Notes on Same-Sex Marriage

Abstract

Using a critical feminist and social work lens, this article argues that the mainstream gay rights movement and its singular focus on marriage has consistently neglected the most marginal among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities and has instead focused on advancing the interests of elite and advantaged lesbian and gay people. We link professional obligations and values outlined in the National Association of Social Workers Code of Ethics to feminist and queer (both activist and scholarly) critiques of the gay marriage movement in three main ways. First, we explore the priorities of LGBT communities and draw on data that suggest there are more pressing needs than marriage equality for LGBT communities of color, who are poor, transgender, hold precarious citizenship, or are without citizenship. We then trouble that issue of marriage being upheld as the LGBT priority, as this diverts resources from these more pressing needs. Second, we look at marriage in Capitalist America and how marriage is used as a form of privatization and a tool of neoliberalism. Finally, we discuss the diversity of queer families and how they really live, while highlighting that the marriage movement stigmatizes and dismantles protections for nonhegemonic family structures. In moving forward, we argue that social workers must engage more critically with the many intersectional issues related to the gay marriage movement than it has in the past and employ feminist social work values and principles when working with LGBT communities.

Introduction

For the last two decades, the mainstream gay rights movement—spearheaded and represented by entities including the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), Gay and Lesbian Alliance against Defamation, and statewide equality organizations—has advanced a social and political agenda geared toward increased access to social institutions for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. From inclusion in the military to, perhaps most notably, access to the institution of marriage, this movement has developed an advocacy agenda that has been accepted by many in the United States as representing the interests of LGBT people.

In recent years, some feminist activists and scholars have argued that same-sex marriage is a “feminist” issue. This position can be found in academic literature (Harding, 2007) and in professional, nonacademic literature (Ms. Foundation for Women, 2013), and in popular media (Davies, 2014). It has also been framed as an issue that social workers must support (Fasbinder, Monson, Montero, Sanders, & Williams, 2013; Woodford, Luke, Grogan-Kaylor, Fredriksen-Goldsen, & Gutierrez, 2012). Recently, Affilia published an article making the case for why feminist social workers must fight for the rights of same-sex couples to marry (Pelts, 2014).

However, we—like many other critical feminist and queer scholars and activists—argue that the mainstream gay rights movement, and particularly its singular focus on marriage as the social justice issue facing LGBT people, has consistently neglected the interests of the most marginal among our queer communities, focusing instead on advancing the interests of elite and advantaged lesbian and gay people (Cohen, 1999; Hutchinson, 2000; Vaid, 2012). Drawing on our professional obligations and values, we argue that social workers must engage more critically with the marriage movement (often erroneously cited as “marriage equality”) than the profession previously has. Indeed, we suggest that supporting the existing gay marriage movement actually directly contrasts with social work (specifically feminist social work) values and principles.

Drawing from the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Code of Ethics (2008) and existing social work scholarship, this article offers a critique of the mainstream gay rights movement’s central focus on gay marriage as the signature issue facing LGBT communities from the perspective of social work cardinal values and ethical principles. Nested within that critique, we argue that much more pressing needs face most LGBT people. We raise concerns related to the function of marriage in contemporary neoliberal economies, and the potential of gay marriage, in particular, to enforce assimilationist and exclusionary family values that undermine other family structures. We argue that the code of ethics obligates social workers to take a critical and nuanced approach to the gay marriage movement and its implications for LGBT communities due to our ethical commitments to cultural competence and social diversity, self-determination, social justice, competence, the integrity of our profession, and social workers’ responsibilities to the broader society (NASW, 2008).

In congruence with social work values, this analysis is also guided by some of the central principles of critical feminisms. These include intersectionality (Collins, 2000; Crenshaw, 1995; Mehrotra, 2010), attention to power and privilege (Gringeri, Wahab, & Anderson-Nathe, 2010), disrupting the gender binary (Nagoshi & Brzuzy, 2010), and challenging systems that perpetuate inequity and oppression (Mohanty, 2002).

Priorities

For over two decades, the national gay rights organizations and statewide equality groups have occupied a largely self-proclaimed position as the representative voice of LGBT communities and arbiter of community interests and needs (D’Emilio, 2000; Gamson, 2000; Vaid, 2012). However, a robust body of literature has long argued that this movement actually fails to address the abundant diversity of LGBT communities across the United States. Its leadership consists almost exclusively of white, middle class, and educated gay men and lesbians (Carter, 1999; Cohen, 1999; Vaid, 2012). Low-income queer people, queer people of color and immigrants, bisexuals and transgender people, and young queer people are largely absent from the leadership of these organizations. Perhaps as a result, the movement itself has advanced an agenda aligned more with the interests of the elite among LGBT people than with the most marginalized of our communities (Bailey, Kandaswamy, & Richardson, 2004; Cohen, 1999; DasGupta, 2012; Farrow, 2012; Hutchinson, 1999; Kandaswamy, 2008; Richardson, 1999; Rosenblum, 1994; Seidman, 1993). This limited agenda (primarily focused on four issues, namely, antidiscrimination laws, hate crime legislation, access to the military, and, most recently, marriage equality) has resulted in rapid progress for a select few. In the process, the primary interests of concern to communities of color, low-income people, transgender people, and other subpopulations of the LGBT community, precisely the most vulnerable among an already marginalized population have been largely ignored.

A rich body of literature exists that debunks the notion of a monolithic, wealthy, young, and largely white LGBT community. This same literature documents economic hardship, disproportionate poverty rates, and multiple social service needs among LGBT communities (Albelda, Badgett, Schneebaum, & Gates, 2009; Badgett, Durso, & Schneebaum, 2013; Battle, Cohen, Warren, Gergerson, & Audam, 2002; Grant, Mottet, & Tanis, 2011). Specifically, LGBT people of color, poor LGBT people, elders, and others in the community articulate a wide range of concerns that are simply ignored by the mainstream gay rights movement in its pursuit of marriage.

Various studies have examined the concerns and priorities of LGBT people of color, demonstrating the mismatch between their interests and those of the mainstream marriage agenda. These studies highlight that black LGBT people, for instance, prioritize issues such as jobs and financial security, health care access, and education over civil rights issues like marriage and partner protection (Battle et al., 2002; Ramsey, Hill, & Kellam, 2010; Vaid, 2012). In some cases, these findings come directly from studies commissioned or conducted by the mainstream gay rights organizations themselves. One such study found that the top two issues prioritized as most urgent by LGBT people of color were affordable health care and jobs/the economy (HRC, 2009). HRC reported the most pressing interests among LGBT people of color as follows: affordable health care (89%), jobs and the economy (84%), equality for people of all races and ethnicities (83%), prevention and treatment of HIV (80%), and equality for LGBT people (79%). In a similar vein, a study by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (Dang & Hu, 2004) highlighted that LGBT Asian Pacific Americans named immigration, hate violence/harassment, and media representation as the three most important issues to their community.

Yet, in spite of having directly asked communities of color what they want from the movement, the national LGBT organizations have different priorities and have forced further to the margins concentrated attention on the needs of queer people who are low-income, precariously employed, or have uncertain or vulnerable immigration status. These needs are nevertheless significant and pressing, particularly for the community’s most vulnerable. In one study (Billies, Johnson, Murungi, & Pugh, 2009), low-income LGBT people identified housing, homelessness, violence, and discrimination as being of great importance but never identified gay marriage as a concern to them. Similarly, when asked about their most pressing concerns, transgender people have prioritized job discrimination, job training, legal services, housing, welfare benefits, HIV/AIDS, hate violence, and barriers to health care access (Battle et al., 2002; Grant et al., 2011; Kenagy, 2005; Kenagy & Hsieh, 2005) over the priorities of the mainstream gay marriage movement.

As the Baby Boomers approach retirement, concerns facing elders across our communities must be addressed in our political movements, as well. Nevertheless, the gay marriage movement is silent on the needs of LGBT elders, addressing the needs of seniors most commonly in the context only of those few token gay or lesbian couples who have been together for 30 years and just finally want to get married. In fact, studies have found that LGBT elders have identified economic insecurity, the cost of medical care, social interactions, and accessible housing as their major concerns (Beauchamp, Skinner, & Wiggins, 2003; Smith, McCaslin, Chang, Martinez, & McGrew, 2010).

In 2007, 50 organizations came together to outline the needs and political priorities of LGBT immigrants (DasGupta, 2012). The needs and issues about which these 50 organizations expressed concern were varied but included the policing of the border, the HIV ban, the process of applying for asylum, the guest worker program, the provisions for harboring, an end of immigrant detentions, eliminating the high income requirements for immigrant sponsors, an end to the 1-year deadline for asylum application, broader definitions of family (beyond marriage) and kinship patterns for sponsorship. The issue of binational couples (the sole immigration focus of the national gay rights organizations) was included but was not one of the higher priorities. Most of these organizations were small, local entities; the national LGBT organizations refused to sign onto their final vision statement or address these issues in their work (DasGupta, 2012).

Despite these facts, little work is being done by mainstream LGBT organizations on racial and economic justice issues. In 2010, the Movement Advancement Project (MAP) surveyed 16 LBGT organizations across the country and found that although several groups named “Issues Affecting People of Color” as part of their program priorities, the actual content of these efforts only involved “outreach” to include or diversify the membership of the organizations themselves. These national groups reported little substantive or programmatic work on racial or economic justice issues (LGBT MAP, 2010).

It is clear that the mainstream gay rights movement, positioning marriage as the most pressing issue facing LGBT communities, has missed the mark in terms of either representing the entire community or focusing attention on the needs and interests of the most vulnerable queer people. On its own, this should raise concerns for social workers committed to social justice particularly in light of the NASW principle that “social workers’ social change efforts are focused primarily on issues of poverty, unemployment, discrimination, and other forms of social injustice” (NASW, 2008). Understanding that the marriage movement has pulled tremendous resources away from the concerns of marginalized queer people onto a cause of interest largely to the elite among LGBT people, social workers have an ethical obligation to approach the resource allocation of marriage movement with some scrutiny.

A recent nationally representative survey of 1,197 LGBT adults found that a significant minority—39%—believes that gay marriage efforts have drawn too much attention away from other issues (Pew Research Center, 2013). Indeed, it is impossible to dispute that resources have been shifted away from other issues toward marriage equality efforts (Conrad, 2009; Funders for LGBTQ Issues, 2012). From 1970 to 2010, philanthropic organizations gave US$72.5 million in grants specifically funding “marriage equality” work—more than that spent on HIV/AIDS, education/safe schools, or labor/employment issues (Funders for LGBTQ Issues, 2012). Because of the 2013 Supreme Court decision, groups are gearing up for further battles about this issue on the state level. National LGBT organizations have already mapped out plans to raise and spend millions on the gay marriage issue between now and the end of 2016 (Eilperin, 2013).

The largest LGBT advocacy organizations in the United States have spent the majority of their labor and finances on this limited set of legislative goals because they claim that these are the issues that most LGBT people care about. Groups like the HRC, Lambda Legal, and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force justify their efforts by citing research that finds that LGBT people rank marriage rights and these other single-issue goals as their greatest concern (Cahill & Kim-Butler, 2006; Egan & Sherrill, 2005). Yet, these surveys have been conducted at events that are not representative of the community as a whole, such as gay pride parades, which are regularly criticized as being corporate, heavily policed, and assimilationist, thus disproportionately attracting white and middle-class gays and lesbians (Caterine, 2014; Long, 2014; Talley, 2014).

As a result of this mismatch between the gay rights agenda and the stated needs of marginalized LGBT communities, queer and feminist activists of color have for two decades increased their demands for an intersectional analysis and multi-issue organizing that incorporates issues of race, class, economics, gender, and sexual orientation (Cohen, 1999; Duggan, 2003; Hutchinson, 1999; Richardson, 1999; Vaid, 2012).

Similarly, social workers committed to social justice must also pay attention to the needs of the most marginalized among queer people. Indeed, this context begs social workers to consider the NASW Code of Ethics’ (2008) articulation of our ethical responsibilities to clients. According to the Code, under Standards 1.01 Commitment to Clients and 1.02 Self-Determination, “social workers’ primary responsibility is to promote the well-being of clients” while they “respect and promote the right of clients to self-determination and assist clients in their efforts to identify and clarify their goals” (NASW, 2008). Supporting a movement oriented so clearly toward the interests of the few to the exclusion of the many constitutes a profound failure to promote the well-being of the most marginalized LGBT people. Advocating on behalf of the interests of the most privileged of LGBT people does not consider the impact of intersectionality nor does it work against or challenge systematic and institutional power. Endorsing a movement in which the elite has silenced or ignored the interests of the vulnerable, for the sake of meeting their own limited interests, social workers fail to promote well-being and further restrict the self-determination of those individuals most in need of support in pursuing their goals.

Further, Standard 1.05 Cultural Competence and Social Diversity obligates social workers to possess a “knowledge base of their clients’ cultures” and “obtain education about and seek to understand the nature of social diversity and oppression” regarding multiple features of identity, including race, gender identity and expression, age, sexual orientation, and presumably, socioeconomic class (NASW, 2008). Accepting the narrow interests of the “marriage equality” movement and interpreting these to be representative of the needs facing LGBT communities broadly, social workers fail to live up to this ethical standard. Indeed, the Code of Ethics holds social workers to an expectation of intersectional analyses (Mehrotra, 2010), in which they are bound to educate themselves about the multiple and interlocking dimensions of oppression within, not just between, marginalized communities.

Taking up such an intersectional and multidimensional critique, we draw on Hutchinson (2000) to link critical social work and feminist arguments related to the marriage movement’s myopic focus on the interests of the elite among LGBT communities. Hutchinson has argued that the national gay rights organizations deliberately ignore critiques by feminists (who argue that marriage is a patriarchal institution), racial justice scholars (who argue that the marriage movement stigmatizes nonnuclear families), and sociologists (who argue that marriage supplies very little, if any, economic benefits to extremely poor individuals). Making marriage equality the primary goal for LGBT politics requires the “dismissal of lesbian-feminist and racial critiques of same-sex marriage, (and) produces an analysis grounded upon the experiences of white and upper-class gays and lesbians” (Hutchinson, 2000, p. 296). This critical feminist critique resonates with social work values, calling social workers to challenge issues of power, and privilege evident in the marriage movement.

Marriage in Capitalist America

Any meaningful examination of the gay marriage movement in the context of feminist and social work values must also investigate the role of marriage as a contemporary institution. Always in flux, the institution of marriage has undergone sweeping transformations in the United States over the past two centuries (and even more dramatically since the 1950s); it is critical that the institution itself not be exempt from examination or critique before it is upheld as the gold standard of relationships and the marker of LGBT equality.

Activists have questioned whether, in a contemporary postwelfare reform, neoliberal context, marriage actually provides the benefits gay activists seek (Bailey et al., 2004; Farrow, 2005; Kandaswamy, 2008; Queers for Economic Justice, 2006). These critics have argued that marriage allows greater access to certain important institutions (e.g., custody, health insurance, and immigration) but also documented how racial inequities are structurally embedded in those institutions. They maintain that the specific benefits sought by the marriage movement are privileges of a racially stratified welfare state. Consequently, while gay marriage may be helpful to white middle-class gays and lesbians, it does not address the needs of other LGBT people, for whom these institutions do not offer much.

In addition, the social safety net has been slashed by 30 years of neoliberal politics. Government funding of many family programs, including health care, child care, reproductive services, nutrition, and welfare have been cut, and the right continues to try to dismantle Social Security. Resources must be allocated to fighting to strengthen those programs, rather than merely focusing exclusively on access to marriage. There is little point in winning marriage equality as a means for LGBT people to access their partners’ benefits if those benefits are being shredded.

Some have claimed that same-sex marriage is a first step toward making marriage a more flexible institution. In response, other activists and scholars have argued that gay marriage is actually a conservative step in the wrong direction—one that fits into a long history of using marriage to undermine a sense of collective responsibility. Nopper (2012) explains that when slavery ended, African Americans were aggressively pushed to marry and register their marriages with the state, and the government prosecuted blacks who married and failed to register. These registration laws allowed the government to use marriage to fiscally and culturally control newly freed blacks, to force them to provide for each other, and to guarantee that the white public had nominal responsibility for the economic security of former slaves (Nopper, 2012). Lisa Duggan (2004, 2012) has argued that contemporary marriage represents a form of privatizing caregiving, relieving the government of its responsibility to provide for its citizens. Responsibility for child care, eldercare, and even medical care (recovery and convalescence after surgery) rests with the private family system, signaled by a married unit assumed to be economically self-sufficient. These examples illustrate Duggan’s claim that the government provides incentives (1,000+ marital rights and benefits) for people to get married, so they will do the work of providing care and relieve the state of these obligations. “Marriage thus becomes a privatization scheme: Individual married-couple-led households ‘privately’ provide many services once offered through social welfare agencies. More specifically, the unpaid labor of married women fills the gap created by government service cuts” (Duggan, 2004, p. 14).

Farrow (2011) and Nair (2013) made the argument that gay marriage is actually a conservative issue. They argue that Republicans have begun to support the cause because they understand, better than do liberals, the ways in which it serves an individualist and privatized agenda. This raises questions about the problems with “equality” goals. For example, Duggan (2003) argued that by framing the work around equality, the movement has lost its explicit progressive values and agenda, and allowed conservatives and libertarians access to the movement to advocate for their versions of equality. The equality framework supports a neoliberal system that is fundamentally opposed to the redistributive and progressive values of earlier incarnations of the movement.

Critical feminist social workers are uniquely poised to challenge these neoliberal trends toward privatization of the family. Drawing on theoretical tools like intersectionality, attention to power and privilege, reflexivity, and disrupting the gender binary, critical feminisms (and feminist social work analyses) offers a critique to the problem of marriage in capitalist America as a neoliberal tool that delegitimizes queer families and increases state regulation over minoritized communities. It recognizes that marriage does not work to mitigate the interlocking forms of oppression that marginalized queer people experience (rather, it enhances them) and depends on a hegemonic neoliberal construction of what defines a family. From this perspective, feminist social workers may call attention to how people who are low-income, women, queer, trans and gender nonconforming, people of color, disabled, without citizenship, or with precarious citizenship are disproportionately impacted when marriage is used as a tool of neoliberalism.

One of the more striking implications of the gay marriage movement is how the movement has reinforced marriage as the vehicle to confer legal protections and benefits. Far from dismantling or even critiquing this form of state regulation through sanctioned relationships, the marriage movement instead reinforces the notion that in order to access legal benefits, one must be married (in fact, the whole argument about marriage discrimination hinges on this point). Missing from the larger argument, however, is the question of whether assigning benefits on the basis of marital status is appropriate and ethical in the first place (for people of all genders and orientations).

Marriage activists claim that marriage is a choice that should be available to all gay and lesbian couples, even if some choose not to marry. However, those who do not get married are denied the legal protections and benefits that come with marriage. Conrad (2014, p. 109) sharply critiques this “choice” argument, suggesting that choosing not to get married brings with it the risk of “poverty, illness, premature death due to lack of access to adequate care, imprisonment, indefinite detention, and deportation.” How much choice is there, really, when people have to choose marriage if they want health care or want to avoid deportation? “While the movement for marriage equality has insisted it is fighting for same-sex couples to have the choice to marry, marriage is not a choice if it is the only way to achieve economic well-being and peace of mind” (N. D. Polikoff, 2008, p. 133). When marriage activists suggest that everyone has a choice about marriage, they deny the reality of this constrained choice and create a false sense of autonomy (Conrad, 2014; Cott, 2000).

From a social work perspective, this constrained choice speaks directly to the value of affirming and promoting self-determination. If social workers are obligated to assist clients in their efforts to identify and pursue their own goals, then it is worrisome to fall in line behind a movement that so clearly restricts choice and mandates a single pathway to secure legal benefits and protections. Employing a critical feminist perspective broadens this critique, recognizing that dwindling government-based programs (including reproductive health care, health care, child care, welfare, and nutrition) results in the brunt of these cuts being felt by poor people, people of color, trans people, and people without citizenship. These communities already experience stigma when they access these resources, face systemic oppression navigating these systems, and are monitored more closely through these systems. Far from supporting marriage access as simply a matter of individual choice or social recognition, critical feminist social work values necessitate a more nuanced and comprehensive critique of these claims and call social workers to respond directly to the constrained choice and fundamental lack of access experienced by the most vulnerable of LGBT communities.

Family Diversity

Marriage has never been the gold standard of relationships for queer communities; LGBT people have developed a wide array of creative and adaptive structures for relationships and families, partly out of necessity and partly out of the freedom that comes from being outside the parameters of that which is “normal.” Even among heterosexual families, only one fifth of U.S. households are now comprised of mother, father, and their biological children under the age of 18. Between 1970 and 2012, the share of nuclear households halved, from 40% to 20% (U.S. Census Bureau, 2013). The majority of American households are formed differently. They consist of single people, cohabitating couples with or without children, single parent households, grandparents or other kin raising kids, queer parents, friends, multiple generation households, extended families, and blended families (with children living between the homes of their divorced parents and being raised alongside their half-siblings and stepsiblings). For LGBT communities, families share the above-mentioned dynamics and structures and are complicated in additional ways. Queer histories present a rich tapestry of relational and family forms, which have existed outside and often alongside the institution of marriage.

LGBT communities have for decades embraced numerous varied and complicated family forms created both inside and outside of existing legal frameworks—many of which are not centered on romantic or conjugal relationships. Gay men partner with lesbians (single or partnered) to conceive and raise children together with multiple parents (Boggis, 2012). Lesbian couples use known sperm donors or inseminating with sperm donated by a friend or family member (who sometimes remain actively involved in the lives of the children). The past 30 years have seen the creation of ongoing, long-term caregiving relationships that provide support to those living with extended illness such as HIV/AIDS. Ballroom, ball culture, and house communities—close-knit groups of affective (though nonlegal) kin often organized around drag culture and commonly constructed by communities of color—have existed for a century, providing social, economic, housing, and other supports for queer people marginalized by sexism, racism, HIV, and homophobia (Arnold & Bailey, 2009; Garber, 1989). Some LGBT adults create long-term, committed polyamorous relationships (Bettinger, 2005). LGBT people are also more likely than their heterosexual siblings to be responsible for taking in an aging parent to care for them (Hu, 2005). Ex-partners, children of former partners, and even ex-partners of ex-partners regularly sit around LGBT family tables (Boggis, 2012). Increasingly, LGBT senior citizens create “Golden Girls” arrangements, living together and/or making legal contracts to care for each other (Boggis, 2012; Queers for Economic Justice, 2006).

Nevertheless, the gay marriage movement is not concerned with affirming these or other family forms so evident in queer history and contemporary life. In contrast, the movement endorses a view that same-sex relationships warrant social recognition because and insofar as they mirror heterosexual relationships in the context of marriage, and even then, only as much as a mainstream “straight” society is willing to tolerate (Walters, 2014). The movement espouses conference of benefits and legal protections in the context of those LGBT people who choose two-person, conjugal relationships. Other relational forms are excluded—in rhetoric and practice—from the movement’s advocacy. Duggan (2004) and Kandaswamy (2008) critiqued some gay marriage groups for using conservative rhetoric that claims children need their parents to be married and demeans unmarried people “while promoting marriage in much the same terms as the welfare reformers use to stigmatize single-parent households, divorce and ‘out of wedlock’ births” (Duggan, 2004, p. 6). These arguments frequently contribute to the pathologizing of black families who frequently build families outside of the nuclear family structure (Farrow, 2005; Hutchinson, 2000).

Many have argued (e.g., Ambrogi, 2013; Gaia, 2011) that queer people who do not comply with dominant notions of normality (e.g., those who do not live just like heterosexual couples) are excluded from gay marriage victories. Kaufman and Miles (2009) have argued that access for same-sex couples into an unfair system does nothing to change the essential unfairness of the situation. Instead of framing the issue in terms of the right to form a family and share household resources inside and outside marriage, marriage equality activists chose to focus exclusively on the right of gay and lesbian couples to marry. In doing so, many have argued that we will end up with a two-tiered system of social acceptance, that is, the “good gays” who get married and the “bad gays” whose relationships are considered illegitimate or deviant (Clark-Flory, 2011; Essig, 2000).

Many activists have noted the numerous family formations that remain unprotected by a successful marriage equality strategy, privileging as it does only those LGBT relationships that adhere to a two-person closed-commitment model (Audre Lorde Project, 2000; Boggis, 2012; Kaufman & Miles, 2009; Queers for Economic Justice, 2006). In order to support these various family formations, many have argued that marriage should not be the means through which benefits and rights are disbursed. N. D. Polikoff (2008) has argued that the gay rights movement is solving the right problem with the wrong solution; all families and households need the rights and benefits that are currently extended only to married couples. Numerous queer and feminist voices have called for decentering and deinstitutionalizing marriage and seeking to create multiple options of legal protections for multiple family structures, instead of proposing the couple form as a one-size-fits-all solution (D’Emilio, 2006; Duggan, 2012; N. D. Polikoff, 2008; Queers for Economic Justice, 2006).

Not only does the gay marriage movement fail to create multiple options of legal recognitions for families, it actually has reduced the number of existing options. John D’Emilio (2006) argued that the struggle to achieve gay marriage rights has failed in many states and as a result actually resulted in the loss of other preexisting family protections. Even when gay marriage has won, many LGBT people still lose. D’Emilio (2006) and N. Polikoff (2013) have demonstrated how the expansion of marriage equality in some states has led to the elimination of domestic partnership options, consequently limiting options for families, rather than expanding them. Municipalities in Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington State, among others have eliminated domestic partnerships when gay marriage was made legal there (D’Emilio, 2006; N. Polikoff, 2013; Turnbull, 2014). Large companies, with thousands of employees, such as Corning, IBM, and Raytheon have made similar decisions (Bernard, 2011). In fact, in almost every jurisdiction where same-sex marriage has passed, civil unions and domestic partnerships have been subsequently nullified or reduced. Marriage has become the only legitimate means of legal recognition.

The marriage movement has, by and large, accepted marriage as the “gold standard” of relationships, arguing that LGBT people experience discrimination by being denied access to this institution and explicitly naming other relational forms (e.g., domestic partnerships and civil unions), “less-than” or second-class arrangements. In doing so, the movement has aligned itself with a strikingly conservative position in which marriage—as a tool of neoliberalism—assumes a sacred status and other relationships further diminish in legitimacy. Further, by eliminating domestic partnerships and civil unions in those jurisdictions where gay marriage has become legal, the movement underscores marriage as the only social institution through which benefits are conferred and through which caregiving is privatized.

In light of this, social workers and queer and feminist scholars must exercise caution in embracing a movement whose success further marginalizes, rather than affirms, this diversity of expression. Indeed, the NASW Code of Ethics Standard 1.05 (Cultural Competence and Social Diversity) instructs social workers to develop a base of understanding for their clients’ cultures, ostensibly including history and within-group diversity. Social work’s value of the dignity and worth of the person also bears noting here. Given that social workers “promote clients’ socially responsible self-determination … [and] seek to resolve conflicts between clients’ interests and the broader society’s interests in a socially responsible manner” (NASW, 2008), supporting a movement whose success codifies a single relational form as appropriate and worthy of social recognition constitutes a failure to resolve conflicts between the clients’ interests and the broader social trends or interests. Social workers would do better in terms of meeting this professional expectation by advocating for legitimacy of all family forms than by promoting the hegemony of a single relational structure.

Moving Forward

We agree with those activists and scholars who have argued that marriage should be solely a personal commitment that couples celebrate with their families, communities, and/or religious institutions and separated from government benefits altogether. However, as long as the marriage equality movement continues to progress, social workers must engage with it, and we believe this must be done in more complicated ways than it has been thus far. Largely due to its framing of marriage as the singular issue of concern for LGBT people in the United States, the marriage equality movement has achieved extraordinary success in recent years. With the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act and lower courts finding in favor of same-sex marriage across the nation, the aims of the movement are, for all intents and purposes, a fait accompli. For many LGBT people, as Scot Nakagawa (2013) has argued, access to the institution of marriage is a significant civil rights issue—one many doubted they would see in their lifetimes—even if it is not an indicator of social justice. As critical feminist social workers, we must prioritize the issues facing the most marginalized, rather than the most privileged, of the LGBT community and not allow the achievement of the mainstream’s goals to overshadow the urgent needs of the most marginal. We must also continue to interrogate the way that marriage serves a neoliberal agenda of privatized caregiving.

Michael Reisch (2013) has critiqued the influence of neoliberalism on social work and pushed social workers to consider how working toward systemic change has taken a backseat to individualized practice. This results in social workers less critically engaging with intersectional issues of oppression and considering social justice merely with a unidimensional lens. It is only with such a limited lens that prioritizing the fight for marriage equality can be considered social justice.

Moving forward in dual contexts of the constraints of neoliberalism and the unprecedented social perception of marriage as the signature issue facing LGBT people, social workers must develop a more nuanced understanding of same-sex marriage. We must contextualize it within broader marriage politics and understand its relationship to neoliberal policies and goals, to recognize it as a largely white, liberal initiative, and to actively resist the dismantling of government programs in favor of privatized caregiving through increasingly narrow “legitimate” family forms.

In accordance with Standard 6.04, social workers “act to prevent and eliminate domination of, exploitation of, and discrimination against any person, group, or class” (NASW, 2008). Because of how queer people construct their families, making marriage the vehicle through which rights and benefits are dispersed perpetuates rather than resolves discrimination against most LGBT people. A marriage mandate will only further marginalize those queer people who form families outside of the hegemonic family formation of two adults in a conjugal relationship. Making marriage mandatory in order for a family to be recognized and protected as “legitimate,” and eliminating other forms of family recognition, actually limits, rather than expands, the legal options for LGBT people, especially those who build their families around nonromantic relationships. Terry Boggis writes “I would like to see federal legislation that is designed to deliver benefits and rights based on my personhood rather than on whether or not I have been a winner in the dating game” (2012, p. 12). In the wake of recent marriage “victories” (and with the promise of more to come), we must now shift our focus to preserving (or reinstating) other forms of family recognition, such as domestic partnerships, civil unions, and reciprocal beneficiaries. Critical feminist social workers have an obligation to fight for more options, not build up marriage as the only option.

Consequently, we call upon social workers committed to social justice to resist the temptation to simplify the concerns of LGBT people to those represented by the marriage movement. Social work must begin to incorporate the impact of poverty, racism, ageism, immigration status, criminalization, and other issues into its micro-level work with LGBT adults and their families. For example, social workers must be trained about the impact of poverty on their LGBT clients, not merely focused on those clients’ experiences of injustice due to exclusion from marriage. Poverty rates are disproportionately higher for LGBT people than for the general population (Badgett et al., 2013). Poor LGBT people access need-based public benefits (food stamps, public assistance, and housing assistance) and health-related public benefits (Medicaid, Social Security Disability, and HIV/AIDS Service Administration benefits), but face numerous obstacles doing so, including consistent discrimination from welfare case managers (Billies et al., 2009; The Welfare Warriors Research Collaborative, 2010). Focusing on marriage as the marker of LGBT equality fails to address these practical considerations facing LGBT people in their day-to-day interactions with social workers.

Similarly, macro-level practitioners must address structural issues (capitalism, institutional racism, immigration policies, the criminal justice system, etc.) as they simultaneously pursue their existing civil rights agenda. Social workers must exercise caution in advocating on behalf of same-sex marriage legislation, seeking to ensure that any such legislation constitutes an expansion of benefits and options for LGBT people and their families, not a narrowing of them.

Scholars and social work faculty can integrate intersectional analyses into their scholarship and teaching, as well, resisting the temptation to see same-sex marriage victories as indicative of equality among LGBT people. Faculty can select texts in social work curricula that emphasize the complexity and intersectionality of LGBT identities rather than reducing the community’s interests to those stated by white, middle-class activists.

Although they lack the formal and widespread social recognition of the larger gay rights organizations, queer organizations do exist across the country that embrace such an intersectional lens. Organizations like The Audre Lorde Project in New York, Esperanza Peace and Justice Center in Texas, Southerners on New Ground in Atlanta, and others provide models for social work organizations and individual social workers seeking to embrace intersectional work with LGBT people that move beyond the single-issue focus of the marriage movement. Additionally, while their reliance on mainstream lesbian and gay donors often requires deference to a political agenda dominated by marriage equality, many LGBT community centers also often provide an array services that extends to the most vulnerable among LGBT people (Surfus, 2013). Individual social workers working in and with LGBT communities would do well to take note of these organizations and their multi-issue focus, in order to position themselves more directly in alignment with the social justice obligation of the profession.

By membership in our profession, social workers also obligate themselves to “act[ing] to expand choice and opportunity for all people, with special regard for vulnerable, disadvantaged, oppressed, and exploited people and groups” (NASW, 2008). LGBT people with multiple subordinated identities (such as LGBT people of color, senior citizens, or immigrants) are among the most vulnerable and disadvantaged people in our society. Their needs are far greater than marriage equality and prioritizing marriage over other issues does not serve their needs.