along with a lamentation of the lack of attention, practical commitment, and affective investment they receive...
Feminist Critique of Same Sex Marriage
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