My Big Respectable Gay Wedding: Same-Sex Marriage and the Paradox of Multicultural Vulnerability

This discussion examines whether, and in what ways, the legalization of same-sex marriage in Canada may reinforce some of the existing hierarchies within gay and lesbian culture. Through an analysis of the paradox of multicultural vulnerability and the same-sex marriage debate in Canada, it suggests that same-sex marriage may operate as a vehicle for social respectability. In so doing, it may further marginalize those individuals who do not conform to particular heteronormative notions about sexuality and relationships. This is not an argument against the legalization of same-sex marriage, which is undoubtedly a significant right for several gays and lesbians. Rather, it is an inquiry into the shortcomings of same-sex marriage the aims to enhance its subversive potential for the broader queer community. Our discussion begins by describing two key concepts: multicultural accommodation, and the paradox of multicultural vulnerability. The second part of this discussion briefly associates the legalization of same-sex marriage with multicultural accommodation to suggest that the former may be seen as a functional form of the latter. More significantly, the third part of this discussion puts forward a case for understanding same-sex marriage as a manifestation of the paradox of multicultural vulnerability.

Definitions

Ayelet Shachar (2000) in “On Citizenship and Multicultural Vulnerability” describes two concepts that are critical to our discussion about same-sex marriage. The first concept that Shachar describes is multicultural accommodation. This refers to legal measures that “[aim] to provide identity groups with the option to maintain… their nomos—the normative universe in which law and cultural narrative are inseparably related” [Emphasis in original]. The author further observes, “the move toward multicultural accommodation generally is justified in terms of promoting the ‘participation and inclusion…[of] groups with different circumstances or forms of life… without shedding their distinct identities’” (Shachar 2000: 65). In other words, multicultural accommodation seeks to help members of a minority group maintain some of their ‘different’ norms. This is regarded as being desirable for not only the minority group, but also the dominant group or institution, which benefits from increased participation of members of the minority group. The second part of this discussion briefly puts forward some reasons for understanding the legalization of same-sex marriage as a functional form of multicultural accommodation.

The second concept that Shachar describes is the paradox of multicultural vulnerability. This paradox arises “when state accommodation policies intended to mitigate the power differential between groups end up reinforcing power hierarchies within them” (Shachar 2000: 65). The paradox involves not incidental in-group rights violations, but rather systemic in-group rights violations. The primary concern is “whether or not the multicultural state accommodates a social and legal disadvantage that is already evident in the group’s established traditions” [Emphasis in original] (Shachar 2000: 71). The third part of this discussion adopts Shachar’s description with the minor amendment that social and legal disadvantage need not be “already evident,” but rather it need only exist. It puts forward some reasons for understanding same-sex marriage as a manifestation of the paradox of multicultural vulnerability. Our discussion now turns to the links between the legalization of same-sex marriage and multicultural accommodation.

Same-sex marriage and multicultural accommodation

The legalization of same-sex marriage may be seen as a functional form of multicultural accommodation. As we will see in our discussion about Halpern et al v. Attorney General of Canada (AGC), this legal measure provides gays and lesbians with the option of maintaining the norm of private monogamous unions between two same-sex individuals through its inclusion into the regime of marriage. (Some queer scholars have contested the claim that such unions constitute the norm of gay and lesbian relationships.) This is not to suggest that multiculturalism per se motivates such an inclusion. Rather, certain parallels between the legalization of same-sex marriage and multicultural accommodation suggest that the former is akin to the latter. As stated above, the legalization of same-sex marriage provides gays and lesbians in private monogamous unions with the option to maintain those unions in context of marriage. Some proponents of same-sex marriage suggest that it is beneficial for not only gays and lesbians, whose relationships are legitimized through state recognition, but also the institution of marriage and the dominant culture that supports it, which is strengthened by the participation of gays and lesbians. Since the legalization of same-sex marriage is similar in process and effect to multicultural accommodation, the former may be understood as a functional, if not formal, form of the latter. Having linked these two processes, our discussion below provides some reasons for understanding same-sex marriage as a manifestation of the paradox of multicultural vulnerability.

Same-sex marriage and the paradox of multicultural vulnerability

In Halpern et al v. AGC, the Court of Appeal for Ontario decided that the exclusion of same-sex couples from the common law definition of marriage—“the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman”—breaches s. 15(1) of The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in a manner that is not justified in a free and democratic society. Seven gay and lesbian couples argued that their reasons for wanting to engage in the formal civil union of marriage—“to celebrate their love and commitment to each other”—are the same as heterosexual couples. They argued that since the definition of marriage creates a formal distinction between opposite- and same-sex couples that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation, the definition ought to be deemed unconstitutional and amended to include same-sex couples. The court performed s. 15 and s. 1 analyses, the Law test and the Oakes test, respectively, to assess the validity of the couples’ claim, and subsequently accepted their equality-based argument. The successful argument in Halpern in essence upholds the common law definition of marriage, but for the opposite-sex clause. Thus, to a significant extent, it maintains the heteronormative structure of marriage as a private monogamous union between two individuals.

Cossman (forthcoming) in “Queers as Citizens” examines the debate about same-sex marriage—a debate that is, in her view, “vastly dichotomized, inadequately ambivalent, and temporally dislocated”—to advance a nuanced understanding of “a middle zone between marriage and nonmarriage, between legitimate and illegitimate citizenship” (Cossman forthcoming: 6). The author outlines the two most commonly held views about same-sex marriage within gay and lesbian communities. Proponents of same-sex marriage hold inclusion into an important social and legal institution as being vital to the citizenship of gay men and lesbians. In contrast, opponents from within gay and lesbian communities argue that since same-sex marriage will be normalizing and assimilating, it will undermine the subversive aspects of queer identities.

Cossman rightly points out that “the debate performs an either/or of being for or against same sex marriage, and for or against inclusion in citizenship as it is currently constituted” (Cossman forthcoming: 1). However, the author does not adequately consider the underlying premises of the so-called “queer activist” standpoint. Certain queer scholars have argued that although gay assimilation is troubling, the production of gay difference—“limiting what is imaginable as a recognizably gay citizen: usually white, male, affluent, discreetly sexual, apolitical, gay subjects”—is even more problematic (Sender 2005: 23; see also Crimp 2004, and Moore 2004). The debate within gay and lesbian communities exists in a context where public spaces for queer sexual experimentation, which in the 1970s and 1980s were sites of a gay liberation movement, are disappearing (Toub 2007; see also Crimp 2004: 298), and being replaced with more socially “respectable” kinds of queer spaces and visibility.

The same-sex marriage debate and the shift toward respectable queer visibility constitute reasons to think about same-sex marriage in terms of the paradox of multicultural vulnerability. In this particular paradox, the legalization of same-sex marriage provides gays and lesbians with the legal option to conform to a heteronormative structure of marriage. This is supposed to help gays and lesbian maintain the same-sex feature of their unions in the context of marriage. However, as queer scholars have argued, same-sex marriage may also operate as a vehicle for social respectability, which may ascribe respect to gays and lesbians in marital unions. In so doing, it may further marginalize those individuals who do not conform to the particular heteronormative notions that same-sex marriage involves. For example, gays and lesbians who are not in monogamous unions, or those who are in unions of more than two people do not fit into the current scheme of marriage. The social and legal disadvantage such individuals experience is “already evident.” Thus, it is important to think about whether the scope of same-sex marriage could be widened to include such individuals. If so, then we may enhance the subversive potential of same-sex marriage. If not, then several queer individuals may remain outside of an institution that neither reflects nor allows their realities.

References

Cossman, B. (forthcoming). Queers as Citizens, excerpts, from Sexual Citizens: The Legal and Cultural Regulation of Sex and Belonging. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Crimp, D. (2004). Melancholia and Moralism: essays on AIDS and queer politics. Cambridge & London: The MIT Press.

Halpern et al. v. Attorney General of Canada (Ont. C.A., 2003)

Moore, P. (2004). Beyond Shame: reclaiming the abandoned history of radical gay sexuality. Boston: Beacon Press Books.

Sender, K. (2005). Business, Not Politics: the making of the gay market. New York: Columbia University Press.

Shachar, A. (2000). "On Citizenship and Multicultural Vulnerability," Political Theory 28, no. 1: 64-89

Toub, M., (2007, March 24). There goes the gaybourhood. The Globe and Mail, Retrieved 29 March 2008 from personal database.

Domestic Abuse is No Different Between Cultures

Do Asian men bring their families to the West to accommodate their abusive behavior within a judicial system immature and naïve enough to disregard their transgressions as cultural phenomena? Unlikely, but it makes prominent a major notion of cultural insensitivity that Sonia Lawrence writes about in her article Cultural (in)sensitivty: The Dangers of a Simplistic Approach to Culture in the Courtroom, whereby domestic abuse of a kind unusual to typically western perceptions, such as burning and the use of sticks (in this case in a Tamil Sri Lankan family [Lawrence 102]) is deemed primitive and third-world. (115) Lawrence correctly argues that women of colour are denied both racial and cultural respect, as they are constantly undermined in the judicial system by having their “otherness” focused on, rather than their affinity to all women, and their prejudice is sustained in having no voice in the media with which to air their grievances. Much was said to condemn Kabilaraj Kanagarajah’s behavior, in beating his two cousins with sticks, but it was the lack of opportunity for Tamil women to portray themselves as much like all others, still victims of domestic abuse regardless of the form it takes, that speaks volumes about the assumptions of Western society about the complacency of coloured women. Would they not want to speak out against this brutality the way many white women do? The patriarchal assumptions, and the subsequent reductionistic approach to the domestic abuse of women in the western world are what I would like to focus on in this post.

Lawrence quotes from the Toronto Sun days after the Kanagarajah case which stated that “Toronto Police and Sri Lankan community members said the incident wasn’t cultural, because with more than 100,000 Sri Lankans living in Toronto, there would surely be weekly incidents of this type if that were the case.” (109, my italics) The inability of the media to separate the incident from the culture; insistence that the sticks were important to focus on merely because they were unusual weapons; and the qualification that sticks were worse than any other weapon, are all reasons why we as Western citizens are not able to separate the crime from the people, and the type of people, who commit them. There is a very prominent gun culture in the United States, and is often a source of satire and ire within certain age and political groups, but the people who commit gun crimes span many cultures and engender an increasingly diverse group of people. There is something to be said for a stick being used as a weapon, and how it relates to a certain culture or ethnicity: perhaps there is a preponderance of sticks available near Sri Lankan homes, citing the convenience angle. Regardless of the reason, domestic abuse is viewed differently when perpetrated by members of the mainstream culture compared to the diseased approach taken by alien cultures. Guns, to those unfamiliar with their scorching ferocity, are likely infinitely more frightening to a person unaccustomed to its loudness, its heat, its immediate deadliness, and the stick, such a toy in its place, looks far less intimidating. But it is the strangeness of the crime, the beating of two young girls for having pre-marital interest in boys, that I suspect people cling to in an effort to justify their own violent infractions, “well at least I didn’t hit my family member over something so petty,” that leads to this intense racialization, and the superiority complex most westerners develop when comparing themselves to others. As Lawrence says, we no longer condescend upon races, but rather the different cultures within those races, and by doing so, marginalize those members of an ethnicity who do not participate in those traditions.

Lawrence states that “’Third World’ cultures are perceived not only as monolithic but also as static,” (116) and in that she makes an argument for why North Americans combine strangeness and primitiveness together when thinking of the Other. Because we, as a western ‘culture,’ are always moving forward and improving, and leave those perceived static cultures further and further behind, and by doing so perceive their strangeness more acutely as we go. It’s such a skewed patriotism that I wonder if there is ever really any respect in the way we treat immigrants. The phenomenon of cultural racism exists, as she states, under the guise of “cultural sensitivity.” We no longer denigrate a person based on his or her skin colour; instead we scoff at the smell of his food or the clothes he wears. These people are inherently inferior because they exude a strangeness that we pass off as primitive, an unlikely and uncanny ability to understand them because they are less complex than we are. In all, the foundation of our cultural sensitivities, and hence the ways we approach the punishment of deviants based on the degree that their behaviour differs from our own, is a learned pattern sustained from colonial superciliousness.

Any change in our behaviour will have to come when we recognize in ourselves that to all others our actions are just as strange and remote, and the judicial system needs to understand the notion that not all people can be culled into a single culture, the notion itself an ever-accelerating current. One may not be able to decide his place within the world, but culture is not necessarily tied to skin colour, and the Tamil girls who were beaten with sticks by their cousin may not have wanted to be thrust unwittingly into this process of racialization. Unwittingly extricated from such a place by the media, by school, by friends, they may have perceived their interest in boys to be acultural, devoid of any defined intent, ill or otherwise. Culture exists only when it is externally recognized by others, and their understanding of their positions in a minority skin colour may have conflicted quite starkly with the fact that nobody, except their own family, treated them differently from any other fourteen or seventeen year old girl.

That the media latched on to the story because of the strangeness of the instrument of abuse, the stick, and the awkwardness around the reason for the attack. People in western societies don’t typically use sticks to attack others, but many refused to see past their myopic interpretation of otherness at the telling realization that domestic abuse is merely that, regardless of whom is the perpetrator.

Works cited:

Lawrence, Sonia N., "Cultural Insensitivity: The Dangers of a Simplistic Approach to Culture in the Courtroom," Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 13 (2001): 107-36

Paradox of Multicultural Vulnerability and the Civil Society Solution

Culture is an important component of a person’s identity; however, the same culture could have vastly different manifestations in different individuals. This is because culture, like identity, is an organic and dynamic concept. An immigrant rich county l can expect a diverse range of cultures, and an even more diverse range of manifestations due to exposure to both native and other immigrant cultures. The government should adopt an accommodation policy that supports the development of civil society groups within identity groups in Canada. This post will first examine the need for government to adopt a policy of cultural accommodation, the resulting problem of the paradox of multicultural vulnerability [hereon: multicultural paradox](Shachar 2000), articulate the nuances of the civil society proposal, and finally consider some of the consequences of this proposal.

There are numerous rationales for the government to pursue a policy of cultural accommodation. Among the most persuasive reasons for a policy of cultural accommodation is that members within minority cultures (or identity groups) are more likely to be discriminated against by mainstream society. In this regard, cultural accommodation is often a form of affirmative action. The maintenance of minority and immigrant cultures also adds a diverse voice in the democratic discourse. Cultural accommodation and promotion promotes a vibrant democracy by allowing minority groups a chance to voice their opinions. The premise is that a state which has a high level of immigrant population, cultural accommodation is an essential policy for the state.

While the government should adopt a policy of cultural accommodation, there are varying degrees by which the policy could be pursued. The problem with state support of culture is that the state will inevitably endorse one version of a culture over another. The ‘multicultural paradox’ exists when the government’s endorsement of a particular version of culture reinforces the power hierarchies that exist within that culture. An example of the multicultural paradox is the government giving cultural groups the right to adjudicate family law issues. In Israel, the government’s acceptance of religious jurisdiction of family law under extensive circumstances has undermined the citizenship rights of woman within those religions (Ibid, 77-79).

Another problem with the government pursuing a policy of multiculturalism is that by pursuing only one version of a particular culture, it is retarding the evolution of that culture. When sponsoring a version of a cultural identity, the government is giving those who disproportionately gaining an incentive to discourage change to the culture’s identity. Specifically, it allows the current cultural elites to accuse those who advocate for a change in the status quo of ‘destroying the culture’. The fact that all culture experience evolution disproves such accusations and the government should not consider all promotion of cultural evolution as destruction of the target culture.

The problem that the government faces with the multicultural paradox is the tension created by the governments need to respect, and provide accommodation, for non-dominant cultures and the dominant philosophy of liberal individualism. The extremes of either pole present troubling consequences. If the government adopts a policy that defers to minority cultures, the government is abandoning the minorities within those minority cultures to the whim of the majority (Kymlicka 1995, 41). If, on the other hand, the government adopts a policy to protect individual’s citizenship rights, the government effectively limits the diversity of voices available in a democratic society. It is also imposing the values of the majority on the minority, also a situation contrary to liberal theory.

A possible solution to this problem is for the government to adopt a concurrent policy of cultural accommodation and support for the establishment and maintenance of culture-specific civil society-like organizations for minorities within the cultural identity group. In this dual-track policy, the government would continue to support and accommodate protections for critical cultural practices. This would include practices that directly or indirectly reinforce the power of the cultural group’s elites and would be detrimental to minorities within the cultural group. The difference in this policy is that the government would actively support the emergence and sustenance of culture-specific civil society groups for cultural minorities.

The civil society groups that the government should support can, and should, range in their mandates and form. In the case of the religious groups, the government should sponsor groups from organizations helping woman who leave their husbands establish a new life (hand-on aid agencies) to those who would advocate for a change in the group’s divorce procedures (advocacy organizations). The existence of such organizations provides a venue by which minorities within cultural groups could organize to effect change within the culture. This program allows the government to respect the importance of a diverse cultural mosaic while promoting the evolution of those cultures by empowering the weak minorities within the culture.

This policy is employs a similar philosophy to theorists who argue that development of civil society within a state is vital to ensuring that that state respects individual rights. The government’s role in the establishment of civil society should only be limited to providing the environment (in funding and other areas) that would promote minorities within the culture to form the civil society organization itself. A government established organization would have the same effect as the government dictating the direction that the evolution should take. By allowing the minorities to form the organizations, the government can ensure that the core of the culture’s evolution remains in the hands of members of the group. The government, in short, should only enable and not direct change.

The dual-track policy is not without its flaws, especially in the areas of selection bias, delayed impact, and inconsistency in government policy. The problem of selection bias is similar to the argument made about cultural accommodation. The government, in choosing which advocacy group to fund is at risk of establishing legitimate minorities that receive funding and support, as opposed to ‘illegitimate’ minorities that do not. While selection bias is a real problem in the dual-track policy, the fact that minorities are being organized forces the established elites to be more receptive of minority concerns. It also breaks the mainstream conception of a homogeneous cultural identity, and alerts the public to the fact that nuances to cultural identity exist.

The delayed impact critique of the proposed policy refers to the fact that cultural evolution requires a significant period of time to occur. During the time when the minority groups are being established to the time when successful evolution takes place, many minority cultural group members remain second-tier citizens. The continued subordination of cultural minorities is an unfortunate cost of the dual-track policy. The alternative, of unconditionally privileging individual liberties over the integrity of minority cultures, is more costly. The destruction of cultural integrity would not only have the detrimental effects mentioned at the beginning of this post, but also expose the culture's minorities to being cast as traitors of the culture (Shachar 2000).

Finally, the government sponsorship of cultural minority groups advocating for change within their culture and its implicit endorsement of cultural elites via cultural accommodation has the government in effect sponsoring both sides of the debate. The government is concurrently pursuing a policy to respect of minority culture while attempting to foster evolution of such culture. The dual-track policy is not fundamentally inconsistent; the promotion of cultural minority groups is predicated on respecting minority cultures while empowering cultural minorities to advocate for change within the mainstream minority culture. The policy adopts a more nuanced approach to culture and cultural evolution; it also allows the government to strike a balance between respect of minority cultures and the rights of minorities within culture.

While it is tempting for citizens of the mainstream identity to argue for the unconditional primacy of individual rights over cultural accommodation, it is contrary to the fundamental principle of multiculturalism to adopt such a stance. The dual-track policy, even with its flaws, provides the government with the ability to balance between supporting cultures and minorities. The multicultural paradox may not be fully resolved by the dual-track policy; however, the policy represents a positive step to resolve the paradox. Until a more comprehensive multicultural citizenship model can be developed the dual-track policy represents the optimal course of action for the government.

Works Cited List

Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship (Oxford, 1995), pp. 34-49

Ayelet Shachar, "On Citizenship and Multicultural Vulnerability," Political Theory 28,no. 1 (2000): 64-89