In the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision overturning Roe, leaving reproductive rights to be strangled by the groping hands of overwhelmingly male Republican state legislatures across the US, progressive activists demanded action. And the Democrat-controlled federal government, having dropped the ball on abortion and facing tough midterm elections this fall, swiftly responded with two bills: one which codified the right to same-sex (and interracial – an added fuck you/“dare you to overrule that” touch to Justice Thomas) marriage, the other the right to contraception.
The former quickly passed the House – including with support from members of the party that killed Roe – while the latter seems DOA in the Senate. Which, perhaps unsurprisingly, led the professional political pundits to first express “shock” at both outcomes, and then to wildly hypothesize. How had an IUD become more controversial than gay marriage? And was this actually a silver-lined sign of progress?
Perhaps the fact that most of the electorate these days – even folks residing in the reddest of states – know (and love) someone from the LGBTQ+ community has transformed homophobia into a relic of the past. (Kinda like how the election of President Obama rendered racism null and void, I suppose. Or so went the thinking of Chief Justice John Roberts when he took the lead in dismantling voting rights back in the Shelby County decision of 2013.)
Of course not. So then what’s the real reason behind this “unexpected” (gays okay / pregnancy-prevention not) Republican stance? Scratch the dirty surface and it’s really no surprise at all. It’s the patriarchy, stupid. For gay marriage – unlike rights involving women or trans people – poses no true threat to the male-run status quo. In fact, the fight for marriage equality has long been number one priority only for the gay and lesbian privileged – i.e., the heteronormative, cisgender folks with white skin, family values and, perhaps most importantly, donor dollars. The only “acceptable” kind. The ones that desperately want to join the system – not upend it.
Which is certainly not the case when it comes to actual female autonomy, to women demanding control over their own bodies (including choosing to say no to male sperm). And most assuredly not when it comes to trans rights, to bestowing power on those who physically embody an overturning of the patriarchy. (Indeed, is there any more visible proof of straight cis male irrelevancy than the sight of a pregnant trans man?)
These are the twin existential threats to “social” conservatives, who are just your average patriarchy-loving men and women. Animated above all not by Sodom and Gomorrah, but by the nightmare of a crumbling heterosexual dictatorship.
Images: Hello I’m Nik and Gayatri Malhotra