www.richardjespers.com
  • Home
  • Books
  • Journals
  • Blog

Franke's Wedlocked

9/17/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
A WRITER'S WIT
We've forgotten how to remember, and just as importantly, we've forgotten how to pay attention. So, instead of using your smartphone to jot down crucial notes, or Googling an elusive fact, use every opportunity to practice your memory skills. Memory is a muscle, to be exercised and improved.
​Joshua Foer
Born September 23, 1982

My Book World

Picture
​Franke, Katherine. Wedlocked: the Perils of Marriage Equality, How African Americans and Gays Mistakenly Thought the Right to Marry Would Set Them Free. New York: New York University Press, 2015.
 
Ms. Franke, Sulzbacher Professor of Law and Director for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia University, puts forth an interesting, almost quirky thesis for her book. She believes that same-sex couples receiving the right to marry is similar to laws that compelled African-American men and women who had been co-habiting prior to the end of the Civil War, to marry following its end. And she asserts some compelling arguments or at least some ideas to ponder.

In her introduction, Franke states: “State licensing means your relationship is now governed by law, and that you have to play by law’s rules. An affair or a breakup now has legal in addition to emotional consequences. Put most bluntly, when you marry, the state acquires a legal interest in your relationship. Cloaking freedom in state regulation—as the freedom to marry surely does—is a curious freedom indeed, for this freedom comes with its own strict rules” (9).
 
The author points up a number of problems with marriage equality, one of which is the following: “Given that sexual orientation-based discrimination is legal in twenty-nine states, many Americans in same-sex relationships find themselves in the situation where they have a right to marry but exercising that right could result in losing their job once their employer learns of their marriage” (59).
 
“Lawyers who advise non-traditional families on their legal rights have noted that once states started to allow same-sex couples to marry, the rights of couples in non-marital families began evaporating. Whether it be relationship contracts between unmarried partners, de facto parental rights, or rights that might accrue between two partners as a matter of common law, little by little courts are saying: you could have married, and since you didn’t we won’t recognize you as having, or being able to create, any kind of alternative family relationship between or among you that is legally enforceable. The right to marry, thus, extinguishes a right to be anything else to one another” (98).
 
Franke later reasserts what she claims in her introduction, which is worth repeating, for it seems to reinforce her thesis: “Getting married means that your relationship is no longer a private affair since a marriage license converts it into a contract with three parties: two spouses and the state. Once you’re in it you have to get the permission of a judge to let you out. And what you learn when you seek judicial permission to end a marriage is that it’s a lot easier to get married than it is to get divorced” (121).
 
As Franke begins to conclude her arguments, she often shifts to speculative language. “Of course we can’t know for sure, as the court documents tell us far too little. But I have a couple of guesses about why these unwed mothers went to court and filed form papers announcing the fathers of their children” (174). “Another possible explanation for the frequent filing of bastardy petitions was the mothers were initiating these cases not for a local legal audience, but for one up north” (176). “It’s not hard to imagine unmarried mothers’ turn to ‘bastardy petitions’ as a way of healing the deprivation of kinship that all enslaved people suffered” (177). “The police had been summoned by another of Garner’s lovers who was jealous and had reported to the police that ‘a black man was going crazy’ in Lawrence’s apartment ‘and he was armed with a gun’ (a racial epithet rather than ‘black man’ was, in fact, probably used)” (181). Well, which is it: “probably” or “in fact”? The latter example, in particular, seems inauthentic if the author cannot, in fact, locate a proper citation to prove her assertions.
 
Near the end of her book, Franke sets up an important and stimulating question: “One might also provocatively ask whether marriage is better suited for straight people. By posing this question I don’t mean to align myself with those, such as the conservative National Organization for Marriage, who feel that only straight people should be allowed to marry, but rather to ask whether the legal rules and social norms that make up civil marriage have heterosexual couples in mind. Put another way, is there something essentially heterosexual about the institution of marriage? Are marriage’s rules and norms well suited to govern the lives and interests of same-sex couples?” (209). Yes or No? Her question would make for an interesting debate!
 
“One lesson we can draw from the early experience of same-sex couples with the right to marry is that marriage may not be for all of us. While we might all support the repeals of an exclusion from marriage as a matter of basic constitutional fairness, we need not all jump into marriage to demonstrate our new rights-bearing identity. If this book has any overarching message it is that we ought to slow down, take a breath, and evaluate whether marriage is ‘for us’” (225).
In an appendix, Franke issues “A Progressive Call to Actions for Married Queers.” I won’t list them here, but the eight points do seem to summarize what her book is about: making sure that that marriage laws help rather than hinder same-sex couples as they seek equality in this arena. The fact that her book comes out shortly before SCOTUS makes its historic declaration does not diminish the issues she raises. Hers is an important book.

NEXT TIME: New Yorker Fiction 2016
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    AUTHOR
    Richard Jespers is a writer living in Lubbock, Texas, USA.

    See my profile at Author Central:
    http://amazon.com/author/rjespers


    Richard Jespers's books on Goodreads
    My Long-Playing Records My Long-Playing Records
    ratings: 1 (avg rating 5.00)


    Archives

    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011



    Categories

    All
    Acting
    Actors
    African American History
    Aging
    Alabama
    Alaska
    Aldo Leopold
    Andy Warhol
    Arizona
    Arkansas
    Art
    Atrial Fibrillation
    Authors
    Authors' Words
    Barcelona
    Biography
    Blogging About Books
    Blogs
    Books
    California
    Cancer
    Cars
    Catalonia
    Colorado
    Cooking
    Creative Nonfiction
    Culinary Arts
    Deleting Facebook
    Ecology
    Education
    Environment
    Epigraphs
    Essays
    Feminism
    Fiction
    Fifty States
    Film
    Florida
    Georgia
    Grammar
    Greece
    Gun Violence
    Hawaii
    Heart Health
    Historic Postcards
    History
    Humor
    Idaho
    Iowa
    Journalism
    LGBTQ
    Libraries
    Literary Biography
    Literary Journals
    Literary Topics
    Literature
    Maine
    Massachusetts
    Memoir
    Michigan
    Minnesota
    Mississippi
    M K Rawlings
    Musicians
    Nevada
    New Hampshire
    New Mexico
    New Yorker Stories
    Nonfiction
    North Carolina
    Novelist
    Ohio
    Pam Houston
    Parker Posey
    Photography
    Playwrights
    Poetry
    Politics
    Psychology
    Publishing
    Quotations
    Race
    Reading
    Recipes
    Seattle
    Short Story
    South Carolina
    Spain
    Susan Faludi
    Teaching
    Tennessee
    Texas
    Theater
    The Novel
    Travel
    Travel Photographs
    True Crime
    #TuesdayThoughts
    TV
    U.S.
    Vermont
    Voting
    War
    Washington
    Wisconsin
    World War II
    Writer's Wit
    Writing


    RSS Feed

    Blogroll

    alicefrench.wordpress.com
    kendixonartblog.com
    Valyakomkova.blogspot.com

    Websites

    Caprock Writers' Alliance
    kendixonart.com

    tedkincaid.com
    www.trackingwonder.com
    www.skans.edu
    www.ttu.edu
    www.newpages.com
    www.marianszczepanski.com
    William Campbell Contemporary Art, Inc.
    Barbara Brannon.com
    Artsy.net
WWW.RICHARDJESPERS.COM  ©2011-2025
                    BOOKS  PHOTOS  PODCASTS  JOURNALS  BLOG