Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair

by Sarah Schulman

Implied in the public’s support for same-sex marriage is a fantasy that gay marriage is a mirror of straight marriage. And even though we don’t really know what the reality of straight marriage is, there is an ideal that involves an aspiration towards monogamy or some kind of sexual constraint. It’s fair to say that many straight people support gay marriage because they see it as normalizing, and do so with an undercurrent of expectation that gay marriage will tame gay male sexual culture and produce approximate monogamy among gay men. In this way, gay marriage is unconsciously understood as an antidote to AIDS, thereby separating “gay” and “AIDS” in the public imagination. Once gay marriage is available, people who refuse it are, in a sense, refusing the offer of normalcy, which means refusing clean, approved, and controlled sexuality. They are offered “good” homosexuality, but may choose “bad” homosexuality, making them even more deviant, different, and socially dangerous than they were before.