Provocative piece in the Village Voice from Judith Levine on gay marriage not being radical enough. Levine says marriage is an institution whose job is, in part, to enable society “to hand out opprobrium to deviants.” Levine doesn’t like that, and she frets that allowing monogamous gay men and women to wed “may stall the achievement of real sexual freedom and social equality for everyone.”

But marriage—forget the “gay” for a moment—is intrinsically conservative. It does not just normalize, it requires normality as the ticket in. Assimilating another “virtually normal” constituency, namely monogamous, long-term, homosexual couples, marriage pushes the queerer queers of all sexual persuasions—drag queens, club-crawlers, polyamorists, even ordinary single mothers or teenage lovers—further to the margins. “Marriage sanctifies some couples at the expense of others,” wrote cultural critic Michael Warner. “It is selective legitimacy.”

Levine is clearly taking a cheap shot at Andrew Sullivan (author of Virtually Normal) here. As I read her, Levine thinks the state should get out of this “selective legitimacy” business altogether. That’s a recognizable libertarian position. It’s been a few years since I read Charles Murray’s book on libertarianism, so I can’t remember if he tackles this question of the state and marriage. Human nature being what it is, my hunch is such a radical move by the state would leave an uncomfortable societal vacuum; one that organized religions and other social institutions would fill and thus assume greater legitimacy and potency in public life. We can debate the merits of such a development, but I wonder, is that really what Levine wants?