Status or Access? The Impact of Marriage on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Queer Community Change
| Author | Abigail Ocobock |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12468 |
| Date | 01 April 2018 |
| Published date | 01 April 2018 |
A O University of Notre Dame
Status or Access? The Impact of Marriage on
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Queer Community
Change
Drawing on interview and survey research
with 116 married and unmarried lesbian,
gay, bisexual, and queer (LGBQ) individuals,
this study offers the rst systematic data on
the relationship between legal marriage and
LGBQ community life. The author distinguishes
between marital status—being married—and
marital access—gaining access to the institution
of marriage—as distinct drivers of community
change. In contrast to research with heterosex-
uals, the ndings suggest that marital access
plays a primary role in LGBQ community
change. The different life course trajectories of
LGBQ people and their prior experiences of
social exclusion alter the relationship between
marriage and community. The ndings push
family scholarship beyond a one-model-ts-all
approach to understanding the impact of
marriage on community engagement. Taken
together, they expand literature on marriage as
greedy, the deinstitutionalization of marriage,
and marriage and social inclusion as well as
offer insights into how LGBQ people understand
and enact marriage.
This article examines the relationship between
marriage and community life for the newest
Department of Sociology, College of Arts and Letters,
University of Notre Dame, 4029 Jenkins Nanovic Halls,
Notre Dame, IN 46556-7000 (aocobock@nd.edu).
Key Words: communities, diversity, LGBTQ, marriage,
same-sex marriage, sexuality.
marital population: same-sex couples. It dis-
tinguishes between marital status—being
married—and marital access—gaining access to
the institution of marriage—as distinct drivers
of community change and examines multi-
ple mechanisms through which each impacts
lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer (LGBQ)
community life. In doing so, it pushes the
family scholarship beyond a one-model-ts-all
approach for understanding the relationship
between marriage and community engagement
and draws attention to variation by marital
and community type. The ndings contribute
to several bodies of work within the marriage
literature, including on the greedy nature of
marriage (Einolf & Philbrick, 2014; Gerstel &
Sarkisian, 2006; Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2008),
the deinstitutionalization of marriage (Cherlin,
2004; Lauer & Yodanis, 2010), and the impor-
tance of marriage for social inclusion (Cott,
2000; Herek, 2006; Lannutti, 2007; Ocobock,
2013). It also offers much-needed empirical data
on the ways LGBQ people understand and enact
legal marriage and extends research examining
LGBQ community life in a so-called “postgay”
era (Brown-Saracino, 2011; Ghaziani, 2015).
The existing family scholarship stresses the
unique benets that people gain from marriage
over and above legal rights and protections,
including better health (Kim & McKenry,
2002), increased wealth (Hirschl, Altobelli, &
Rank, 2003), trust and security (Cherlin, 2004),
family recognition (Ocobock, 2013; Powell,
Bolzendahl, Geist, & Carr Steelman, 2010),
Journal of Marriage and Family 80 (April 2018): 367–382 367
DOI:10.1111/jomf.12468
368 Journal of Marriage and Family
and social status (Cherlin, 2004; Herek, 2006).
However, this scholarship typically focuses
“inward” (Gerstel & Sarkisian, 2006, p. 17) on
marriage’s benets for individual spouses and
their children. Far less research examines the
social consequences of marriage, and that which
does presents a less positive picture—showing
that contemporary marriage reduces community
ties and participation (Coontz, 2005; Coser &
Coser, 1974; Einolf & Philbrick, 2014; Gerstel
& Sarkisian, 2006; Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2008).
The movement for marriage equality moti-
vated further interest in the relationship between
marriage and community life, with scholars and
activists expressing concerns about the future of
LGBQ community life postmarriage (Bernstein
& Taylor, 2013; Duggan, 2003). Yet existing
literature is limited to research with heterosex-
uals, and more than a decade after same-sex
marriage rst became legal in the United States
virtually nothing is known about its impact
on LGBQ communities. This new population
of marriage participants offers opportunities to
extend the literature on marriage and commu-
nity life in several ways. First, because access
to legal marriage among heterosexuals could be
taken for granted, family scholars have exclu-
sively stressed the role of marital status. Study-
ing a group that has only recently gained access
to legal marriage makes it possible to also exam-
ine the impact of marital access on community
life. Second, recent research suggests that the
impact marriage has on community life might be
determined by its participants; that is, how they
dene and enact marriage (Kim & Dew, 2016).
Focusing on a group that might do marriage dif-
ferently allows for examination of marital vari-
ation and sheds light on how heteronormative
ideas shape existing work on marital dynamics
(Reczek & Umberson, 2016). Last, by conduct-
ing research with a population that has relied on
minority community support (Weston,1991), we
can observe the moderating role that community
characteristics play in shaping the impact of mar-
riage on community life.
Drawing on interview and survey research
with 116 LGBQ individuals, I show how mar-
ital access and status operate through differ-
ent mechanisms and shape different aspects of
LGBQ community life. I argue that the different
life course trajectories of LGBQ people and their
prior experiences of social exclusion alter the
relationship between marriage and community
life, making marital access the primary driver
of community change for this rst cohort of
same-sex marriage participants.
B
Marriage as a Greedy Institution
The prevailing theoretical framework for under-
standing the relationship between marriage and
community life is that of marriage as a “greedy
institution.” This is partly based on the concept
of dyadic withdrawal, as couples tend to get
caught up in the intimacy of new relationships
at the expense of other connections. Yetscholars
also more specically argue that marriage is a
greedy institution because it demands a unique
kind of commitment that offers the least time
for others (Coser & Coser, 1974). This stems in
large part from cultural ideas about how mar-
ried people should relate to one another. The
idea that your spouse should be your soulmate
(Whitehead & Poponoe, 2001) means that mar-
riage demands an especially intense emotional
involvement. As such, the married are less able
to get together with friends or participate in
community activities without worrying that their
spouse will feel emotionally deprived. Because
spouses are also expected to be condants and
the main source of emotional support (Coontz,
2005), the married are also less likely to turn
to others for help. In contemporary marriage,
it is expected that “[e]ach must make the part-
ner the top priority in life, putting that relation-
ship above any and all competing ties” (Coontz,
2005, p. 20).
A small body of research has provided empir-
ical support for this idea. Using the second
wave of the National Survey of Families and
Households, Gerstel and Sarkisian (2006) found
that married heterosexual individuals are signi-
cantly less likely than their never and previously
married counterparts to have frequent contact
with neighbors and friends or to give them
emotional and practical support. Research with
heterosexuals has also highlighted how marriage
is particularly demanding of women’s time, as
marriage increases the hours women spend
on housework (Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2008).
Using longitudinal data from the Panel Study of
Income Dynamics, Einolf and Philbrick (2014)
found that newly married women, but not men,
were signicantly less likely to volunteer after
marriage and volunteered fewer hours.
Although their research was with
heterosexuals, Gerstel and Sarkisian (2006,
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