Welcome to Expectation vs Reality—a monthly column from writer Gabrielle Korn about the lifelong process of realigning what you expect with what you experience, and what we can all learn from the bumps along the way.
"Raise your hand if you don't believe in marriage."
I raised my hand. So, too, did the majority of people around me.
It was the late aughts. I was in college, and my professor was hosting a panel discussion with queer theorists discussing marriage equality, a right that LGBTQ+ people did not have.
The professor nodded sagely. "Statiscally, that tracks," he said. "And also, statistically, most of you will end up married anyway."
Not me! I, for one, had paid attention in my Intro to Gender & Sexuality seminar. The tradition of marriage was a business transaction between two men, the selling off of a daughter. It was only in our modern era that marriage became about love, that people began to think you should be able to find one person to monogamously fulfill all your needs for the rest of your life.
Gay marriage seemed like heterosexual cosplay, like pretending the only difference between straight people and queer people was the gender of your partner; as though there weren't large differences in experience and culture that made it so that a 1:1 comparison was impossible. I was certain that queer relationships were more nuanced and complex. There was more room for possibility; a queer partnership could be whatever you needed it to be, unlike how I perceived heterosexuality, which felt fixed. You could not simply swap out a groom for a bride and proceed as though nothing else had really changed.
And, you know. There's also the fact that I was an angsty, lonely kid. I couldn't really imagine myself loving anyone enough to commit my life to them. I liked that being gay meant I didn't necessarily have to think about it. As Fran Lebowitz put it, "Do you think gay marriage is progress? Are you kidding me? This was one of the good things about being gay."
Besides. Marriage equality was hardly the biggest issue facing my community. There were threats to our lives, our safety. Marriage felt like a far-off luxury compared to the immediate danger. There was homelessless, and suicide, and laws that didn't protect us from discrimination. An ongoing epidemic of violence against all of us, but specifically Black trans women. Who had time to get married? Queer liberation for me personally meant being able to live my life openly and safely; it also meant the freedom to not have that life repackaged into a straight-shaped box. It didn't include marriage, not as a requisite, anyway.
And then, suddenly (or at least, it felt sudden to me, someone who didn't really pay attention yet), in November of 2008, California — a place I had never been that was supposed to be a beacon of equality — passed Prop 8, which would ban same-sex marriage. I was 19. I went to a protest, standing amidst the crying queer couples and realizing for the first time that there was a good chance that when it came to marriage, I didn't really know what I was talking about. It was obviously important to many people. There was no reason to believe I knew better than them what mattered to our community.
Photos: Courtesy of Gabrielle Korn
I was in my mid-twenties when my most radical friend, someone I'd met through doing activism, told me she was going to marry her girlfriend.
"I thought we didn't believe in marriage," I said.
She shrugged. "That changes when you really love someone."
Did it? Would it also change for me? I wasn't so sure.
In 2015, the Supreme Court made marriage legal in all 50 states. With marriage suddenly an option, I felt that maybe it was something I'd eventually want. Maybe I wanted to try to find someone I loved enough to want to marry. This thought didn't fill me with panic. It didn't make me feel like I was assimilating or sacrificing my queer culture. Instead, it made me think that perhaps the reason I thought I didn't believe in marriage was because it was an impossibility, and I was protecting myself from the pain of it. You can't be upset that you can't have something if you don't even want it.
And then, there was the voicemail from my grandmother the day the news dropped; a tearful, effusive congratulations on the marriage equality win. I was moved by her show of support, by the way this right was the pinnacle of equality in her mind. It was so important because her marriage had been so important to her, and she wanted me to have the same experience. I realized that I'd been using my queerness to keep myself separate from my family, to have part of my life that was sacredly different. But I was starting to want the opposite. I wanted the things that made me different to not mean I had to be separate. I still thought the idea of hitching yourself to a person for life was a little suss, and marriage's roots in oppression never stopped feeling very loud to me; but, I realized, you don't have to fundamentally believe in everything about an institution to want its benefits. Even my straight friends felt wary of it while they participated. This was not, in fact, a uniquely queer experience.
And, as my professor foretold, I did meet someone I loved enough to marry. We were together two and a half years before I proposed on December 31, 2019. It had been a terrible year; a lost job, a terminally ill loved one. The pain and loss had shown me I wanted us to be there for each other forever. If something bad happened I wanted her to legally be in the hospital with me. I wanted to share health insurance and be each other's beneficiaries. You know, the boring things that you don't think about when you're a 19-year-old new gay. Now, those things didn't just seem vital; they felt romantic. We eloped in 2021 and had a wedding in 2022.
Photo: Courtesy of Gabrielle Korn
And then — in the backdrop of our bliss — marriage equality was once again on the table. In the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the court should also overturn its ruling on same-sex marriage (as well as the right to contraception). Losing the federal constitutional right to abortion is the worst legal action that's been taken in my lifetime. It's bigger than everything; it's bigger than marriage. But it has opened the doors for things like marriage to be up for debate, things that make us equal, that give us a fair chance in this country. In response, to protect marriage equality, the House passed the Respect For Marriage Act, which is great, except that if the Supreme Court does repeal the decision that led to marriage equality, states could go ahead and deny same-sex couples their marriage licenses anyway. My wife and I now live in California, a state that has already proven once that if left to its own devices, it won't allow marriage equality at all.
Over the past two years there have been a record number of anti-gay and anti-trans bills. As per the ACLU, "These measures bar trans and non-binary people from access to health care, from updating their identity documents, and from full participation in daily life. They seek to erase trans people from society and to ban schools from talking about the mere existence of LGBTQ people." These things are much more dire than the right to get married; they are matters of life and death. I still feel this way about queer liberation. To paraphrase an old activist friend — you can't get gay married if you're dead.
But — but. It's hard to explain the absolute indignity of having your own right to your own marriage debated in court. As though you aren't an adult, but a problem that must be solved. As though your commitment somehow sullies the sanctity of marriage itself. As though it's a privilege you don't deserve because you are different, not a fundamental right because you are human.
I am tired of having to fight for my right to equality. I don't think I should have to. I don't think any marginalized group should have to. But we do have to, and so we will. Because we're different, but we still deserve our lives, our liberties, and the pursuit of our happiness, and in this country those things are not just given to you when you don't fit the mold. That includes marriage. But if equality starts and ends with marriage, it's not liberation. Ditto to everything being legislated — as Laverne Cox once said to me in an interview many years ago, "We have hate crime legislation, but if that dude out there who called me a dude wants to kill me, he’s going to do it." Liberation won't be decided in a courtroom. Not for queer and trans people, not for anyone. But that doesn't mean it's not vital to have laws that protect us. That framework is crucial. But how do we change how people treat us? That is the heart of liberation, I think.
So, yes. Marriage is important. It's important to me. But it's not the full story — not for anyone. It never has been.