She applied the “Page 99 Test” to her new book, Marriage Material: How an Enduring Institution Is Changing Same-Sex Relationships, and reported the following:
Page 99 launches browsers into the middle of a chapter about a group of LGBTQ+ people I call “Marriage Assumers.” The previous two chapters examine two other groups - “Marriage Embracers” and “Marriage Rejecters.” Taken together, these chapters explore variations in the marital orientations of different kinds of LGBTQ+ people.Learn more about Marriage Material at the University of Chicago Press website.
Page 99 conveniently offers readers a brief summary of what they have already learnt about Marriage Assumers thus far in the chapter. Asking them to “pause and imagine the average Marriage Assumer for a minute,” it directs readers to imagine the following kind of LGBTQ+ person:She came out and started dating same-sex partners after legal marriage was already possible. She always assumed that she would get legally married one day. Knowing that her relationships have marriage potential matters to her, and she has vetted her partners for marriage interest and commitment early on, making it a deal-breaker. She does not know exactly why marriage is so important to her. Instead, she feels it is “just what you do” when you love someone and are committed to them. She also wants children, and she feels strongly (but rather abstractly) that marriage is important for having them. She has been lucky enough to find a partner who feels the same way.Having reiterated central features of a “Marriage Assumer,” page 99 then guides readers to focus on the topic of a new section on “Marital Readiness” by asking: “But how does she know when it is the right time to get married?”
By the end of the page, I have set the scene for answering that question, but have not yet delved into the data that does so. I explain that although Marriage Assumers needed to know that marriage was “on the table” from the beginning, it was usually only the front end of their relationships that progressed very quickly toward marriage, then their relationships slowed down (something I later refer to as “locking it down, then slowing it down” – p.101). Marriage Assumers moved quickly from meeting to dating and moving in together, in an effort to ensure a commitment that could put them on the track toward marriage, but then wanted to take their time to achieve particular relationship and life attributes deemed necessary for marital readiness. Marriage was regarded as the crowning achievement of their relationships; it was something they were consciously working toward, but would not rush into.
Browsers would get only a partial idea of the whole work from page 99. They would gain a general sense that it examines how LGBTQ+ people think about and do marriage. Yet relationship trajectories and “marital readiness” represent just one small part of that larger story.
Because page 99 conveniently summarizes how “Marriage Assumers” think about marriage, readers would accurately glean the way marriage is taken for granted by LGBTQ+ people who formed serious relationships after same-sex marriage was already legal, and the extent to which marriage defines their relationships. And if one had to pick a group to narrow in on, Marriage Assumers perhaps make most sense. Now marriage is legal nationwide, all LGBTQ+ people start their relationships with the option to legally marry.
But it is only by comparing across groups that readers gain important insights about the transformative impact of legal marriage on LGBTQ+ lives. Browsers might be left with an impression that same-sex relationships today are fairly indistinguishable from heterosexual ones. But they may not realize that this represents a significant transformation in same-sex relationships. And they will not understand what has been gained and lost with that change. Notably, at the very top of page 99 a run-on sentence from the previous page emphasizes “the central role that access to legal marriage plays in shifting ideas about marriage and parenting across generations.” The rest of page 99 quickly moves on to a new sub-section, but I hope a savvy reader might be alerted to ponder social change.
What I would want readers to know, that might not be possible from page 99 alone, is that Marriage Material is not just about same-sex marriage. I use the case of same-sex marriage to advance understanding of the enduring and changing meaning of marriage as an institution. I challenge the prevailing narrative in family sociology that marriage is a fundamentally weakened institution, showing how it continues to shape individual choices and behaviors in profound ways. I illustrate how marriage operates, shedding light on a variety of institutional mechanisms that work independently and in tandem for different people. Overall, I contend that marriage has had a transformative power on same-sex relationships—one that is much stronger than the power of LGBTQ+ individuals to change the meaning and practice of marriage.
--Marshal Zeringue
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