Fighting for marriage: Gender, sexuality and religion in the contemporary marriage movemen

"Fighting for Marriage" ethnographically explores the tensions between values and inequality over changing gender and sexual relations in the extensive project to restore heterosexual marriage. In 2004, I conducted ten months of research in Oklahoma as a case study of the broader politics of marriage in the United States. Oklahoma dedicated $10 million from its welfare block grant in 1999 to promote heterosexual marriage as a way to reduce poverty. It also successfully passed in 2004 a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. Based on participant observation and seventy in-depth interviews, I consider the productivity of culture in heterosexual marriage politics and its material consequences.;The cultural project to restore heterosexual marriage presents two frames. In Oklahoma, the "moral" frame, which claims moral authority to define gender and sexuality as fundamental to heterosexual marriage, took precedence over the "anti-poverty" frame, which concentrates more on the needs of poor single mothers. Rather than just target low-income families, marriage promotion redistributed welfare funds earmarked for needy families to provide free marriage education classes to "all Oklahomans" through community and religious organizations, and public state organizations. Consequently, the moral frame that seeks to transform the culture of marriage produced economic consequences that focused the benefits of marriage classes more on a white privileged population.;Both frames speak to an underlying anxiety over changes in gender relations and what this means to the unspoken power of heterosexuality. Yet, the less dominant anti-poverty frame brought some unintended consequences. One welfare office authorized marriage classes to poor single mothers. Tensions between values and economics led many workshop leaders to modify the curriculum to enhance relationship skills with significant others more broadly defined. Two lesbian couples also participated in two consecutive marriage workshops, silently challenging the heteronormative assumptions of the curriculum. Thus, this study suggests that, while efforts to restore heterosexual marriage seek to curtail changes in gender and sexual relations, they expand as well opportunities for thinking outside the one-man, one-woman box.