graff-marriage - IMat I s M arriageF orT l idn't e ven l ook a t rettedw hen h e d id o r emember w hite er J osec oming b etg a t m e o ver a nd you F

lidn't even look at retted when he did o remember white er Jose coming be- tg at me over and you! Fuck you!" at ng slave no more." rrm, trying to calm ,down, man. Calm . But they just held dy mother walked .l looked at my fa- own, his hair now vith his belly stick- his was my father, :ed to be. me go. I turned to Iy shoved the arm re door and down :d up at a house of relped me through o where I couldn't rere I was going to k about what I was rd Don still wasn't ras gone before he Lo table, but he saw rst told me I could nt when I could af- rim, "to figure out IMat Is Marriage ForT 341 42 WHAT IS MARRIAGE F'OR? I'. ,I. GRAF'F E' I' Graff is contributing editor to TIrcAmerican Prospect and out magazines, and a visiting scholar at the Brandeis women's studies Research Center. Her work has appeared in such publications as Tlrc Boston Globe, The New York Times Magazine, Ms., The Nation, Tlrc Village Voice, Tlte Women's Reoiew of Books,and more than a dozen anthologies. This address is based on her book entitled what Is Marriage For: The StrangeSocialHistory of Otrr Most Intimate Institution (Beacon Press, 1999). 11 ack in the 1970s, when I first fell in love,I knew I would never get ffi married. As did most of my friends during the 1980s, I expected . . . LJ we would live together without the intrusion of law. And besides, who ever imagined two women marrying? But today my marriage-or rather, the possibility of its legal recogni- tion - is being debated around the world. Three countries - the Netherlands, Belgium, and Canada-now offer same-sex couples full civil marriage rights. The Massachusetts supreme Judicial Court has said that full marriage rights must be made available to our state's same-sex couples beginning May 77,2004. Other countries-including all six Scandinavian countries, Cermany, and South Africa-offer lesbian and gay couples just about every- thing about marriage except the word. Many more countries, provinces, and states give us roughly half of full marriage's legal obligations, recognitions, rights, and responsibilities: Australia, New Zealand, Hungary, Israel, portu- gal, France, eleven out of seventeen provinces in Spain, and two provinces in Argentina. And more countries and states are on their way in the next two or three years. Taiwan has said it will pass a same-sex marriage law. South Africa, Sweden, Spain, and New Jersey are all strong contenders for full mar- riage rights. Switzerland, England, and Scotland will soon add "all-but- marriage" systems that offer just about everything but the word. California is expanding its domestic partnership registry to be essentially the equal of vermont's civil unions, and I expect more Argentinian and Brazilian states and provinces to follow suit. My job here is to give some historical background to all this discussion.