It is always striking when conservatives and progressives agree. On Fox News earlier this year, psychiatrist and Fox news contributor Keith Ablow weighed in on whether the government should get out of the marriage business. In response to the Supreme Court cases considering the constitutionality of California’s ban on gay marriage and challenging the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)—the federal law that makes it possible for the government not to recognize same-sex marriages in those states where they’re legal, Ablow states, “I don’t think states nor the federal government should be involved in marriage at all.” He argues that it should not be the government’s concern to decide whether two people of the same gender marry.

This privatization argument mirrors one made back in 1997 by libertarian David Boaz in his Slate article titled “Privatize Marriage: A Simple Solution to the Gay-Marriage Debate.”  The article points out that privatizing marriage will “put gay relationships on the same footing as straight ones, without implying official government sanction. No one’s private life would have official government sanction–which is how it should be.”

The conservative-libertarian perspective is not too dissimilar from the progressive stance taken by a particular group of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) and allied activists, scholars, and community organizers. In their 2006 statement Beyond Same-Sex Marriage, the signatories contend that all families will benefit from “separating basic forms of legal and economic recognition from the requirement of marital and conjugal relationship.” In other words, the government’s job is not to define marriage or what counts as “legitimate” family but to support the diverse forms of family life that allow its citizens to provide care for one another. The statement makes explicit that marriage is not the only worthy form of family or relationship but should be available to those who find it the most meaningful. Society needs to establish ways to recognize kinship relationship, households, and families other than conjugal partners.

While these two positions exhibit surface agreement, there is a deeper philosophical difference in the reasons why conservatives and progressives promote the idea that government should stay out of the marriage business. The conservative-libertarian view prefers to keep the government out of the “caring” business altogether, tending to support the idea that health and caring issues relating to the poor, disabled, children, and elderly should be to left to the private realm of non-profits, charities, and families. Government welfare programs, according to this philosophy, just get in the way of providing effective care to the poor and needy.

Further, according to this argument, state-assisted child-care and parenting planning amount only to government interference in private lives. Because conservatives want to cut taxes, especially for the wealthy, they never opt to expand government support for the needy or to offer universal benefits, measures that would ultimately increase taxes. Emblematizing the conservative approach to care is George W. Bush’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Built on the philosophy of regulating caring to the private realm, its promise was to invigorate civil society by encouraging churches and charities to be “little armies of compassion.” In this market fundamentalist approach, a caring society places the onus on the poor to help themselves (or to find someone to help them) since they are, according to this rhetoric, to blame for their poverty.

In contrast, progressive arguments want to see an expansion of government involvement in a caring society. This perspective views the privileging of marriage—whether for heterosexuals or non-heterosexuals—as problematic because it discriminates against those who do not fit the two adults plus children model. Authors of the Beyond Same-Sex Marriage statement argue that legalizing same-sex marriage to end discrimination against lesbians and gay men does not go far enough to solve structural social inequalities. It is a travesty that lesbians and gay men are unable to receive the many benefits that are connected to marriage—including health insurance, Social Security survivor benefits, and favorable tax treatment. But the focus on legalizing same-sex marriage furthers the privatization of care work, and will likely continue to marginalize those who do not have the resources to provide and/or receive care.

After the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act became law in 1996, federal and state marriage promotion policies became part of our social fabric, seeking to promote heterosexual marriage as a solution to social problems such as single motherhood and poor childhood outcomes for children in low-income families. In my book One Marriage Under God, I uncover the social consequences of marriage promotion policies on the ground as these programs spend welfare dollars to offer free marriage workshops to predominantly middle-class, white couples. These policies demonstrate again the problematic ways that the government is involved in the marriage business. In this case, marriage promotion programs fail to address the structural and economic foundations of poverty that are barriers to marriage, and most programs do not target low-income individuals who are less likely to marry.

The debate over what role the government should play in the marriage business is crucial to undertake at this stage in history. Americans need to think carefully about how marriage creates a privileged status for some while leaving numerous others (queer or not) without equivalent social support.

Melanie Heath is the author of One Marriage Under God: The Campaign to Promote Marriage in America (NYU Press, 2012). She is associate professor of Sociology at McMaster University in Ontario.

»»  Happy Pride from NYU Press! Save 25% on a selection of our new and classic LGBT Studies titles, when you order via our website. Sale ends on July 1, 2013.

Today’s fathers are more involved than ever. According to the Pew Research Center, fathers spend over 10 hours more per week doing housework and child care than they did in 1965. Yet their paid work hours have only decreased by 5 hours per week. It may be no surprise then that fathers are now experiencing a good deal of work-family conflict. In honor of Father’s Day, I have a few suggestions for helping out all those dads who want to be more involved with their kids:

1. Paid paternity leave.  The United States is the only industrialized country without paid parental leave. I vote for the Icelandic model. Currently they offer 9 months of paid leave, with 3 months reserved for mothers, 3 months reserved for fathers, and the rest shared. Just in December, their Parliament approved an extension of leave to 12 months, with 5 months for each parent and 2 months shared (this will go into effect in 2016).

2. Shorter work hours.  The United States is the only industrialized country without a maximum work week. The European Union has a working time directive that limits all work, including overtime, to 48 hours per week. Many countries set this lower. Belgium has a legal working week of 38 hours. The actual average working time in the European Union is 37.5 hours per week.

3. Paid vacation.  The United States is the only industrialized country that does not require paid annual leave. The European Union insists on a minimum of 20 days. The French get 30 days. If we count paid holidays, the difference is even greater. Austrians get 22 vacation days and 13 holidays!

4. Daddy Day.  Why save it for once a year, when dads could have a day to spend with children every week? In the Netherlands, one-third of men work either reduced hours (i.e., part-time) or full-time over four days, leaving an extra day which has become known as the “papa dag.”

We want dads to be more involved. Let’s try to help them out.

Gayle Kaufman is Professor of Sociology at Davidson College, a 2012-13 Fulbright Scholar, and the author of Superdads: How Fathers Balance Work and Family in the 21st Century (NYU Press, June 2013).

Broadly speaking, my book Beyond the Nation: Diasporic Filipino Literature and Queer Reading provides a history of Filipino literature in the United States from the onset of U.S. colonialism in the Philippines at the end of the nineteenth century through the contemporary moment. Framing the literature in a transnational context shaped by U.S. (neo)colonialism and migration, it focuses in particular on the ways that gender and sexuality are integral to Filipino racializations, social formations, and state and cultural nationalisms as well as to manifestations of U.S. empire and terms of assimilation at specific historical junctures.

Although I discuss the work of several writers who self-identify as gay or queer and consider the depictions of queer characters in various literary texts, the book as a whole doesn’t seek to document a history of non-normative Filipino sexualities or desires in literature. Rather, it attempts to theorize and enact a queer reading practice that attends to the constitutive articulations of gender, sexuality, and eroticism to race, nation, and diaspora. As such, it would seem to bear a tangential relation, at best, to Gay Pride.

Indeed, insofar as the book seeks to contribute to the growing, diverse bodies of scholarship associated with queer of color and queer diasporic critique, it is less concerned with the development and consolidation of sexual identities than with the gendering and sexualization of race (Filipinos/as as savage, effeminate, hypersexual, hyperfeminine) and with the freighted political meanings that gender and sexuality assume when placed in comparative international contexts (liberation vs. repression, modern equality vs. patriarchal hierarchy). Both of these historically shifting but persistent conditions—the production of racial difference in part through gender and sexual deviance from white colonial norms, the production of U.S. exceptionalist discourses in part through (illusory) ideals of gender equality and sexual freedom—place diasporic Filipino writers in vexed positions. Namely, they must contend simultaneously with imperialist denigrations of colonial bodies and aptitudes as well as with nationalist recuperations of normative bodies and aspirations.

However distant they may seem, these ideas come to mind when I think of Gay Pride. While I imagine that for many LGBTQ folks the revelries represent a unique time of the year when all manner of things queer are welcomed, encouraged, and (dare I say it) rendered normal, I tend to see and experience the event as a discomfiting moment when the racialization of non-normative sexualities comes to the surface. Or put conversely, it is when every Pride participants’ sexuality is up for grabs and the default straightness of everyday life is suspended that racial differences and the ambiguous, deviant sexualities they signify become all the more apparent.

Moreover, the specific circumstances that enabled the emergence of Gay Pride in the first place and that we’re supposedly (supposed to be?) commemorating—Stonewall, the Village, New York, the Sixties, and so on—leave me wondering if these particularities are being strategically forgotten or rewritten by the Gay Prides taking place throughout the country and around the world. To avoid further entrenching the association of “modern” gayness with white U.S. sexceptionalism, metronormativity, and capitalist entertainment spectacles, I can only hope that this annual event is being remade dozens of times over, cross-cutting global gay and lesbian imaginaries and practices with local histories and politics, demographics and desires, fabulosities and festivities.

Martin Joseph Ponce is Associate Professor of English at The Ohio State University.

»»  Happy Pride from NYU Press! Save 25% on a selection of our new and classic LGBT Studies titles, when you order via our website. Sale ends on July 1, 2013.

A little over a week ago, the folks at NYU Press approached me about writing something for their blog, From the Square: something that addressed the “continuation of [my] work’s themes, or an op-ed piece related to LGBT issues” for June, aka National Pride Month. Because I’ve had a great working relationship with the press as an author and as a book series editor, I agreed to write a brief “thought piece” about a song I’d recently heard on the radio. About my visceral response to hearing its message, what it sounded like, and how it addressed—or failed to address—a queer pop politics resonant with my own point of view.

I wrote the piece with a very specific audience in mind: queer studies scholars, and folks who happened to have read my book, Relocations: Queer Suburban Imaginaries. You know, the typical readers of an academic press blog, which in my mind tapped out at a couple of hundred self-selecting folks, max. I wrote the piece with an eye (and ear) towards subtlety and nuance, as many academics—specifically literary and gender studies scholars like me—are wont to do.

I wrote about how Macklemore’s Billboard Hot 100 hit (which never broke the Top-40), “Same Love,” struck the wrong chord with me, because it opened with someone speaking from a gay/questioning perspective, before immediately discarding the possibility of a gay/questioning rapper by reinforcing the narrator’s heterosexuality and love of girls.

Regardless of how odious I found “Same Love,” and as much as Macklemore and Ryan Lewis aren’t pop stars who appeal to my personal tastes, my own, very short blog piece ended on an emotionally sincere and positive note. I described how Mary Lambert—the queer female artist who sings the vocal hook—moved me to tears with her voice and some, if not all, of the lyrics she sang. The takeaway (for those who didn’t read to the end, or had trouble parsing through my obtuse academic language inappropriate for a venue like an academic press blog) is that we find emotion, affiliation, and resonance in the strangest of sources, even when we are otherwise not inclined to do so. I liked Lambert’s hook and what she stood for as much as I chafed at Macklemore’s and Lewis’ message and performance.

And yet many readers fixated on the things I said with sarcasm and humor about Macklemore, Lewis and the privileged position from which they speak as white, heterosexual (as the song emphatically reminds us) men. Other readers considered me ungrateful, regressive and damaging to the cause for not embracing a positive song written on “my behalf,” and for “my benefit” as a queer person, at the same time they insisted the song wasn’t written for me: instead, they insisted, it was intended for potentially homophobic straight men who would actually listen to a “guy’s guy” and change their minds about how “evil,” bad and disgusting homosexuals are.

Straight allies were offended that I wasn’t on the bandwagon, simply because someone straight made an effort to NOT hate me and what I stand for. Gay people were worried that I would alienate potential allies, because rocking the boat or expressing a dissenting opinion about a “positive” representation would mean we were ungrateful. We wouldn’t want that because we need straight people to approve of us to get laws passed, and no one will ever stand up for us again if we demand more. All of them neglected the fact that we’ve bravely, repeatedly stood up for ourselves throughout the course of human history: that for the most part WE had to be the change we wanted to see, and sometimes that change required a disagreement or a full-blown fight instead of an apology.

On the one hand, the responses that ensued—the hate, contempt, sexism and homophobia spewed at me for critiquing “Same Love” for its half-baked notion of equality—took me by surprise. Who knew Macklemore had so many fans?!? On the other, the sexism, violence and homophobia from straight and gay folks alike—mostly men—were sadly predictable. Some of the more violent ad-hominem comments I refer to in this piece have since been moderated out of the blog’s thread, not at my request, but because the editors felt these comments crossed a certain line with homophobic and hints of sexually violent content.

It seems that in whatever context, the fact that I am a “Gender Studies Professor” offends nearly everyone, because I might actually force people to think about their sexism and misogyny—gay men and women included. Dick jokes and crude speculations about my hatred of penises abounded on Facebook from gay and straight men alike, irrespective of the fact that as a big old dyke, I don’t exactly have “peen” on the brain 24/7, nor do I use it as my measuring stick (so to speak).

I was accused of not accounting for Macklemore’s intentions or his “intended audience,” when readers obviously hadn’t bothered to take into account mine, or even to read all the way to the end of my piece. I listened to the damn song in its entirety a gazillion times before I disagreed with its premise and decided it wasn’t my cup of tea. Anyway, using the logic of intentions is deeply flawed. But saying something “academic” of this nature is sure to solicit more vitriol, so I should move on.

I was confronted multiple times over with the notion that I, as a queer person, should be grateful for any scrap of approval tossed my way by straight people because they have the power, and they have access to the “mainstream.” Self-identified “straight but not narrow” sensitive dudes were the most freaked out about what I had to say, and I can’t imagine they’re just huge Macklemore fans, despite what a good jam “Thrift Shop” is. If you’re really not so narrow, why do you have to go through the trouble of telling us you’re straight first? Are you genuinely disturbed that you aren’t reaping praise simply for being sensitive and empathetic? Is the bar for being a “good guy” set that low?

It’s telling that nearly all of my detractors rushed to Macklemore’s defense and no one even bothered to mention Mary Lambert, or her centrality to what I wrote about the song’s resonance with me as a queer woman. Both gay and straight people suggested I was suffering from internalized homophobia, and accused me of being an “unhappy,” “bitter,” “man-hating” “grumpy cat” (which I hadn’t realized was an insult).  Touched as I am by the trolls’ concern for my happiness, since when did political dissatisfaction and a difference of opinion mean we lacked joy, love, friendship and a sense of humor?

If expressing my discontent with how I’m spoken for by a straight white rapper is internally homophobic, then so be it. I have no shame in being a homosexual who demands more from her allies than empty lip service in a song that is actually kind of dumb (except for the vocal hook). I’m not saying people shouldn’t listen to it or like it. If they want to play it at their weddings, gay or straight, more power to them. I’m just saying I want more, better, smarter. If that ain’t gay pride, I don’t know what is.

This is not to say that the only feedback I’ve received has been negative. In fact, I actually appreciated and learned from some of the numerous exchanges I’ve had in response to this piece on Facebook (dick slinging misogyny aside), and I’ve happily dialogued with anyone who was willing to address me sincerely and directly from beyond the shield of internet anonymity, regardless of whether or not they agreed with me. I’ve taken this time to write a follow-up for this blog in an effort to collate my responses to some of those conversations with genuinely engaged interlocutors.

I’d like to close with a happier tale of one particular exchange I had on Facebook with Christina Torres, one of my former undergraduates at USC, who now works for Teach for America. She considers herself an ally to queer causes, and she asked me point blank: if Macklemore’s route isn’t the way to go, then what is? “How can we better educate allies (including myself) on how to be good allies (or is that even important)?”

I told her I could go on at length about the many ways one might ally with LGBTQI politics and people without pulling a Macklemore, but the simplest answer I could share in the truncated format of a Facebook wall comment was that allies should go the extra step and radically CHANGE HETEROSEXUALITY; dare to imagine beyond a certain kind of normativity, and challenge the power that adheres to these very categories. Why do we continue to rely on the idea that “sharing privilege” will make things better? Why not make things better by undoing privilege; by abdicating the power that inheres in classed, racialized, gendered, sexualized categories? Radically reconceptualizing what is “normal” gives us plenty to do before writing songs about being gay but not really; about liking gays, while asserting staunchly that one has been all about the girls since ‘pre-K.” Everyone seems happy with the fact that Macklemore’s song provided a “start,” despite the fact that these battles have already “started” over and over again. Sometimes a start ISN’T enough, and any ally worth their salt should realize that for us to demand more from them is not ingratitude or a sign of self-hatred, but a glimmer of that hard-won thing we call “pride.”

Karen Tongson is Associate Professor of English and Gender Studies at University of Southern California. She is co-editor for NYU Press’s Postmillennial Pop series and is also co-editor-in-chief of The Journal of Popular Music Studies.

A few weeks ago, the man who washed my hair in a beauty parlor—he was perhaps 30—nonchalantly referred to the person he shares a home with as his “husband.”  That term, along with “wife” and “fiance” are rolling off the tongues of more and more people I encounter, suggesting that “girlfriend,” “boyfriend,” and “partner” or “lover,” may soon be quaint reminders of an age before gays and lesbians could marry.

For most of us the urge to be married is not about changing the world, but about gaining access to the same rights, privileges, and social affirmation that coupled, middle class people enjoy in this country. Because of the centrality of marriage in our culture—as a route to gaining decent health care, inheritance rights, and community membership—I can’t begrudge anyone for wanting that.

Even in relatively liberal parts of the country, such as the suburban New Jersey town where I lived for many years, we’re still marginalized.

When our son was in middle school, he was asked to fill out forms that asked him for his mother’s name, his father’s name, and their respective telephone numbers. Lewis brought that form home, and placed Nancy’s name in the space for “mother,” and where it asked for information about “father,” he crossed out the word “father” and wrote in “mother” with my name next to it.

Lesbian mothers across the nation similarly report that when they’re out in public their children are frequently queried: “Who’s your daddy?”

Today, top-rated television shows feature gay (and to a lesser extent, lesbian characters), and many of the culture war battles I describe in my book Shameless have subsided—for the moment. But we’re not yet intelligible according to the codes of the culture.

When heteronormativity rules, queer intimacies are often read through a heterosexual lens, transforming sexual and affectional ties into biological ones, effacing the nature of gay and lesbian relationships. This is particularly troublesome for children of same-sex couples, along with non-biological parents, because it de-legitimates the bond that produced the child—and delegitimates the child, too.

No wonder marriage is so attractive to many queer people today. It would accord many of us instant recognition, belonging and ease, furthering what some have described as the “normalization” of homosexuality.

Yet I can’t help but think about those who are left out of the wedding party: single people, people whose material circumstances prevent them from marrying, and couples who choose, for any number of reasons, not to do so. That’s why, for my own part, I’ll continue to the use “girlfriend” or “partner” to describe my significant other, blurring the distinction between those who marry, and those who do not.

Arlene Stein is a professor of sociology at Rutgers University and the author of Shameless: Sexual Dissidence in American Culture (NYU Press, 2006). You can follow Arlene Stein on Twitter @SteinArlene. She blogs at https://steinarlene.wordpress.com.

In my first book, Relocations: Queer Suburban Imaginaries, I write extensively about driving around in cars listening to music; about commutes for pleasure in the Southern California landscape with the power to transmogrify nostalgic and wholesome American Graffiti-style cruising, into the kind of cruising Al Pacino polices and dabbles in (undercover, of course) in the 1980 thriller of the same name.

We cruise along; our drives down Southern California’s palm-lined, pot-holed thoroughfares are scored by songs of adventure, longing and regret. This is the only way I really listen to new music these days. Sometimes I sing along. At other times I surrender to the candied ambience of pop, becoming happily attenuated to its comforting predictability. But something happened recently that nearly jostled me out of the cushy bucket seats in the lesbionic/So Cal sorority girl Jeep I inherited from my mom. In what was surely part of the media ramp-up to June, aka “national pride month”—isn’t there something deeply sinister about that phrase?—I heard this on the radio:

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

It felt like a slap in the face.

As one who belongs to a generation of queers with a special ear for Cole Porter’s clever innuendo—queers accustomed to projecting our homo desires into popular love songs, and reading ourselves into the narratives of amorous legitimacy—the bald earnestness of  “Same Love,” a “conscious” rap about rejecting gay stereotypes in support of same-sex marriage, felt vulgar. More crass than Katy Perry’s made-up confession that she kissed a girl and liked it. (At least there’s some fantasy swirling around in that formulation). Meanwhile, the carefully calibrated “politicized” verses of “Same Love” by Seattle-based white rapper, Macklemore and his creative class posterboy producer, Ryan Lewis, (featuring vocalist, Mary Lambert), felt lacking in any genuine allegiance with queers.

In the opening verse, as soon as the scenario is established in which the narrator, “Ben” questions his sexuality as a child through a tantalizingly Sedgwickian identification with his uncle, the mother corrects his misidentification and reminds young Ben that “you’ve loved girls since before pre-K.”

Macklemore (foreground) and Ryan Lewis (background) performing “Same Love” on The Colbert Report, May 1, 2013.

In fact, Ben’s gay (mis)identification is constructed as the source of his own preconceived notions—his stereotypical views—about what constitutes gayness: an aptitude for art (“‘cause I could draw”), a genetic predisposition (“my uncle was”), and a precocious anality (“I kept my room straight”). Just as his mama corrects him and draws attention to the stereotypes animating the proclivities that might lead him astray to being gay, he is corralled back to fulfill his destiny of becoming a straight-but-not-narrow male ally for people like his gay uncle who are targets of the religious right’s scrutiny and hypocrisy. (Read the lyrics in their entirety here.)

“Same Love” was produced in 2012, during the campaign for Washington Referendum 74, which would legalize gay marriage in the state. By all accounts, the song was written with a sense of local duty, as part of the effort to push Referendum 74 through. Furthermore, Macklemore wanted to respond forcefully to homophobia in hip-hop, perhaps even bolstered by events like Frank Ocean’s more ambiguous “coming out.” Though I don’t question the earnestness of Macklemore’s and Lewis’ intentions to help out queers like you, me, Frank Ocean, and Macklemore’s uncle, the rhetoric of “sameness” and the white male hetero privilege that affords such statements of equivalency feel totally patronizing.

“Same Love” is aptly titled, and unwittingly plays upon the classical tropes of homosexual narcissism, while also trotting out the newer rhetoric of equivalency, brandished visually during the HRC’s most recent campaign in which red equal (=) signs were posted on Facebook with rash enthusiasm. A graduate student in American Studies and Ethnicity at USC, Emily Raymundo, wrote a smart and rousing screed about that particular phenomenon, so I won’t go on at length about why this mass display of hetero-allegiance with the HRC totally pissed me off. Suffice it to say this: nice as these gestures are intended to be, why does it take a thousand straight people on Facebook switching their profile pictures to legitimize a broader conversation about LGBTQIA issues? Maybe we don’t want to be “liked” by you on social media or in meatspace.

Why does it take a white dude who phobically disavows his own fleeting homosexual identification as just another instance of “buying into stereotypes” to make the case for gay marriage, and gay biologism on pop radio on our behalf? Maybe the music on the radio already feels queer to us, has already been made queer by us.

Why did so many pop critics, mostly male (because most of them are), jizz all over “Same Love,” including it in their year-end top-10 lists, and praising it for its depth and profundity?

“Same Love” by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis (featuring Mary Lambert) is the poppy end of hip-hop. It may well be the most profound ditty either genre has ever produced.”^[1] As a pop specimen, the song is nowhere near that awesome or deep. The rap feels labored, and the instrumental backing track sounds like the piano riff in “Seasons of Love” from Rent mated with the anemic, pseudo-blues chords from John Mayer’s “Waiting for the World to Change.”

Aesthetic quality aside, all of what I’ve said thus far is pretty obvious. The fish was in the barrel so I pointed and shot. And I don’t even have time to get into the video and its homonationalist—nay, let’s just call it nationalist—depiction of the “life cycle” from birth, to love, to homeownership, to marriage, to death, intercut with Civil Rights-era documentary footage for emphasis. It’s so neoliberal, using that word would be redundant. So what’s the point of writing about “Same Love” during “pride month” for a special series of posts about LGBTQIA issues, if we already know this object is bad and its producers are, despite—or because of—their sensitive guy intentions, kinda douchey seeming? (See this video in support of my last claim.)

Because I heard it again on the car stereo later that same night.

Because I fortuitously managed to miss all the authoritative and conscious rap verses about choice, birth, religion and marriage to tune in just in time to hear Mary Lambert’s vocal hook ushering us out of “Same Love.” I heard a velvety lady voice that would be at home reinterpreting the deep catalogues of womyn’s music and lesbian balladry; a voice evocative of a postmillennial Joan Armatrading, leavened by a little Joni, a smattering of Stevie, and a healthy dollop of Sarah McLachlan.

Lambert sings the hook; Lewis claps in the background. The Colbert Report, May 1, 2013.

It felt like it existed outside of the storyline, in the way queer things have always exceeded narrative’s normativizing outcomes. She sang of her love, not of a same or equivalent love: “My love, my love, my love she keeps me warm.”

She said nothing of marriage, but sang tenderly of a warmth, a feeling—the slightest adjustment of temperature and pressure, which requires no validation from the likes of Macklemore, and no expressive DJ roof-raising in the background from Ryan Lewis.  Her voice quivered as it crescendoed its way through the final catechism, “love is patient, love is kind (not crying on Sundays…not crying on Sundays).” And on that Sunday, I cried a little in my car.

Karen Tongson is Associate Professor of English and Gender Studies at University of Southern California. She is co-editor for NYU Press’s Postmillennial Pop series and is also co-editor-in-chief of The Journal of Popular Music Studies.

Feminists for Choice: What inspired you to write Pray the Gay Away?
Bernadette Barton: I write about what I call the “abomination incident” in the introduction to Pray the Gay Away. A neighbor told me being gay was an abomination after I came out to him. Although this kind of testifying is relatively commonplace in the Bible Belt, I had never before encountered a stranger who felt entitled to judge me as sinful, and tell me so, based on my sexual orientation. I grew up in Massachusetts in a politically progressive family and was unaccustomed to this kind of interaction. So, even though I had lived in Kentucky for 11 years by this point, I had not experienced much homophobia. My experience as a graduate student at the University of Kentucky, surrounded largely by lesbians, led me to believe that this sort of homophobia had ended.

I was both surprised and troubled by this encounter–the abomination incident–in 2003. Shortly thereafter began the 2004 presidential election season with an anti-gay marriage amendment on the Kentucky ballot. At this point, the homophobic discourse in the public sphere amped up considerably. Marrying a same-sex partner was compared to marrying a dog, horse, child and cousin. Homosexuality was constructed as polluting and contagious. And yard sign and bumper stickers displayed people’s public attitudes about gay people, many of which were in opposition to gay rights.

It became forcefully clear to me that homophobic attitudes and actions were alive, and integral to many people’s understanding of their social worlds. Since I had found my relatively small encounters with stranger homophobia so disturbing, I began to wonder how such attitudes affected gay people who grew up in the region. I was relatively lucky not to negotiate bigoted beliefs directed against my person-ness until I was in my mid-20s. What would it be like, I imagined, to process this kind of condemnation while one’s identity was still forming? Thus, Pray the Gay Away was conceived, and I formally interviewed 59 people from the Bible Belt and have had informal conversations with over 200 others.

FC: Why did you focus on the Bible Belt area specifically?
BB: I focused on the Bible Belt because this region has a number of unique features that affect the lives of gay people. The Bible Belt is, first of all, dominated by people who either actively espouse conservative Christian attitudes about social issues, or defer to those who do. In other words, as I describe in Pray the Gay Away, the Bible Belt is a place of “compulsory Christianity” and those who are not Christian, or not a practicing Christian, or who are socially progressive Christians rarely say so, generally preferring instead to present the appearance of agreeing when they do not (an action called personalism) in order not to offend anyone.

This personalism, a façade of agreeability, is another unique feature of the Bible Belt, compared, for example, to the Northeast. Composed mostly of southern states, the Bible Belt fosters a culture of politeness and direct contradictions of statements of facts or opinions is considered rude. This means that when someone makes bigoted comments about gay people, those present are generally reluctant to challenge such statements for fear of conflict. This sequence of events then supports an overall negative impression of homosexuality, and strongly affects any gay people who might be present.

Finally, though I am originally from the Northeast, and have roots on both the east and west coasts, I have lived in Kentucky for the past 20 years though graduate school and a faculty position. Social norms about religion in the region confused me, so different were they from my own Catholic upbringing. From this seed of confusion, and distress over many homophobic public displays during election seasons (bumper stickers, political ads, and candidate debates) was born a desire to understand the lives of Bible Belt gays. I further believe that the Bible Belt is little understood by those who live in other regions of the United States, and is a place subjected to much stereotyping. I was thus interested in dispelling such myths, and giving voice to a group of people many perceive as simply victims.

[This content originally appeared on Feminists for Choice. Read the entire interview here.]

»»  Happy Pride from NYU Press! Save 25% on Pray the Gay Away (and other select LGBT Studies titles), when you order via our website. Sale ends on July 1, 2013.

With the Supreme Court considering the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, numerous reports recognizing the economic viability of the same-sex wedding industry, and the first legally recognized gay wedding being celebrated (and protested) in France, it’s no wonder issues related to same-sex marriage are experiencing a surge in media coverage.

A recent article in The Atlantic, for example, reports that with legal recognition of their unions, many contemporary same-sex couples are negotiating the traditions and terminologies associated with marriage. Like many of their opposite-sex peers, couples weigh the pros and cons of name change, consider the importance (or limitation) of language such as “husband” and “wife,” and decide what the affiliated cultural associations of marriage mean to them and their relationships.

Gays’ negotiation of tradition is not a new phenomenon. As I argue in my book As Long as We Both Shall Love: The White Wedding in Postwar America, queer couples have consciously negotiated the traditions associated with the white wedding for decades, even in the years before same-sex unions began to be recognized legally across the United States. Despite widespread views that the white wedding—with its acceptance of idealized gender roles, market prescription and participation, and religious expression—is a conservative and conformist site of American culture, many same-sex couples have used the celebration to express alternative views of life and love.

As they’ve celebrated, brides and brides, grooms and grooms have accepted, rejected, and amended established traditions, proving the wedding’s flexibility and relevance to contemporary life. At their base, same-sex weddings, especially those of the 1990s and early 2000s, challenged tradition and accepted authority by rejecting the notion that a wedding was celebrated by a man and a woman. Beyond the challenge of two men or two women standing before wedding guests, couples took a cue from their opposite-sex peers as they hand-picked elements of the celebration to fulfill individual desires for the wedding and personal visions of their relationships.

Some women challenged gendered expectations of assumed femininity by wedding in pantsuits, while others referenced the fulfillment of “childhood dreams” in their selection of long white wedding gowns. Many couples integrated witnesses’ participation into the celebration to reject what they saw as the unnecessary isolation of the couple being wed and to indicate the importance of community to their unions. Two San Francisco grooms wed in the early 1990s combined elements of Jewish liturgy with a country-western theme in a nod to both their faith and their personal aesthetic. The lack of established tradition in queer weddings meant couples felt free to create their own.

While offering opportunities for personal expression and fulfillment of individual desire, weddings have likewise served a political purpose. As The Atlantic piece suggests, the terminology of “husband” and “wife” or a shared last name communicate a vision of partnership and family with which many Americans are familiar. Such practices help to legitimate queer unions to the broader population. In a similar way, weddings provide a recognizable site where those uncertain about the nature of gay unions are presented with an image of love, commitment and dedication, all of which tend to increase the likelihood of support for marriage equality.

Queer couples’ willingness to celebrate their unions publicly and without apology has exposed the broader population—from members of the wedding industry to colleagues and students to friends and family—to the committed, loving relationships same-sex couples share. Wedding celebrations, where the language of love and commitment are so central, has weakened the resolve of those who are inclined to argue that queer unions weaken marriage as an institution. In this way, reconsiderations of tradition and meaning reach beyond the couple being wed to raise questions among and shape the views of a far larger audience.

Karen M. Dunak is Assistant Professor of History at Muskingum University in New Concord, Ohio. She is the author of As Long as We Both Shall Love: The White Wedding in Postwar America (NYU Press, August 2013).

»»  Happy Pride from NYU Press! Save 25% on a selection of our new and classic LGBT Studies titles, when you order via our website. Sale ends on July 1, 2013.

Gay Parents in Red States: Not an Oxymoron
—Abbie E. Goldberg

As a recent article in the Los Angeles Times addresses, lesbian and gay parents are often rearing children in unexpected places. Namely, according to the analysis of U.S. census data, more than one in four same-sex couples in Salt Lake City, Utah, are rearing children. Besides the Utah capital, other large urban areas where high percentages of same-sex couples are raising children include Virginia Beach, Va.; Detroit, Mich.; and Memphis, Tenn., all of which are places where more than a fifth of same-sex couples are bringing up children. Indeed, according to the article, “a striking percentage of same-sex couples are rearing children … in conservative places not known for celebrating gays and lesbians.” For example, among states, Mississippi has the highest percentage of gay and lesbian couples raising children (26 percent), according to the analysis of U.S. census data.

As the Los Angeles Times article notes, “this fact may seem at odds with perceptions that San Francisco and New York are the centers of gay and lesbian life. Pop culture depicts gays and lesbians turning to adoption, sperm banks or surrogacy to form families in decidedly liberal cities such as Los Angeles.”

So why are same-sex couples raising children in these areas, as opposed to moving to more gay-friendly and urban areas? Among the key reasons are cost of living and family ties. Indeed, as I told the Los Angeles Times, “When you ask, ‘Why are you living here?’ [lesbian and gay parents in rural areas] almost always say family. It shouldn’t really be surprising. They value family–and now they’re creating families of their own.”

Little research has focused on the experiences of lesbian and gay parents living in rural and/or conservative geographic areas. Yet it should. As I describe in my book Gay Dads: Transitions to Adoptive Fatherhood (NYU Press, 2012), lesbian and gay parents–and prospective parents–in rural and/or conservative areas of the U.S. often encounter many barriers and challenges related to their sexual orientation. In an ironic twist, many of the states with the highest percentages of same-sex couples raising children are those with the most anti-gay laws. For example, they are among those with constitutional amendments banning marriage for same-sex couples, and those that prevent same-sex partners from jointly adopting children. Thus, lesbian and gay parents living in these areas encounter legal obstacles in building and protecting their families, which contributes to a sense of legal vulnerability. As Gregory, a 40-year-old gay man whose partner legally adopted their son because their state did not allow same-sex partners to jointly adopt a child, shared with me, “It’s not just my rights. It’s the child’s rights. If I get killed in a car accident … the child has no rights to inherit anything from me. He has no rights to my Social Security. No one does, actually” (Gay Dads p. 83).

Becoming parents may make same-sex couples more sensitive to legal inequities and the importance of legal equality (e.g., with respect to gay adoption, and with respect to marriage equality). For example, I found that many of the gay men in my study felt that parenthood had fostered in them a greater sense of awareness–even activism–about legal equality, such that they were more impassioned advocates of gay rights than they had been pre-parenthood. The couples I interviewed voiced their sense that not only would access to adoption and marriage provide legal recognition of their family ties, but it would provide social recognition. They felt that being able to have both men adopt their child, and being able to get legally married, “would probably add some validation to our family as a unit … in the eyes of … society in general.” As Russell, 41, explained, “It’s weird that [my feelings about marriage equality] have changed, but [they have]. I think that with the addition of Christopher, it becomes more important. I don’t want him as a child to feel second-class status about his family” (Gay Dads p. 89).

Now well into the second decade of the 21st century, we are marching toward a future where equality for LGBTQ people seems possible–at least in some parts of the country. But it is important not to forget all those LGBTQ people, and same-sex couples with children specifically, who reside in the “less obvious” places in the U.S., and who deserve–but often lack–legal rights and protections. Moving is neither possible nor desirable for many of these families. Thus, our efforts to secure equal rights for all families must extend into these regions, until equality becomes the national language.

Abbie E. Goldberg is Associate Professor of Psychology at Clark University. She is the author of Gay Dads: Transitions to Adoptive Fatherhood (NYU Press, 2012).

»»  Happy Pride from NYU Press! Save 25% on Gay Dads (and other select LGBT Studies titles), when you order via our website. Sale ends on July 1, 2013.

Can you tell us a little about your role at NYU Press and how you got here?
As the Marketing Associate/Exhibits Coordinator, I make sure that NYU has a strong presence at all of our annual conferences, that awards are sent out, and that our marketing materials are as up to date as possible. I was originally an intern at NYU Press for two years—followed by one year at Oxford University Press—and now I’m back!

Why did you decide to pursue a career in (academic) publishing?
My first foray into publishing was kind of spontaneous. I needed a work study job while studying journalism at NYU, and I applied for a job as a Marketing Intern here at NYUP. I ended up enjoying it so much, that I decided to pursue a career in publishing after I graduated.

What are you reading right now?
I just finished an edited collection called Against Equality: Don’t Ask to Fight Their Wars, which contains various radical queer critiques of the LGBTQ community’s obsession with repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. A lot of the viewpoints were very controversial, so naturally I enjoyed every moment of it. I enjoy a good queer studies book that pushes your buttons and makes you think. GRR, rage, argument!

Good ol’ fashioned print or fancy schmancy e-book?
Print all the way. When I started at OUP, I purchased a Kindle so I could carry around Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 without my arm dislocating and falling off, and I haven’t touched it since. I can see the appeal, but for me there’s nothing like holding a book in your hand. Also, you can’t browse the shelves of a bookstore with a Kindle. Gross.

What are some of your hobbies?
In my spare time, I aspire to watch lots of movies and try new kinds of food, but I mostly sit in my room eating Chinese food and browsing Tumblr. Just kidding, sort of. Now that it’s getting warmer here in New York, I love exploring new neighborhoods, going to museums for free, and reading in the park by my apartment. Basically movies, books, food, and “cul-chah.”

You’ve lived in New York for awhile. Any insider tips to navigating this crazy city?
For the love of God, please move away from the subway doors so people can get off the train. Also, explore as much as possible. There’s so much to see and do outside of Manhattan below 96th Street.

We know you’re kind of a foodie. Got any favorites you’d like to share?
I could go on and on (and nobody wants that), so here’s a few neighborhoods: Flushing for Korean, East Harlem for Mexican, Jackson Heights for Columbian and Indian, and Parkchester for Bangladeshi.

We *also* know that you’re pretty media savvy. What’s your social media network of choice, and what are you #obsessed with right now?
Have I mentioned that I’m addicted to Tumblr? I don’t post as much as I used to, but I can browse it for hours. I think it’s the combination of cats, pretty photos of food, .gifs, and unhinged social justice crazy that draws me in. Please send help.

Check out Broadist, an amazing body positive fashion blog, and Bon Iver Erotic Stories, which is not really sexual as opposed to ridiculous. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to go pick apples with my beard-y future husband.

What are you most looking forward to this summer?
I have a ton of day trips planned. I love getting out of the city when it’s warm out, sometimes the heat and the crowds are just too much. Also ice cream. Eating all of the ice cream.