Who of us? The queer divorce.
I wonder if we will ever figure out what a queer marriage is?
As more queer, trans, non binary and intersex people stream into the divorce salon, facing extreme uncertainty, my focus tends to roll back to where it all began.
Arriving back at marriage. Is any of it queer? Is any of it ours?
About 10 years ago the United States defined marriage beyond a cis man and a cis woman and a country was thrust into a new definition of marriage: it’s for the gays and theys, too!
I know the names of the people who fought for gay marriage at the federal level. The history is easy to understand.
What I found myself hypothesizing on is this: how many who fought for gay marriage considered gay divorce?
Did any gay marriage proponents pause and realize so many marriages end - gay and hetero - and ask themselves what that might look like?
I can answer that for myself because I was one of those people. The answer is: no.
Right now, there is open terrain, still very much unknown to us. How we manage our lives post gay divorce.
How does one map queer divorce on the long arc of queer history? Is marriage ever queer? Is divorce ever queer?
I have now met over 200 or so queer divorcees through the divorce salon. An online space where queer, trans, and non binary people grapple with emotions, child rearing challenges and financial burdens of being divorced (or about to be).
Through discussions on the tumult of intentions lost, homes sold, children moving from one home to another, loss of community and general malaise that divorce brings our hour and a half conversations give structure and meaning to this new thing…. we are now a subculture of queer culture. And, we are not exclusive, we take all queers!!
Truly, all queers who marry should be preparing themselves for this possibility. For every queer in the salon who said, “I had no idea….it would turn out like this”. Yes, me too. Us too. All of us are right there with you.
We are much more than heartbroken queers.
We are queers who look fondly at the dreams our marriages held and we see the other queer people having and we laugh. We were once so full of the same intentions and commitment.
We hold the unenviable spot when queer dreams go unfulfilled. The rage, shame and self loathing, the relational loss and all of the other losses strung together like a shitty garland.
Divorce often breaks many bonds, including those with chosen family.
We don’t know how. We don’t know how to hold all of the truths in our hands. Salon attendees explain to me how many friends have been lost, how the fabric of their support system eroded post-divorce, how many community members stopped asking or stopped offering an ear.
Queer divorce occupies a deserted space. A kind of mystery of space collapsing into itself.
It is dramatic, it’s beautiful and, I firmly believe, an evolutionary readjustment to what the heck queer relationships might look like now and in the future.
Queer people are often dodging the seduction of the het world.
Many of us have fought against assimilation. Yet, so many of us have courted it, too.
Look, the family courts across the US are not painted in rainbows. And, judges are often queer hating bigots so you better have an attorney who knows what the heck the laws
It is failure all the way up the ladder.
There won't be a new vocabulary in these courtrooms. Family court is as binary and rudimentary as it ever was. My queerness and my transness is multi-dimensional but in that courtroom I was just fighting to be seen as a man who had a baby with an individual who didn’t want me around any longer.
The extension of legal divorce to queer couples means we remain largely.
There will be dehumanization in these courtrooms. Trans parents
Just one story and one person willing to go public with their story: Tiq Milan.
His story is so emblematic of the ongoing troubles trans people are facing in family court. I urge you to listen to his story. Once married and raising a child with his wife he is now estranged from both his ex and his child.
I wanted to be a husband. At least, I thought I did when my now ex wife asked me to marry her.
The queer writer who thanks his husband in the dedication page of his book, the Drag Race star who had a lavish wedding and jets off to Jamaica with the words JUST MARRIED written across his face, the famous talk show host who moved with her wife to another country.
I hear stories where queers who had no preoccupation with marriage decided to give it a go based on a few key factors. Chief of which is assuring of something is concrete in this
Many queer people have been shaped by the same history, religions, practical politics that het people also claim. We fall in love, we want a family we end up with little information to deviate from the next step: marriage. And, why not.
And, yet…. Is any of it queer?
