MICHAEL BRONSKI

LIVING IN CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS--a city so committed to being in the vanguard of the right-to-marry movement that it opened the doors to City Hall at 12:01 am Monday, May 17, to be the first municipality in the United States to issue state-sanctioned marriage licenses to queer couples--I feel that I am often in the eye of the same-sex marriage hurricane. While I have mixed feelings about the fight for same-sex marriage--which range from a 1960s gay liberation-instilled distrust of the institution to a cheerful acceptance that "equality under the law" has to be a good thing--there is one aspect of all this that drives me crazy. Now that many of my 40-60-year-old lesbian and gay male friends are getting hitched (many opting for the traditional wedding dinner and party they cannot afford), I wish them well. But I also wish they would be more honest about their motives.

My friends are, for the most part, women and men who have a history of political activism and who, even a decade ago, would have been dead set against looking for the state's imprimatur on their intimate relationships. Yet they are rushing to the altar. Sure, civil marriage will provide gay couples some benefits that are now granted to heterosexuals--but until the federal government recognizes same-sex marriage, the scope of these benefits is quite limited. The rush to the altar is so strong that I can only think there is another reason; despite their stated countercultural politics and commitment to lesbian-feminism and gay liberation, these friends have a deep-seated, sentimental attachment to traditional marriage, with all its emotional weight and social trappings.

Equally surprising to me is that, to a large degree, this is a gendered affair. In fact, close to 75 percent of marriages that have taken place (legally) in Boston and (illegally) in San Francisco have been between women. (In my extensive social and political circle of friends, I know of only two males couples who have decided to get hitched.) Clearly there is something about state-sanctioned marriage that is more appealing to lesbians, and probably women in general.

And why not? These are women who were raised on Barbie--that rubberized icon of femininity, whose most sublime apotheosis was as a beautiful Bride--and who were caught up in the first wave of commercial propaganda of the postwar Wedding Industry. Is there any doubt, in anyone's mind, that we live in a society that is completely dominated by a Marriage Culture that tells us from the age of consciousness that the only way to be happy is to be married? And that women are the primary targets of this cruel myth?

From my vantage, the fight for same-sex marriage is as much, if not more, about the brainwashing of Americans by the $70-billion-a-year Wedding Industry as it is about equal rights. Over the past sixty years it has been impossible for women and men--although most of the Wedding Industry's advertising is aimed at women--not to be affected by the over-the-top consumerism that has warped people's minds to make them believe that marriage is the only valid relationship. Sure, most of my friends are not buying $12,000 wedding dresses or $2,000 wedding cakes, but we are living in a political dream world if we don't believe that the intensive commercialism and consumerism that unites Marriage Culture to the Wedding Industry touches all of us. According to Cindy Sproul, co-owner of RainbowWeddingNetwork.com, an online wedding gift registry for gays, gay newlyweds want the same thing heterosexuals want. "They want to wear tuxes, they want to wear gowns, they want traditional weddings. They want the same things: a DJ, a florist, a caterer." Of course gay people, and especially lesbians, want to get married: They have been told to do so their entire lives by a culture that is hellbent on promoting a dyadic family unit and by a form of consumer capitalism that is as avaricious as it is overpowering.

Feminism has astutely dissected how the fashion and "glamour" industries have devastated women's lives. They have scrutinized how commercialism of all kinds has harmed women. Yet, as far as I can tell, the gay and lesbian community has refused to discuss how the Wedding Industry--from Bride's magazine to the newly minted "same-sex marriage greeting cards" that are selling briskly in gay bookstores--has influenced our lives. Marriage means many things to many people. But to willfully refuse to examine how marriage is deeply connected to--and propelled by--consumerism is both dangerous and destructive.

I am less worried about state-sanctioned marriage--there are some useful benefits here that are awarded to heterosexuals and not to same-sex couples--than I am about consumer-sanctioned marriage.

Michael Bronski is a writer, critic and journalist. His last book, Pulp Friction: Uncovering the Golden Age of Gay Male Pulp (St. Martin's), was just awarded a Lammy Award for best anthology. A visiting professor in women and gender as well as Jewish studies at Dartmouth College, he has been active in the Gay Liberation Movement since 1969.

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