The future is queer kids: Queering the homonormative temporalities of same-sex marriage

Date01 August 2020
DOI10.1177/0263395719872595
Published date01 August 2020
Subject MatterArticles
https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395719872595
Politics
2020, Vol. 40(3) 265 –280
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0263395719872595
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The future is queer kids:
Queering the homonormative
temporalities of same-sex
marriage
Callum Stewart
The University of Melbourne, Australia
Abstract
Same-sex marriage is emblematic of a crisis of vision in lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and gender non-
binary, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ) politics, according to some queer theorists. Through the
concept of homonormativity, Duggan insightfully criticizes same-sex marriage politics as spatially
privatizing and depoliticizing queer difference. Brown argues, however, that Duggan herself reifies
homonormativity. He calls for theorists to imagine the queer potential in non-fixed spatial relations.
Given Duggan and Brown’s focus on spatiality, this article approaches queer imaginations beyond
homonormativity from a temporal perspective: I ask what transformational potential same-sex
marriage holds to queer heteronormative and homonormative temporalities. I argue that same-sex
marriage may not only queer the public/private dichotomy, but also subvert the heteronormative
temporality of straight time. Straight time produces identities, spaces, and times as fixed, pre-
political, and timeless, and is constructed against queer time in which identities, spaces, and times are
non-fixed, political, and sociohistorically constructed. By theorizing straight/queer time as politically
produced through the reproductive relation between adulthood and Childhood, I repoliticize the
temporalities of homonormative and queer imaginaries and recognize children as queer citizens of
a queer future. Same-sex marriage may therefore produce two previously untheorized images of
queer potential: the Child queered by their parents, and the Child queered by their sexuality.
Keywords
child, homonormativity, same-sex marriage, straight time, queer future
Received: 10th June 2018; Revised version received: 16th June 2019; Accepted: 29th July 2019
Introduction
Same-sex marriage has been hotly debated by gay, lesbian, and queer theorists and
activist s. Traditional gay and lesbian theorists have long advocated for same-sex mar-
riage (Mohr, 2005; Stoddard, 1992). Queer theorists, however, argue that same-sex
Corresponding author:
Callum Stewart, School of Social and Political Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3010,
Australia.
Email: calstewart@live.com.au
872595POL0010.1177/0263395719872595PoliticsStewart
research-article2019
Article
266 Politics 40(3)
marriage is emblematic of a homonormative crisis of vision in lesbian, gay, bisexual,
trans and gender non-binary, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ) politics (Duggan, 2003; Nair,
2014). Homonormativity, according to Lisa Duggan (2003: 50), is a new ‘politics that
does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions, but upholds and
sustains them, while promising the possibility of a demobilized gay constituency and a
privatized, depoliticized gay culture anchored in domesticity and consumption’. In
response, Gavin Brown (2009) argues for a move beyond homonormativity and proposes
new visions of queer spatial relations. While Duggan and Brown focus on homonorma-
tive and queer spatiality, this article approaches the move beyond homonormativity from
an alternate temporal perspective: I ask what transformational potential same-sex mar-
riage holds to queer heteronormative and homonormative temporalities.
For Jose Esteban Munoz (2009), homonormative politics presents a crisis of vision in
LGBTIQ activism because it is founded on ‘straight time’ in which identities are con-
structed as natural, timeless, and pre-political. There are significant overlaps with
Duggan’s (2003) critique here; Duggan argues that homonormative same-sex marriage
politics is founded on a fixed, depoliticizing, and privatizing ‘equality’; it grants equality
in public to white affluent gay men, but limits the potential for a more radical and demo-
cratic ongoing reconstruction of sexual, raced, gendered, or classed inequalities by
removing queer difference to the private sphere (see also Nast, 2002; Puar, 2007).
Against straight time, Munoz calls for a queer utopian imaginary of the future. For
Munoz (2009), a queer potential necessarily exists in the relations of politics. Brown
similarly emphasizes the ways in which subjects and spaces are constructed through
undetermined and interdependent relations with others (Brown, 2009). Indeed, a number
of queer theorists have demonstrated the queer non-fixity of spatial relations, including
the public/private dichotomy (Andrucki, 2017; Berlant and Warner, 1998; Blunt and
Dowling, 2006; Brown, 2009; Gormann-Murray, 2007, 2012; Oswin, 2005). Brown
(2009) contends, then, that sites that appear to strengthen norms or mark assimilation,
such as same-sex marriage, also hold a queer potential.
As Doreen Massey (1994) argues, space and time are co-constructed and thus inextri-
cably interlinked. Yet neither Duggan nor Brown consider the relational construction of
times in their analyses of homonormativity. The first contribution of this article is there-
fore to repoliticize the relational construction of time in both homonormative and queer
imaginaries through the adulthood/Childhood dichotomy institutionalized in marriage.1
The second contribution of this article is to illuminate the thus far unexplored queer
potential within homonormative relations after the legalization of same-sex marriage.
The relational construction of the adulthood/Childhood dichotomy illuminates a signifi-
cant omission in the works of both Duggan and Brown: both fail to figure children in their
respective images of the future. I argue that the homonormative politics of same-sex mar-
riage may produce two new images of utopian queer potential: the Child queered by their
parents, and the Child queered by their sexuality (or, the ungrown homosexual).
I here focus on marriage as an institution of social reproduction; marriage reproduces
the social meaning of sexual practices and the associated social structure.2 The Australian
debate over same-sex marriage has centred on its social rather than economic implications,
with a particularly strong focus on the figure of the Child (Hosking and Ripper, 2012). It
therefore provides concrete insights into homonormative temporalities and their queer
potential. In 2004, the Australian Liberal Coalition Government, supported by the Labor
opposition, amended the Marriage Act 1961 to define marriage as exclusively between a
man and a woman. This act was widely received as an attempt to delegitimize same-sex

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