Rethinking the Angus Leung case and ‘winning’ spousal benefits for same-sex married couples in Hong Kong: a victory or still a long way to go?
Recently, civil servant Angus Leung won his case against the government and the Court of Final Appeal in Hong Kong ruled in favour of him and his husband Scott Adams, who have entered into marriage overseas, getting a joint tax assessment option. It does not only push forward the public recognition of sexual coupledom of gay and lesbian-identified couples but is also significant in opening up an alternative narrative in the legal discourse regarding the systematic injustice. However, in my opinion, there are still potential dangers in a pre-mature celebration and a dire need to rethink the notion of same-sex marriage or marriage itself and the equality recognizing it grants (or does not grant).
On the plus side, the court ruling was an essential step in validating same-sex couples’ sexual citizenship in terms of relationship-based rights claims. In “Constructing sexual citizenship: Theorizing sexual rights,” Richardson writes, “Although the language of rights largely speaks to the freedoms and obligations of the citizen, many citizenship rights are grounded in sexual coupledom rather than rights granted to us as individuals”. This judgment gave same-sex couples married overseas the spousal benefits their marriage status should grant them. It is also significant that the court statement reads “the absence of a prevailing view in society was no reason to deny the rights of a minority”, thereby affirming these rights as basic human rights which cannot be swayed by public opinion.
On the downside, we need to beware of the entrapments of rejoicing at this partial recognition of same-sex marriage. To rally for the legalization or recognition of same-sex marriage is inevitably to resort to the politics of assimilation in order to earn acceptance by the largely heteronormative society. Butler writes in “Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’” that “[Heterosexuality] can augment its hegemony through its denaturalization, as when we see denaturalizing parodies that re-idealize heterosexual norms without calling them into question”. By the same token, in the endeavour to conform to and re-idealize the heteronormative norms without questioning them, the hegemony of heteronormativity is augmented. We need to keep in mind that the legalization or recognition of same-sex marriage is not equivalent to equality for all. Rather, it appeals to the policy of sameness to produce what Lisa Duggan coined as “homonormativity”, by duplicating and re-circulating the ideals of heteronormativity of a ‘long-term’, ‘monogamous’, ‘loving’ and ‘intimate’ sexual coupledom. Petitioning for the approval of a monolithic ‘good gay image’ of the married couple inevitably equates the negation and erasure of any diversity in the queer community and gender identification. We do not only want people who identify as gay men and lesbian women to have marriage equality. In fact, we want all people who identify as men, women, gender fluid, non-binary, transgender, or genderqueer and all else to have equality and freedom. We also do not only want marriage equality for all, as ‘marriage’ is a narrow and somewhat exclusive notion denoting the ‘right’ form of relationship for the ‘right’ genders. Rather, we demand the freedom for all to have conduct-based rights claim, identity-based rights claim and relationship-based rights claim in what Diane Richardson termed as sexual citizenship.
(Charmed Circle of Sexuality by Gayle Rubin)
The implication behind is that while we applaud the partial victory of the Angus Leung case, we must never stop pondering what would be authentic equality for all and how we should build upon partial victories to achieve it. I would suggest that the politics of liberation would be a better alternative to the politics of assimilation and that only by celebrating diversity can we truly prevail in queering the notion of marriage and disrupting the source of inequality: the hegemony of heteronormativity.