"Out of the closets and into the chapels!": Same-Sex Weddings and the Battle for Marriage Equality

Rejecting the notion that weddings are inherently conservative or conformist, this paper argues that same-sex brides and grooms challenged existing cultural norms and expectations through the very act of celebrating a wedding.  They exerted individual authority over the ceremony not only in their selection of music, dress, and overall wedding style, but also in their very direct rejection of a legal system that denied same-sex couples’ access to the rights and privileges of marriage. As such, queer wedding celebrations have been an important tool in efforts to achieve marital equality for gay men and lesbians.  As demonstrations of love and commitment weddings often communicated what words could not.  Through their weddings, couples celebrated the communities from which they came, those to which they currently belonged, and those which they created, if only for their wedding day.  In the aftermath of their celebrations, couples often found greater support, even from unlikely sources.

Same-sex weddings transcended the “difference vs. accommodation” debates often raised in subcultural groups and hotly contested within the queer community.  Weddings offered a location where couples expressed a blend of intentions and motivations as they chose if and how to engage with consumer culture, queer politics, religion, and/or extended families.  The flexibility of the American wedding’s “invented traditions” allowed activists to shape the ceremony to fit their political goals and social perspectives.  The public celebrations of long-condemned personal relationships challenged ideas of who should have access to the rights of marriage and who should qualify as a married couple.  Queer weddings gave new life to the ideal that the personal is indeed political.