Introduction

Realities of Human Beings: Whose Sensitivity?

Chapter 12 presented an insight into the realities of the respective State identities and the cultural context in the Baltic States and Poland. The societies have experienced deep cultural traumas and geopolitical insecurity. Although these traumas are not related to LGBT rights, the sense of threat is transferred, as a defence mechanism, onto LGBT rights. Cross-border recognition of civil status in the States which are not ready for same-sex marriages is often described as “very sensitive”, but seldomly is it the sensitivity of people that is meant by the words “a sensitive issue”. Political sensitivity is the constant focus of attention. In the current chapter, by contrast, the realities of human beings are at the centre of attention. There seems to be a hidden question emerging in many contexts whether the same-sex spouses are indeed vulnerable and sensitive humans, or political activists, and whether their marriage is a political project, or indeed serves the same function as a heterosexual marriage. That is why it is so significant to consider the humanity of people at stake.

Concept of Re-Cognition

The concept of “recognition” in this particular chapter is also broader than in other parts of the book. It is recognition in law and beyond law, rather than “cross-border recognition of validity of status” that becomes the centre of attention. To mark this difference, this chapter uses a slightly different word: “re-cognition”. The word “recognition” in itself contains “cognition”, which refers to mental development and understanding. The Latin word cognosco ( con “with” and gnōscō “know” ) means, in the process of cognition, we become aware, acknowledge, perceive and understand. Therefore, the process of recognition is closely related to understanding the “others”. Empirical research in psychology and sociology greatly contributed to the understanding of same-sex families and contributed to legal changes.

Six years past Obergefell v. Hodges, the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision legalizing same-sex marriage, it is possible to dispassionately assess the dire claims about “redefining” marriage. Allowing “Adam and Steve” to marry undercuts the association between marriage and procreation, same-sex marriage opponents contended (Gallagher 2008). Of course, marriage is an important site for childrearing, too—both for opposite-sex and same-sex couples.

In the years before Obergefell, a steady drumbeat of articles claimed or assessed whether same-sex marriage would redefine marriage, crescendoing around Obergefell, as Figure 1 shows.

Public opinion polling shows Americans have come to embrace LGBT identities and same-sex marriage. With 20/20 hindsight, Chief Justice Roberts’ dissent that “[s]tealing this issue from the people will […] mak[e] a dramatic social change […] more difficult to accept” feels overblown.

What is troubling for longer-term implications of Obergefell is lawmakers’ subsequent attempts—thankfully, now mostly stalled-out—to “get the government out of the marriage business, altogether” (Ablow 2013). This is the idea that, in U.S. Senator Rand Paul's words, “the time has come to examine whether or not governmental recognition of marriage is a good idea” (2015). Religious leaders latched onto this seductively simple response. More than 700 Christian figures pledged to cleave civil and religious marriage to avoid “implicat[ing] the Church in a false definition of marriage” (Radner and Seitz 2014). Lawmakers also took up the gauntlet. But they advanced quite different conceptions of what it would mean to “end marriage” (Lindenberger 2009)— from shifting the responsibility for issuing marriage licenses to the church to redefining marriage entirely as domestic partnerships (Rutherford 2016).

The dangerous idea of radically transforming the state's relationship to marriage took hold. This occurred despite the fact that well-drawn statutory protections offering robust exemptions to religious communities could mute the impact on religious dissenters without entirely overhauling the current institution of marriage. Instead, lawmakers advanced the far more ambitious platform of cleaving marriage away from the state, taking a page from feminists. And yet those advocating for this separation—from feminists to religious advocates—presumably were concerned for vulnerable persons in their own communities, who would likely fare worse.

This chapter aims to explain the historical and contemporary conceptual terrain over which queer and religious actors are operating, especially in relation to the state's recognition of same-sex relations. I first cast some light on the link between secularization and secularism with a view to determining what we are to understand by these terms. Then, I discuss an alternative view of secularization as an integral part of the state-building processes in Europe. In doing so, I explain why the theoretical toolkit of “legal pluralism” proves particularly enlightening in rethinking the role and place of sub-state normative regimes within states. Finally, I briefly apply my arguments to the ongoing struggle for same-sex marriage in numerous countries around the world. I argue that in a truly post-secular society the legal order should allow people—whether queer or religious—to produce “their own law” and make available a plurality of regulatory models.

Shortcomings of the Post-Secularization Thesis

The prefix of “post-secularization” conveys the idea of going beyond, but one needs to ask whether secularization is something one can really go beyond. I am not referring to the question of whether contemporary politics can dispense with secularization, but the question of whether or not secularization has ever existed as an actual phenomenon. If secularization never really occurred, talk of post-secularization runs two risks. First, it could tell a story that does not stand close scrutiny. Second, and more importantly, it could be contributing to a mistaken understanding of the historical processes it refers to. The case I want to make is that secularization was not so much an actual phenomenon as it was a narrative meant to produce reality. One of its main effects is what Charles Tilly identifies as “the major unanswered question in European history” (Tilly 1989, 563)—that is, the political form called “state.”

I am not arguing that secularization is something merely discursive concerning the modern state or that it merely played a role in the establishment of the fundamental distinction between the secular and the religious realms. As a signifier, secularization does refer to a bundle of both signified and actual phenomena.

Shortly after Black Lives Matter protests broke out around the United States in the spring of 2020, a curious protest took place in the state of Texas. Organized in response to the Texas governor's coronavirus-related order to close businesses devoted primarily to the serving of alcohol, some Texas bar owners staged a “Bar Lives Matter” protest outside of the Texas State Capitol building in the city of Austin and others coordinated a lawsuit challenging the governor's order in U.S. federal court. This lawsuit instigated by the Texas Bar and Nightclub Alliance followed in the footsteps of other lawsuits brought by Christian churches around the nation challenging pandemic-related limitations on in-person religious services. In July 2020, responding in apparent disgust to the activities of devoted drinkers in Texas and elsewhere, the wellknown economist and liberal columnist Paul Krugman lamented the potentially deadly reopening situation facing U.S. schools and students in the coming fall, opining in The New York Times that “the reason we’re in this position is that states, cheered on by the Trump administration, rushed to allow large parties and reopen bars. In a real sense America drank away its children's future.”

In this concluding chapter on future directions in queer and religious political alliances, I aim to explore the pandemic pitting of bars against babies, and then too churches against children. Moreover, I will demonstrate that the constellation of competing interests present in the coronavirus pandemic—one of the defining moments of the Trump presidency— cannot be broken down along neat political affiliations or dispersed across predictable camps on either the left or right. Rather, what we have witnessed again is the crisscrossing of political, religious, and sexual interests defying easy categorization. During these times, indeed, it seems almost as if queer theorist Gayle Rubin's 1980s-era “bar dykes” managed to commandeer Texan nightlife and that Paul Krugman was writing for Phyllis Schlafly's conservative Eagle Forum rather than for The New York Times.

In this topsy-turvy situation, the possibility of new alliances between queer and religious groups has emerged. Indeed, as this chapter discusses, recent viruses—notably, HIV and coronavirus—have raised existential issues for queer and religious folk alike and instigated converging debates about sustaining community in the midst of mass human death.

A central claim of natural law theory is that moral reality exists independently of human beliefs about that reality. “Moral laws are propositional realities, ‘dictates of reason’, not character traits, practices, or cultural creations.” Moral reality is reflected in the natural law; no law can lay claim to obedience if it lacks this connection.

Yet history is replete with natural law theorists who confused their beliefs about the natural law for the natural law itself. The nineteenth-century campaign against Mormon polygamy is a case study that has echoed in recent debates about LGBTQ access to marriage. The federal government prosecuted and imprisoned polygamous Mormon husbands, revoked common law privileges and constitutional rights, and legally dissolved the Mormon church while seizing most of its assets. More than a century later, polygamy continues to generate legal commentary, especially in debates about marriage equality.

Nineteenth-century anti-polygamist arguments and contemporary defenses of traditional marriage each illustrate the dangers and pretensions of natural law theory. Anti-polygamists justified their attacks on Mormon polygamy with appeals to Protestant Christian morality, a sexist theory of republican self-government, and White supremacy, rooting each of these in the natural law. Today, of course, U.S. laws cannot be justified by their mere coincidence with Christian morality. Though gender imbalances remain, women are now entitled to full participation in representative government and public life. White supremacy also persists but is illegal in government and disreputable in society. Yet, anti-polygamists were confident of the objective truth of their premises and the resultant conclusion that polygamy violated the moral order; it was the passage of time that exposed these purportedly objective truths as merely customary values held by nineteenth-century White Americans.

Natural law defenders of traditional marriage made the same mistake in a different way. They argued that the defining characteristic of marriage is reproductive sexual union, a definition now rejected by most Americans—including, one suspects, most believers. Seventy percent of Americans, including a majority of political conservatives, support same-sex marriage, and nearly two-thirds of American women of child-bearing age, including virtually all believers, use some form of contraception. Rather than mistaking widely held social conventions for the objective moral order, as did the nineteenthcentury anti-polygamists, traditional marriage defenders have mistaken their sectarian religious beliefs about marriage for that order.

Religious minorities can play a role in the recognition of equal rights for samesex couples and in affirming the equal dignity of families. Typical accounts of the relationship between religious groups and sexual minorities, such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people or women, describe a different story. They report that religious communities oppose progressive reforms, especially with regard to gender roles and LGBTQ rights. This chapter discusses certain religious communities defying this view. Examples include some churches of Reformed Protestantism. More specifically, they concern the Waldensian Church, a historical denomination that today survives only in Italy and in some regions of Argentina and Uruguay.

I would like to start by offering a roadmap. The first section addresses the potential role that religious minorities might have in promoting progressive views of gender and LGBTQ rights. Notably, it argues that they might have a privileged perspective when it comes to creating alliances with these sexual minorities. The chapter then offers an overview of the Waldensian Church and its history. It then focuses on the debate about gender and LGBTQ rights within the Waldensian church and on the distinctive meaning of family within the Waldensian Church. It argues that this distinctive meaning has streamlined reforms within the Church that were beneficial to nontraditional families. The concluding section offers reflections on new directions, and, more generally, the future of similar alliances with sexual minorities.

The Privileged Perspective of Religious Minorities

Observing the world through the lens of a social minority offers a unique perspective. The condition of being a minority generally implies a request for special protection or particular statuses. But the existence of minorities also has also implications for other groups: the minority factor has an innovative and disruptive power in its challenging the certainties of a dominant majority. When these two aspects occur in tandem societies experience the power of what, in philosophical and political terms, Jacques Maritain defined as “prophetic shock minorities.” By the term, he refers to “small dynamics groups freely organized and multiple in nature, which would not be concerned with electoral success but with devoting themselves entirely to great social and political ideas and which would act as a ferment either inside or outside the political parties.”

In recent decades, it has seemed as though queer people and women's rights advocates were making progress in the culture war over the family. From 2001 to 2021, 31 countries legalized marriage for same-sex couples. Majorities in the United States and European Union countries came to support same-sex marriage and other fundamental rights for LGBTQ families. Although some variation remains, divorce is now relatively easy to attain in most Western nations around the world. Parentage and custody rights for same-sex couples are increasingly the norm in Western democracies.

Yet, despite this growing support for pluralistic family forms, divisions remain, and, in many countries, legal victories for religious conservatives threaten to scale back progress for women and sexual minorities. For example, in 2018, the United States Supreme Court decided Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission in favor of a baker who refused service to a same-sex couple because of the baker's religious beliefs. In the past seven years, three politically motivated lawsuits challenging the Affordable Care Act's contraception mandate on religious and moral grounds landed in the Supreme Court. In 2021, the Court sided with a Catholic adoption agency that refused to work with LGBTQ couples. Women's and girls’ right to terminate a pregnancy, even before viability and even in cases of rape or incest, is in peril, with the Supreme Court deciding to sit by and watch for months as Texas, the country's second-largest state, passed a law criminalizing abortion and effectively rendering Roe v. Wade a dead letter. With a new supermajority on the Supreme Court since 2020, social conservatives in the United States have pressed forward with a sweeping set of religious exemptions from public services and nondiscrimination laws that threaten to turn respect for group differences into a license to discriminate. And these recent attacks go well beyond the conservatives’ bread and butter issues of abortion and “the family”—as evidenced by pandemic-era religious freedom challenges to even basic public health measures such as mask mandates, immunizations, and restrictions on large gatherings. That is, despite increased acceptance of pluralistic family forms, it seems that the United States is suddenly awash in a tide of religiosity.

How can queer activism contribute to gaining recognition and material support for a plurality of nonnormative relationships and families, including Consensual Nonmonogamies (CNMs) and polyamories? What is the significance of coalition work in queer legal politics around relational rights? What kind of coalitions may be conducive to intersectional queer politics for social justice and what kind of coalitions may obstruct such a goal? In this chapter, I engage in a series of interrelated reflections on queer politics, religion, and the ethics of coalition work around the legal recognition of relationships not matching the normative pattern of heterosexual dyadic organization. Its main focus is on the potential of coalitions between queer and religious groups.

The chapter argues that coalitional practice forms a key element of queer politics and that coalitions between queer and religious groups are in principle welcome. I further argue that queer and religious groups do not form mutually exclusive populations and that the boundaries between the secular and religion appear to be much fuzzier than usually acknowledged if we carefully examine the history of core political concepts, including those commonly structuring queer politics. Inasmuch as CNM is concerned, the observation that both secular and new-age polyamory and conventional religious polygamy face legal discrimination in many jurisdictions provides valid reasons for considering coordinated responses. Apart from a shared interest in relationship recognition beyond dyadic relational forms, the racist denigration of indigenous CNMs or Muslim polygamy in white settler societies and Western (majoritarian Christian) countries invites coalitions around anti-racism as an integral part of intersectional queer social justice politics. At the same time, I suggest that fruitful coalition work is best founded on a set of shared values, which renders queer coalition work with groups that are overtly hostile toward LGBTQI+ people inherently problematic. Foregrounding the need to carefully consider the ethical grounds for coalitional practice, the chapter rejects proposals that queer agendas could be advanced through strategic coalitions with conservative religious groups whose major motivation for action is the preservation of civil marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Queer politics strives for an ethics of inclusivity and entails the affirmation of nonnormative ways of life.

This book elaborates on a counterintuitive idea. Religious conservativism in family law could have more in common with queer politics than liberal politics, with queer designating “whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant [as t]here is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers” (Halperin 1995, 62). I focus on a specific illustration of this idea, by looking at certain nonmarital regimes introduced in the West from the end of the nineties with the goal of obstructing marriage equality.

Laws open to friends or relatives were enacted by same-sex marriage opponents in, for instance, Alberta, Vermont, Hawai’i, Victoria, Tasmania, and New Zealand. Similar laws have been defined “[t]he backlash version of the embracing of domestic partnerships” (Boyd and Young 2003, 768). The mobilization of the conservative groups behind them was not animated by a desire to promote plural family values and recognize a larger set of families. The idea was to grant legal recognition to same-sex couples while at the same time preserving traditional marriage, as well as diluting the symbolic value of same-sex couple recognition into a larger basket of desexualized relationships. Yet, such reforms virtually aligned with a queer ambition to debunk stereotypes around family. Amongst these stereotypes is the sexual and romantic nature of the union, challenged by the recognition of committed unions of adult friends and relatives (nonconjugal couples).

The recognition of nonconjugal families is a worthwhile project from the perspective of queer politics. There is a fascinating body of literature on the much-needed shift in law's focus from sex to care. By reducing law's attachment to sexual relationships, these theories suggest, law could finally also recognize nonconjugal families where important caretaking work occurs. In Canada, the debate was sparked by the seminal work of the Law Commission of Canada, an independent federal law reform agency advising the government to shift law's focus on nonconjugal couples already in 2001 (Law Commission of Canada 2001, 37; see also Cossman and Ryder 2001). The United States and the United Kingdom have also been a wellspring of seminal reflections in this area.