Complicating Conformity
Keywords:
Same-sex marriage LGBTQ+ rights Lambda Legal Assimilation Social justiceAbstract
In the fall of 1989, the queer community became embroiled in a fierce debate over whether to press for marriage rights. Two attorneys from Lambda Legal, a leading gay and lesbian rights organization, set out the competing considerations in the pages of Out/Look, a community magazine. Tom Stoddard, the then-executive director, argued that the movement should prioritize marriage rights because that strategy provided the surest path to equality. Paula Ettelbrick, Lambda's Legal Director, disagreed. She conceded that marriage provided “the ultimate form of acceptance” and “an insider status of the most powerful kind.” That fact, however, was the problem. Gays and lesbians, she argued, should not be focused on assimilating to the mainstream, but rather should pursue justice for those who were different.
References
1
Chauncey, George, Why Marriage? The History Shaping Today's Debate Over Gay Equality (New York: Basic Books, 2004), 97–98Google Scholar.
2
“Gay Marriage: A Must or a Bust?” Out/Look, Fall 1989, 8–17.
3
Thomas B. Stoddard, “Why Gay People Should Seek the Right to Marry,” Out/Look, Fall 1989, at 12.
4
Paula Ettelbrick, “Since When Is Marriage a Path to Liberation?” Out/Look, Fall 1989, at 9.
5
Ibid., at 14.
6
Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015).
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Lvovsky uses “queer” to refer to individuals who engaged in nonnormative sex practices. This essay does the same. Ibid., 23.
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Ibid., 25, 40.
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Ibid., 36–41.
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Ibid., 41.
13
Ibid., 41–52.
14
Ibid., 149.
15
Ibid.
16
Ibid., 57–59.
17
Ibid., 57.
18
Ibid., 220.
19
David K. Johnson, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).
20
Estelle B. Freedman, “Uncontrolled Desires: The Response to the Sexual Psychopath, 1920–1960,” Journal of American History 74 (1987): 103.
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Lvovsky, Vice Patrol, 221.
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Ibid., 225.
23
Ibid., 234.
24
Ibid.
25
Ibid., 230.
26
Ibid.
27
Ibid., 236.
28
Ibid.
29
John D'Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940–1970, 2d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 138–80.
30
Lvovsky, Vice Patrol 237.
31
Ibid., 56–57.
32
Ibid., 232.
33
Marie-Amélie George, “The Custody Crucible: The Development of Scientific Authority About Gay and Lesbian Parents,” Law and History Review 34 (2016): 488.
34
Ibid., 503
35
Nancy Faber, “Lesbians Madeleine Isaacson and Sandy Shuster Find ‘Marriage’ Happy but Hardly Untroubled,” People, July 9, 1979, 53–55.
36
Chauncey, Why Marriage? 102–4; and Edward Alwood, Straight News: Gays, Lesbians, and the News Media (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), ch. 11.
37
Marie-Amélie George, “Bureaucratic Agency: Administering the Transformation of LGBT Rights,” Yale Law & Policy Review 36 (2017): 132.
38
Ibid., 124.
39
Robert O. Self, All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy Since the 1960s (New York: Hill and Wang, 2012), 395.
40
Ibid., 110–12, 328; and Lefkovitz, Alison, Strange Bedfellows: Marriage in the Age of Women's Liberation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), 2–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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George, Marie-Amélie, “Framing Trans Rights,” Northwestern Law Review 114 (2019): 555–632Google Scholar; Franke, Katherine M., “The Domesticated Liberty of Lawrence v. Texas,” Columbia Law Review 104 (2004): 2688–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Warner, Michael, The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life (New York: Free Press, 1999), 96–98Google Scholar.
