The authors of all three books you are about to read about have invested a lot of time into this matter. Our group feels that it is important to read up on continuing research on the issue we are trying to reach out to people on. We hope that you can read a little bit about what we have wrote about them here and then click on the links to look more in depth yourselves. These three books we found are from Google Books so you should be able to read sections of them online. What is important to note with these books is that they all relate to the fact that banning same-sex marriage is denying rights and benefits to an entire group of people in our country. All three authors, Jonathon Golberg Hiller (1), Jonathon Rauch (2), and Kathleen Hull (3), are very passionate about their positions on the matter and are brilliant thinkers and researchers.
(1) A. The Limits to the Union: Same-Sex Marriage and the Politics of Civil Rights
B. Jonathon Goldberg-Hiller
C. This book chapter talks about the uprising of same-sex marriage being a challenge to civil rights. In this book they specifically talk about the situation in Hawaii, which we can relate to our group’s blog topic that happened in California in 2008. In 1990, Hawaii did not allow for the legalization of same-sex marriages. This is when two lesbian couples and one gay couple decided to challenge the law and apply for marriage licenses. Their applications were denied. This action created a lot of anger and controversy; therefore the 6 individuals took the matter to court for being deprived of equal rights. The state court kept their prior ruling of marriage only being between a man and a woman until later in 1993 when the decision was appealed in the Supreme Court. After great deliberation, the court made the decision to extend marriage licenses to same-sex couples because 1990 ruling was said to be enforcing gender discrimination.
D. We can learn a lot from Jonathon Goldberg-Hiller’s research and we can look how it relates to our blog topic. It is important to understand that this matter affects people everywhere in our country and it has done so for sometime now. One specific event that spurred from the Hawaii case was the invention of the “civil union” in the state of Vermont in 2000. Goldber-Hiller goes on to explain how both of these cases were involved in civil rights and how especially commentators of the Vermont “civil union” agreed that it was, “an act of pure stigmatization”(Goldberg-Hiller 6). His research is useful to us as readers because we can see how much this was a heavily disputed issue in the courts. It was not something that the majority of people on either side of gay marriage took lightly.
E. Goldber-Hiller has contributed a lot to the research of the history of same-sex marriage in our society. It is important to understand how our courts thought of the issues ten years ago and compare to how people look at the argument today. Are they still the same reasons? A lot of them are. Gays and Lesbians want to receive equal rights and receive marriage benefits and want to have their relationship culturally and legally recognized.
(2) A. Gay Marriage: Why its Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America
B. Jonathan Rauch
C. Rauch’s introduction in his book talks about the social impacts of not allowing legalized gay marriage. There is a lot of tradition and discussion that surrounds the idea of marriage. For example, when one has his or hers first kiss, date or the first time having sex there is a thought of marriage in the future of that person’s life. What if all of that was taken away from someone? There is so much cultural impact surrounding lovers and marriage, because if a gay or lesbian gay couple cannot get married, what do people think of them as? These couples are stuck in a middle fuzzy stage because they never can legally bind themselves to one another.
D. I feel as though this is a very useful argument against Prop 8 because at least everyone can relate to some form of love in one way or another. Everyone can think about their first kiss or date and think about what that meant to them. What if you knew you met your soul mate and then you knew that you could never marry them? Rauch alludes to how the law makes homosexual couples feel when being discriminated against when he says, “The law only sees individuals, never couples; the larger society is not sure what to make of these so-called partners. Their world remains incomplete, unfinished” (3). This argument makes sense to include in our blog because it’s about feeling accepted into culture. This is an emotional situation we are dealing with and really impacts people’s lives in a negative way.
E. This would be an interesting area of study especially for a psychologist or for the subject of sociology to see how relationships are affected by this fuzzy stage that homosexual couples face. It is would be hard for heterosexuals to think of a life without marriage and it would be an interesting study to see watch a straight couple try to live for a time without it. I imagine it would be difficult to have a relationship that society does not necessarily support and the laws not give a legalization opportunity to. I think this would be a really interesting study to do to see how heterosexual couples react to not being able to be married and then see how they feel about same-sex marriage.
(3) A. Same-sex Marriage: The Cultural Politics of Love and Law
B. Kathleen E. Hull
C. This segment of this book by Kathleen E. Hull is necessary to our argument of gay rights and same-sex marriages. In Hull’s analysis he examines the importance of marriage to Lesbian and Gay couples and their need to secure and unify their romantic relationships. One can see how this is related specifically to our topic because Hull talks about how same-sex couples think and relate to marriage similar if not completely the same as heterosexual couples. Therefore why shouldn’t we allow for homosexuals to get married and receive the same marriage benefits, it is not like they are trying to destroy the meaning of marriage.
D. This article is useful with our blog because it talks about some of the main arguments for those pro same-sex marriages. These arguments stem from the fact that legalizing your romantic relationship has its economic benefits. Hull says this in her book when she says, “Almost all of the gays and lesbians interviewed in this study expressed an interest in accessing practical rights and benefits of marriage, things like tax benefits, access to health insurance, and having one’s partner designated as next of kin in emergency situations” (Hull 3).
E. Another Argument that Hull makes in her book is about the growing amount of visibility of the gay culture on television and in Film. I think this would be an interesting discussion to further research and how much this could help the legalization of marriage if more people were comfortable with the gay and lesbian culture. If you think about it some very well respected and entertaining people on TV and pop culture are gay such as popular talk show hosts, Ellen Degeneres and Rosie O’Donnell. I have not heard anything but good things about Ellen Degeneres and you can tell the people that come on her show really respect her. I think Ellen would be treated the same by the thousands of viewers of her show no matter what her sexual orientation is. Not to mention, Ellen and Portia’s wedding would no longer be legal because they were married in LA in August of 2008.
If you want to read up on just how beautiful their Lesbian wedding was, read on here…
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