ABSTRACT
In this final substantive chapter, I move away from examining ‘real-life’ attitudes to and perceptions of law as it relates to lesbians and gay men, and shift my focus to visions for a different world. Whereas in the three previous chapters, my emphasis was on how lesbians and gay men experience law in their everyday lives, my concern in this chapter is to explore alternative visions of the place of law in the everyday lives of lesbians and gay men. To do this, I compare and contrast the approaches to the regulation of relationships and parenting in two texts: Marge Piercy’s 1979 novel Woman on the Edge of Time, which is widely recognised as one of the most important examples of feminist utopian literature, and the 2000 film Big Eden, written and directed by Thomas Bezucha, winner of 14 audience choice awards at lesbian and gay film festivals in 2000 and 2001. These two texts are examples of very different types of utopia, both of which can provide significant insights into the place of law in the everyday lives of lesbians and gay men. I argue that looking to utopian fiction can bring to light different perspectives on legal consciousness and the place of power and resistance in the regulation of lesbian and gay relationships and families. I begin with an exploration of utopian studies and I consider whether and why these two very different texts can be described as utopian, followed by a discussion of my reasons for examining utopian space within a project on sexuality and legal consciousness. In the second section of this chapter, I provide more detailed analysis of the background stories and utopian vision in these two texts, before moving on to evaluate their different approaches to the issues of same-sex relationship recognition and lesbian and gay parenting, and the insights into relationships of power and resistance that are present within them. I argue that these utopian texts can provide frameworks for alternative ways of thinking about the place of sexuality within contemporary legal frameworks.
