The debate over same-sex marriage in the United States is fundamentally a disagreement about the nature of democratic citizenship and the meaning of full inclusion of adult citizens in the polity. The facts that marriage has both private and public dimensions, and is described by policy makers as natural and unchanging even as they write laws to define it create confusion among those who publicly contest same-sex marriage. The feminist critique of marriage provides insight on the issue; its critique, along with the questions raised by same-sex marriage, indicates a need to rethink many aspects of the legal regulation of families and intimate life as they affect democratic citizenship.Jyl Josephson is an associate professor of political science and director of women's studies at Rutgers University, Newark (jylj@andromeda.rutgers.edu). She is coeditor, with Sue Tolleson-Rinehart, of the second edition of Gender and American Politics; coeditor, with Cynthia Burack, of Fundamental Differences: Feminists Talk Back to Social Conservatives, and author of Gender, Families, and State: Child Support Policy in the United States. The author thanks Jennifer Hochschild for her editorial guidance. Thanks also to the three anonymous reviewers, and to Cynthia Burack, David Foster, and Stacy VanDeveer, whose questions helped me to clarify my arguments.

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Activists in feminist, queer, and trans movements share in common a critique of the existing gender order. Yet activists may have different understandings of what is wrong with existing gender arrangements, and different understandings of what might be required to establish greater social equality. Using data from interviews with activists in the feminist, queer, and trans movements in Iceland, this article looks at the ways that gender equality and the gender binary are understood by individuals who identify with feminist, queer, and/or trans activism, and some of their shared and conflicting critiques of the existing gender order.People who are involved in feminist, LGB or queer, and trans activism share many critiques of heteropatriarchal, cisnormative social and political regimes. In particular, as Raewyn Connell has put it, the 'intransigence of gender' is of concern to feminists as well