Ranting and Raving

Lately, especially since the Massachussetts ruling on gay marriage, there has been much talk of "Judicial Tyranny" from the neo-cons. Based upon contexts I have come up with the following definition.

Judicial Tyranny: Any attempt by the courts to uphold the constitution and protect personal liberties that run counter to the slimly held popular opinion du jour.

I originally posted this in rain_luong's journal, but since it's my clearest articulation of these ideas to date, I thought I'd place it here as well. It should be noted also that "Family Values" is a particular paradigm for family organization that falls somewhere between slavery and feudalism, as I argue below.

"Heterosexual privilege" is largely defined as the rights conferred upon married people. The assumptions behind it are paternalistic in nature; built on the assumption that a woman requires a man's care, and that a man obtains power to care through his relationship with a corporation. From Ozzie and Harriet to Malcolm in the Middle this paradigm has been submitted as the American Dream.

The problem is that this paradigm never completely described reality and does so now less than it ever has before. And thus "wives" have become "partners," not just because of the existence of same-sex couples but because of the variability of which partner may have a relationship with a corporation.

In short, the reality of dual career couples has deconstructed the rationale for heterosexual privilege; yet the institution remains, along with the false nostalgia for the family-as-portrayed-in-sappy-sitcoms. In short, conservatives want to get back to the day when a corporation owned a man who owned a woman, and any revision of marriage undermines that agenda.

So, when you speak of "heterosexual privilege," what is in fact being spoken of is the privileging of a specific type of heterosexual relationship that receives state blessing. If the goal is that "everyone should have the same rights, because hey, we're all people," we need to stop privileging this particular class of relationship. In order to see the types of heterosexual relationships that are not privileged, one need only listen to congressional prattle about "unwed mothers" and "single parents."

One of the reasons that Canada can grant gays the right to marry more easily than America is that in Canada domestic partnership is defined in terms of things like shared household expenses, a joint mortgage, a joint account. These are the proofs required to demonstrate a relationship for the purposes of immigration; the state shows no interest in whether the people involved are married or not, nor in their genders. Of course, in Canada one does not need to be owned by a corporation in order to obtain health-care either.

Until we deconstruct the notion of marriage as a means of expression for patriarchal power, it will be a challenge for same sex couples to obtain it. And until we deconstruct marriage as a means by which rights that ought to be inalienable are conferred we will not see everyone receiving the same rights.

For this reason, while I back same-sex marriage on the principle that the opposition to it stems from hate, I do so with reservation, on the principle that marriage should confer no privileges in the eyes of the state.