Wedlocked: The Perils of Marriage Equality

When the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision on marriage equality on June 26, 2015, many Americans celebrated. In Obergefell v. Hodges, a divided Court held that the right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by the due process and equal protection clauses of the Constitution. Although thirty-six states had already issued same-sex marriage licenses (disrupted by ongoing judicial review), this decision by the nation's highest court presumably settled the issue. Across the country the wedding-industrial complex prepared for a wave of events, and municipal offices began issuing marriage licenses to all couples who applied for them. The decision also engendered a backlash, as opponents of marriage equality looked for ways to deny this right, using “religious freedom” laws that attempted to allow discrimination in the name of protecting conservative religious values. Katherine Franke's Wedlocked raises different concerns about marriage equality. Indeed, the book's sub-subtitle asserts, “How African Americans and Gays Mistakenly Thought the Right to Marry Would Set Them Free.” In a provocative investigation, Franke juxtaposes the modern marriage-equality movement with efforts to incorporate newly freed slaves into the nation as full, if not fully equal, citizens after the Civil War. Franke does not assert a direct analogy but rather illuminates several examples where the legal right to marry limited the practical realities of black lives and suggests that such limitations can, and do, similarly affect same-sex couples. Franke's research in the archives of the Freedmen's Bureau, the southern “black codes” meant to restrict civil rights, and Civil War era pension files suggests that trends among African Americans, who are statistically less likely to get married than are other demographic groups in the United States, have a long history that still reverberates. Given how the white majority used marriage against newly freed slaves as a means to control them, the current reluctance of some African Americans to wed makes sense. Franke not only wonders if the same marital restrictions might apply to same-sex couples but also demonstrates numerous ways they do. She summarizes the book's central theme as “be careful what you wish for” (p. 13).