DOMA – Feminism and Religion

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: THE TWO AND THE ONE: CAN WE EMBRACE AND CELEBRATE SINGLENESS AS MUCH AS MARRIAGE?

This was originally posted on 7/22/13

Like many other readers of this blog, I have followed the progress of the Prop 8 and DOMA cases to the Supreme Court and waited with bated breath during the month of June to see how the cases would be decided.

On June 26^th I rejoiced in decisions that brought the United States several steps closer to affirming the full equality of all human beings. I am happy that lesbian and gay couples can now get married in California, the state of my birth, the state where I still vote. As one commentator remarked, “This story has a happy ending—it leads to marriage.” I am also pleased that lesbian and gay couples will not be excluded from “marriage benefits” offered to heterosexual couples, simply on the basis of their sexual preference.

Still, the gay marriage victories raise other questions. Much of the rhetoric surrounding the push for marriage equality assumed that “marriage” is or should be “the norm” for all people. Those arguing for the right of gay people to marry often seemed to be saying: “We are just like everyone else.”

THE TWO AND THE ONE: CAN WE EMBRACE AND CELEBRATE SINGLENESS AS MUCH AS MARRIAGE? by Carol P. Christ

This assumption leaves out a whole lot of people—among them large numbers of single women. Continue reading “THE TWO AND THE ONE: CAN WE EMBRACE AND CELEBRATE SINGLENESS AS MUCH AS MARRIAGE? by Carol P. Christ”

To Have and to Hold: Gay Marriage and the Religion Question

If a conservative religious traditions can’t give their mothers or sisters full equality, how can we expect them to give a GLBT individual the time of day?

Outrage. Anger. Fear. Hatred. These are just a few of the words that flashed across my Twitter feed as I woke up on that fateful Wednesday, June 26 morning when the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act (or DOMA) was unconstitutional and that supporters of Proposition 8, the hotly contested voter initiative in California that banned same-sex marriage, had no standing. People were mad. However, it wasn’t just the typical kind of mad that is associated with hatred, it was a type of mad that was met with impossible anguish because what I was reading and feeling was a result of one thing: there was nothing more they could do.

What does all this mean? Questions from friends and family were filling up my inbox and although I wanted to take a moment to just hit “Reply All,” and input the words: Equality, I had to hold back and start to examine the notion that although equality may now be firmly on the proverbial table, there is still a lot of work to be done, specifically for gay marriage and those wanting to marrying inside the traditional church spaces they grew up in and not just the ones that have come out as open and affirming in recent years towards LGBT individuals. Continue reading “To Have and to Hold: Gay Marriage and the Religion Question”

“If You Allow Gay Marriage…” by John Erickson

“We need to start examining the underlying questions of counter-cultural relationships that view one man marrying many women to be hip because we begin to see that although a polygamist idea of marriage may be sexy from a popular culture standpoint, the thought of legally recognized gay marriage always then gets likened to bestiality.”

… you have to allow polygamy, bestiality, and everything else!” The title for my post this week is a quote from an individual I used to associate with. This individual, haling from a conservative evangelical background, tried to explain to several others and myself the reasons why gay marriage would eventually lead to the repeal of anti-polygamy and bestiality laws across the United States.

The problems that I have with this particular argument are conflating gay marriage with religious freedom. Activists and scholars can draw comparisons to anti-polygamy cases such as the 1878 U.S. Supreme Court case Reynolds v United States and the 1882 Edmunds Act and 1887 Edmunds-Tucker Act that disfranchised and led to the imprisonment of Mormon polygamists. But in the end, gay marriage is not about religious freedom but rather human rights.

I often feel that there is this need both within and outside religious communities to promulgate the idea that LGBTQ individuals want to get married within the sanctified walls of “the church” just as much as heterosexual couples do. Although I do not want to disqualify those who desire to see LGBTQ equality within their faith based communities, buying into a heternormative ideal of what traditional marriage should look like needs to result in LGBTQ individuals asking why marriage should be performed in sacred spaces in the first place The normative traditions that have often defined marriage have also served as shackles keeping LGBTQ couples in the mindset that to achieve fully marriage equality with their heterosexual counterparts is to fully immerse themselves within the same traditions and practices. Continue reading ““If You Allow Gay Marriage…” by John Erickson”