On the Subversive Meaning of the Supreme Court Ruling: Let them be as miserable as the rest of us

One of the common threads that I’ve seen in relation to the Supreme Court decision concerning same-sex marriage is the idea that same-sex couples can now participant in the transcendent and sacred sacrament of marriage. Whether people agree with this decision or disagree, they all seem to hold marriage up as something truly sublime.

I’d like to take a more psychoanalytic approach and reflect briefly on the idea that what makes this decision so important lies predominantly in the other direction: that now same-sex couples have access to a profoundly mundane and unfulfilling type of relationship configuration that was previously prohibited to them, and that is where the true radicality of the ruling lies.

To begin, let’s reflect on one of the predominant fantasies of the fundamentalist in relation to same-sex attraction: that there is a community of people having unrestrained sexual enjoyment. A community that is fully sexually fulfilled, having fun and enjoying life in an excessive way, outside the constraints of traditional societal norms.

This can be seen, for instance, in the passionate proclamations from the pulpit about the excessive promiscuity of gay men and the thinly veiled joy witnessed in the preacher who speaks of the coming wrath of God (i.e. the claim is not that gay people are unhappy, but that they should be made unhappy).

In psychoanalytic terms this is the fantasy of a non-castrated other. An other who has access to what gives them overwhelming satisfaction. An other who is able to have the pleasure that we have had to renounce or somehow lost.

We see this same fantasy playing out in the jilted lover who imagines that their ex is having unmediated pleasure while they are suffering. The fantasy is of “them” having all the fun that is blocked off from “us.” Often the person only lets go of their bitterness when they discover that the other is not having some access to a full life that they are not (while they may be happier in small concrete ways, they still suffer from the same things that everyone else does).

On the other side people can also play into this fantasy by attempting to enact the enjoyment that the other imagines them having. Here an ex might enact revenge by pretending to have excessive enjoyment (posting up pictures of themselves partying and with other people). What happens here is a version of the saying “the best revenge is success.”

Fundamentalists have held, and continue to hold, a huge amount of power. They are able to persecute and exclude gay people in a variety of ways. Their hatred being fuelled by the fantasy of the other as sexually fulfilled and excessively happy. One of the few weapons of response is to act up to this image, to pretend that one is having all the fun that the other is imagining. An act that can be very exhausting, unfulfilling and destructive to the self.

For real progress to be made the fantasy of the non-castrated other/self has to be burst. One of the unconscious reasons why fundamentalists don’t want same-sex couples to be able to get married might well be because it threatens the psychic structure they have built that keeps the gay and lesbian other as an enemy. When someone can be seen to embrace the mundane of marriage then it’s harder to imagine them out in the world having full sexual satisfaction that is denied to us. The sublime is unending sexual fulfilment through the creation and immersion of a never ending variety of sexual acts (something encouraged by consumerism with the drive for ever more sex toys). The mundane is precisely marriage. The elusive sacred is in the former, while the materialist position is more generally found in the latter.

This is why I take a more controversial stance regarding polyamory. While many of my friends are polyamorous, I think that polyamorous communities often fall foul of the desire for full sexual satisfaction. Many polyamourous individuals (though not all) are looking for the non-castrated full pleasure that they see as missing from marriage. But here they misread the radical blessing of marriage for its curse. It is precisely in accepting the lack of sexual satisfaction that marriage offers that one can find a good reason for defending it.

Of course, many people get married because they think it will satisfy, but at its subversive core the marriage act involves two people opting out of the excessive demand for multiple partners, sexual satisfaction and constant stimulation. It is freedom from this exhausting and ultimately oppressive dream. Marriage does not hold out the freedom to have sexual satisfaction, but the possibility of a freedom from having to seek that out.

The marriage vows are then a way of saying, “look, lets hang out, have fun, explore our sexuality, and care for each other while basically accepting that the idea of some perfection out there doesn’t exist.”

Recall, the final scenes in Roman Polanski’s 1992 comic masterpiece Bitter Moon. Oscar and Nigel watch on as their partners first dance together, then sleep together, with no concern for their gaze. Something that Oscar cannot stand. Oscar has masochistically endured (and enjoyed) the sadistic games of Mimi, because the sadomasochism connects them. But now he is left out completely. He can’t handle it and shots Mimi before killing himself. We are then left with the original unsatisfied, repressed couple (Fiona and Nigel). With one difference: they have gone through the adventure of seeking a non-castrated pleasure and found it wanting. The couple at the end are the same as the couple at the beginning, but now perhaps they have been somewhat disabused of their fantasy that there is a non-castrated form of pure enjoyment. This then opens up the possibility of them having a more satisfyingly unsatisfied relationship.

The important thing about the Supreme Court ruling therefore might be not that same-sex couples are free to enter into a more satisfying and sublime type of relation, but that now they can choose this form of unsatisfying and mundane path. One that, if done well, might be very enriching and fun.