Abstract
The legalisation of same-sex marriage in South Africa in November 2006 made the country
the exemplar for gay and lesbian rights in Africa. The advocacy of, struggle for and finally
winning the right to marry was a euphoric victory for numerous gay and lesbian people. The
various steps that had to be negotiated in order to pass the Civil Union Act are documented in
To Have and to Hold: The Making of Same-Sex Marriage in South Africa (2008, hereafter To
Have and to Hold). The blurb at the back of To Have and to Hold describes the book as
“invaluable for understanding [the same-sex marriage] journey and its legal, social, cultural
and religious ramifications”. The editors of the volume, Judge, Manion and de Waal, add that
the various stakeholders that supported same-sex marriage “adequately interrogated the role
and function of marriage” (Judge et al. 2008: 12). In this article, I put this claim to the test by
interrogating the legal, social, cultural and religious reasons put forward in favour of samesex
marriage in To Have and to Hold. From a queer point of view, same-sex marriage is
problematic because it ignores the regulatory power of the state, the fact that marriage is a
public tradition, the argument that the supposed “respectability” bestowed by marriage is a
farce, and the contention that legal benefits should be given to people regardless of their
marital status. I use queer linguistic tools to deconstruct the claim by the editors that the text
represents a “critical engagement” with same-sex marriage (Judge et al. 2008: 1). I conclude
the article by showing how, rather than opening a space for the “recognition of diverse
sexualities and relationship forms” (Judge et al. 2008: 12), the Civil Union Act is limited to
those people who self-identify as gay or lesbian.