Rockway Institute In the News

Study: Denial of marriage hurts gays' mental health by Roger Brigham March 2, 2006

Within a handful of years, marriage equality has catapulted from an obscure social concept to a polarizing political issue on par with abortion, stem cell research, and the death penalty. Yet while the political debate has raged about the meaning of marriage and who should have the right to marry, little is known about the effect denial of same-sex marriage has on the gay and lesbian population.

This week, the National Sexuality Resource Center at San Francisco State University unveiled the results of an ambitious study that tries to fill in the blanks.

The findings of the review of research literature – "I Do, But I Can't: The Impact of Marriage Denial on the Mental Health and Sexual Citizenship of Lesbians and Gay Men in the United States" – are neither unexpected nor pretty. Analyzing historical and cultural factors from twin perspectives of social sciences and psychiatry/psychology, the study shows how lesbian and gay individuals who have what Gilbert Herdt, Ph.D., director of the center and co-author of the study, refers to as a "deep, cultural desire to marry" suffer increased stress disorders, guilt, low self-esteem, depression, and substance abuse when denied the right to marry. Further, the ban against same-sex marriage promotes and sustains a homophobic stereotype by causing many to seek fleeting gratification from furtive encounters rather than emotional security through stable relationships.

"These losses create traumatic reactions – what we might call the 'legacy of discrimination,'" Herdt said.
"If you force people to live in the shadows," said co-author Robert-Jay Green, Ph.D. of the Rockway Institute at Alliant International University, "they tend to live a shadowy life."

The marital lock-out also is a barrier to many LGBT people accepting their own sexuality, Green said.
"One of the reasons gay and lesbian people don't come out is because they can't conceive of a full and complete relationship," he said. "They can't conceive of a normal relationship. That can lead to all kinds of secretive, underground relationships."

In clinical terms, the study discusses how marriage provides couples with more emotional and social support than their unmarried counterparts; gives them benefits regarding taxes, inheritance rights, insurance and medical decisions; and reduces their incidence of psychiatric disorders and stress.

Leah Crask, executive and policy administrator for George Mark Children's House, and her partner, Teresa Weeks, attended the presentation with their 9-month-old son, Caden. Married at San Francisco City Hall in February 2004, only to have their marriage declared invalid six months later, they talked about the decisions they faced when they wanted to visit Crask's family in St. Louis while she was pregnant with Caden.

"It was during the third trimester," Weeks said. "They don't recognize our domestic partnership in Missouri. If Caden had been born there, I would not have been listed on the birth certificate. If anything had happened to Leah while she was there, I wouldn't have had any voice in how she would be cared for. It's a lot of things you shouldn't have to deal with on a daily basis."

Even though Crask and Weeks had been together for years, their families' attitudes changed when they were actually married.

"It makes a huge impact," Crask said. "My parents said, 'Oh, they're getting married. This is for real.'"
Stuart Gaffney and his partner John Lewis are two of the plaintiffs in Woo v. Lockyer, one of the lawsuits to declare the state ban on marriage unconstitutional.

"We were able to get married in San Francisco City Hall in what was one of the most profound days of our lives," Gaffney said. "We realized when we heard the words 'By the powers invested in me' what it was like to be treated equally. And we also realized in that moment the burden of shame we had lived with."

Gaffney's family knows something about legal bans against marriage. In 1948, his parents, an interracial couple, were allowed to be married in California, but many states still did not allow interracial marriage. They moved at various times to other states and repeatedly found their marriage was not recognized. They were not allowed to buy a house in Missouri as a married couple.

"This is something I never wanted to have to have in common with my parents," Gaffney said.
Herdt said the study of the impact of marriage and its denial over the past decades showed that bans against any population's right to marry tended to reinforce other forms of discrimination against those same populations.
"As long as the bar continued to exist against interracial marriage," Herdt said, "it continued to reinforce all racism."
Marital equality also takes a toll on LGBT children, the study shows. Because they are not able to envision a life in which they can have a happy ongoing relationship, Herdt said, they have "diminished hope, diminished dreams, and a diminished way of looking at the future."

Inevitably, the authors gave an oral reference to Brokeback Mountain, in which the two protagonists live in a rural culture in which there is no positive vocabulary for the emotions they feel so deeply and truly.
"Ennis Del Mar epitomized this existence," Herdt said. "He had to constrain his entire personality to maintain his life."

Gaffney remembered the day his bond of matrimony was removed as well as he remembered the day of joy in which it had been granted.

"Six months later it was ruled null and void," he said. "The feeling of social invisibility slammed me in the face. I felt ashamed and I felt isolated by the hand of our government."

The study is scheduled to be published this month in Sexuality Research and Social Policy: Journal of NSRC.