our culture. It may be that, as the literature suggests,[1] many same-sex couples would abjure mimicking or subordinating themselves to heterosexual norms. Others might wish to avoid what they consider the routinisation and commercialisation of their most intimate and personal relationships, and accordingly not seek marriage or its equivalence.[2] Yet what is in issue is not the decision to be taken, but the choice that is available. If heterosexual couples have the option of deciding whether to marry or not, so should same-sex couples have the choice as whether to seek to achieve a status
- ↑ For example De Vos “Gay and Lesbian Legal Theory” in Jurisprudence Roederer and Moellendorf (eds)
(Juta, Cape Town, 2004) at 349–50, raises the question of why the state should provide special legal recognition
to only those relationships which conform to a heterosexual stereotype, thereby further marginalising and
oppressing those whose relationships are less traditional in form. See also Cheshire Calhoun Feminism, the Family, and the Politics of the Closet: Lesbian and Gay Displacement (Oxford University Press, Cape Town,
2000) at 113, who points out that the argument that same-sex marriage rights depend on the view that the state
ought to promote one normative ideal for intimacies, plays directly into queer theorists' and lesbian feminists'
worst fears:
“Queer theorists worry that pursuing marriage rights is assimilationist, because it rests on the view that it would be better for gay and lesbian relationships to be as much like traditional heterosexual intimate relationships as possible. To pursue marriage rights is to reject the value of pursuing possibly more liberating, if less conventional, sexual, affectional, caretaking, and economic intimate arrangements. Feminists worry that pursuing marriage rights will have the effect of endorsing gender-structured heterosexual marriage …”
- ↑ The literature suggests, however, that most gay people in South Africa dream of getting married. See Gevisser “Mandela’s stepchildren: homosexual identity in post-apartheid South Africa” in Different Rainbows Peter Drucker (ed) (Gay Men's Press, London, 2000) at 135. For many the dream is attenuated by present reality. See Ruth Morgan and Saskia Wieringa Tommy Boys, Lesbian Men and Ancestral Wives: Female same-sex practices in Africa (Jacana, Johannesburg, 2005) at 321. Writing about gay identity in a black township on the outskirts of Ermelo, Reid “‘A man is a man completely and a wife is a wife completely’: Gender classification and performance amongst ‘ladies’ and ‘gents’ in Ermelo, Mpumalanga” in Men Behaving Differently Graeme Reid and Liz Walker (eds) (Double Storey, Cape Town, 2005) write that
“[s]ame-sex engagement and marriage ceremonies which take place in the region are events where traditions are both evoked and reinvented. They constitute significant social occasions where the performance of gender is enacted in a particular, ritualised way. These events are also topics for seemingly endless speculation, rumour, gossip and fantasy.” (At 221.)
He goes on to write that that while Bhuti (one of his informants) may have fantasised about a white wedding and honeymoon, Zakhi aspired towards a more traditionally African engagement and wedding ceremony, which includes lobola negotiations between the families and an umhlambiso engagement followed by a white wedding.
“Marriage signals a pinnacle of social acceptance and equality before the law. The fact that individuals are getting married in spite of the law suggests that social acceptance and the quest for respectability is a primary motivating factor.”
One organiser complained that in gay weddings there was far too much emphasis placed on superficial things such as rings, food and especially clothing at the expense of more substantial issues such as the quality of the relationship. (At 223.)
