文档介绍：1
Queer Families
In December 2005, an appeals court in New York State ruled “that the state
constitution does not require New York to treat gay couples the same as heterosexual
couples in marriage licensing”(Keen 11). The ongoing gay marriage debate has set the
stage for many lesbians, gays, and queers to ask what marriage equality really means for
the gay movement. According to Michael Warner in the book The Trouble With Normal,
the institution of marriage by nature privileges those who are married over those who are
not married. Additionally, it forces lesbians and gays to conform to a heterosexual
lifestyle. Warner explains the difference between straight culture and gay culture when
he says:
Marriage marks that line. It is not the way many queers live. If there is such a
thing as a gay way of life, it consists in these relations, a welter of intimacies
outside the framework of professions and institutions and ordinary social
obligations…Instead, the marriage issue, as currently framed, seems to be a way
of denying recognition to these relations…(116)
In my paper, I explore the issue of gay marriage through the related concept of the family
and how that notion is interpreted in queer culture. Because of the recent buzz
surrounding gay marriage, it is important to understand the ways anize and
how anization can and cannot be viewed in heterosexual terms. Once we
understand what family means in a queer interpretation, then we can go back and ask
Warner’s question “Is marriage a step in the right direction?”(Warner 126).
2
What Is a Family?
Not the Traditional Definition
Before I introduce my research and findings, I must define how the term family
will be used in this paper. When the New York State Court ruled against gay marriage,
Justice Milton Williams wrote for the majority opinion that state marriage law
“systematically regulates heterosexual behavior, brings order to the resulting proc