Introduction

I begin this book with the story of my spouse and I essentially being kicked out of the Des Moines YMCA for being lesbians. I use this narrative to introduce the ways relationships between social and legal definitions of “legitimate” family are used to regulate access to social rights and resources. The most pervasive stories in public dialogues about families headed by lesbians and gay men at the turn of the twenty-first century suggest that legalizing same-sex marriage should be either the panacea for all the constitutional vulnerabilities of queer citizenship, or the downfall of civilization due to the crumbling of the institution of marriage. I argue that the construction of lesbian-headed families should be explored in the context of other arenas of social policy, including adoption, immigration, and welfare. I discuss my family’s location in this research.

Queer in the “Heartland”

I explore the public marriage debate through an allegorical reading of “marriage equality” in Iowa in 2009. Drawing on participant observation with a multiracial group of lesbians organizing a queer community center in Des Moines, Iowa, I narrate the extraordinary moment when the state granted new rights and a new sense of family legitimacy to same-sex couples. Both sides in the political debate claimed the high ground of the civil rights movement as touchstone for legitimacy. I draw on voices of lesbian mothers of color in particular to challenge both sides of the dialogue. I consider, in particular, “colorblind” narratives of equality on both conservative and liberal sides of the public debate. I explore the ways that sociopolitical narratives about white motherhood as salvation for vulnerable “orphans” functioned as an avenue toward political redemption for white lesbian mothers who now have the “choice” to save their children from the stigma of illegitimacy.

Family-Making and Citizenship

I draw on the voices of the mothers we interviewed to discuss the lived experience of citizenship exploring in particular, the ways a range of lesbian-headed families have been positioned in a context of inconsistent and swiftly changing laws regulating same-sex marriage and adoption. I consider citizenship and belonging through parents’ stories about interacting with social institutions (e.g., churches), government agencies (e.g., the Veteran’s Administration), state and federal laws governing marriage and domestic partnership, and the child welfare system (e.g., transracial adoption). I conclude with a structural critique of marriage as a patriarchal institution, grounded in the voices of mothers I spoke with. Through this discussion of citizenship, I explore the complexities of embracing a systemic criticism of marriage, while simultaneously desiring the legalization of same-sex marriage in order to gain access to family protections.

Irreconciliable Differences

I consider debates about Proposition 8, a California initiative that proposed banning same-sex marriage in 2008 after it had been legalized earlier that year. I explore family-making narratives of mothers of color in particular, in relation to political debates in news reports and letters to the editor between June and November 2008. Vociferous debate about children as symbols for the future of the nation engaged nationalist language of rights, equality, and “true Americans” on both sides. Sociopolitical fears about how legalizing same-sex marriage would affect children’s education and moral development infused sociopolitical narratives about the dangers of same-sex marriage for the United States. When the state initiative was passed on election night in November 2008, same-sex marriages were declared unlawful in the state. The simultaneous election of Barack Obama raised racial tensions about whose votes tipped which scales. I explore sociopolitical narratives of racial blame in news discussions of the political outcome.

Making Family Legal

I explore family-making in three distinct regions of the country in the early years of the twenty-first century. I use as a lens a series of same-sex marriage performances in 2004 in San Francisco, California; Bernalillo, New Mexico; and Iowa City, Iowa, exploring my interviewees’ differing relationships to these local claims for legal same-sex marriage. I explore the ways lesbian mothers negotitate lack of access to the range of social protections, benefits, and privileges that come with legal marriage at federal, state, and local levels through a reproductive justice lens. This comparative regional emphasis demonstrates stratification between mothers living in different states, with access to different levels of legal protection. At the same time, it also makes evident stratification among mothers of different racial-ethnic identities, tribal identities, and socioeconomic statuses living in the same state that are connected to long histories of settler colonialism, white supremacy, and patriarchy.

Making Family

I explore lesbian mothers’ narratives of pregnancy, birth, and adoption in relation to the fertility and adoption industries. I use the stories of these mothers to explore the scaffolding of power regulating motherhood, and the ways that it varies from state to state, as well as the conflictual terrain of public representations of lesbian-headed families. Stratified reproduction between lesbians and heterosexual women, and between lesbians of different races and socioeconomic statuses, fundamentally shaped these mothers’ family-making experiences. Whatever their responses to mainstream expectations regarding motherhood, their family-making practices were articulated and evaluated—by themselves and others in their social worlds—in reference to heteronormative social practices. Whether rejected or embraced, pervasive mainstream representations of motherhood and family shaped responses and social interactions. Laws and policies also shaped the ways that families were formed and understood, yet families carved out creative family structures and understandings of kinship relations.

Navigating Illegitimacy

I explore the first few years of the twenty-first century through the stories of mothers negotiating a sense of belonging and legitimacy in a sociopolitical context of shifting laws and policies about same-sex marriage and adoption. I explore the ways that mothers navigate the treacherous terrain of socializing their children in a society that denigrates their families—for example, in hospital care, education, and transracial adoption. I explore legal changes in Vermont in 2000 and Massachusetts in 2003 legalizing same-sex unions, and the ways these decisions lay legal groundwork for the widespread use of the civil rights movement as an analogy for the “marriage equality” movement. The legal strategy of arguing for the rights of same-sex couples to marry based on the harms that illegitimacy will impose on their children emerged as an important legal precedent that shaped the way same-sex marriage was legalized federally in 2015.

Conclusion

I revisit my argument that legalizing same-sex marriage both provided new rights and benefits to same-sex couples and further entrenched structures of inequality grounded in patriarchy, white supremacy, and economic stratification. I explore my research questions about how same-sex marriage was legalized and what that change may mean. The short answer is: It depends on whom you ask. Intersections of race, gender, tribal affiliation, socioeconomic status, and region show how same-sex marriage affects families in different social locations. I explore the meanings of the 2015 US Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage federally through three allegories. The family-making narratives of queer mothers articulate a critique of the contemporary US system of regulating and disseminating the rights of citizenship through legal marriage. I draw on these intersectional stories to envision coalitions and intersections between and among people and families whose lives are not recognized, valued, and protected in the United States.

What about the Children?

I consider the political context of family-making in the “family values” era of the 1990s. I explore public controversies over the children’s book Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman (1989) in relation to political discourse on race, gender, and family values in the 1990s. I consider parallel discussions of motherhood, fitness, and citizenship in public discussions about same-sex marriage, social welfare benefits, disability, and immigration. I explore changes in adoption policies as a strategy for neoliberal privatization. Considering these public narratives about “illegitimate,” “illegal,” and “unfit” mothers and children together illuminates intersecting axes of power regulating their access to the full range of citizenship rights, including race, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, and gender. Exploring this political moment is crucial to understanding the complex and contradictory ways the same-sex marriage and adoption debates are intimately connected to reproductive politics.

Reproductive Allegories

I build a framework for exploring conflicting narratives in ethnographic interviews, public policy discussions, and news media, grounded in a critical engagement of allegory. I construct a genealogy of legitimacy, gender, race, enslavement, and tribal identity, focusing on disjunctures between mainstream online family-tree programs and the family-making histories of African American, Navajo, and white queer mothers. I suggest that “traditional” family tree structures can be read as allegories for how society defines legitimate families. I argue that grafted trees function as more useful metaphors for family relationships. I consider ethnographic allegory through the family-making stories of one African American lesbian. I then turn to a discussion of the “family values” politics of the 1990s to consider sociopolitical allegory as a lens through which to explore connections between public news media, public policy discussions, and law. Genealogical allegory completes this theoretical framework of nesting analytical lenses.