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Think "gay matrimony" and what image comes to mind? Maybe you see a stream of smartly tuxedoed lesbian or gay couples marching, freshly licensed, out of San Francisco's City Hall-- thanks, on the part of city officials, to some bold legal sleights-of-hand. Look at those gay wedding rings! And those fancy get-ups! No wonder divorce lawyers, like buzzards circling a well-padded beast, salivate in anticipation. Yet it could turn out that gay marriage's most enduring benefits will fall to some of America's most disadvantaged. Consider the implications of same-sex matrimony for people in prison and those whose deviation from the straight-and-narrow puts them on a path to going there.

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If gay marriage becomes legal, then inmates married to same-sex partners-- if they're lucky enough to be in the rare jurisdiction and facility that allow it-- would have equal access to conjugal visits with their spouses. A weekend with hubby in a trailer in a prison yard may not seem very romantic, but it's a godsend for people otherwise deprived of contact with loved ones. On the other hand, the prospect of state-sanctioned sodomy occurring under state-issue sheets could give right-wing legislators just the leverage to end such visits for all prisoners.

However the most intriguing relevance of same-sex matrimony for inmates is right inside the prison's concrete-and-steel bowels. The West's burgeoning penitentiaries are its last remaining large-scale same-sex institutions-- which, like the armies and boarding schools of yore, are filled with homo sex. Gay marriage offers a chance for legitimating-- and maybe moderating the violent jealousies that can attend-- the only romantic outlet to which most prisoners have access. And anyway isn't marriage, like schooling, supposed to calm and civilize the male, so that he doesn't end up in jail? Prisons have classrooms within their walls, so why not encourage intramural marriage?

In a strict sense, authorities couldn't do much about it. "Prisoners have a Constitutional right to marry," Kara Gotsch of the American Civil Liberty Union's Prisoner Project tells The Guide. "There have been attempts to prevent marriage but that has always been successfully litigated." Prisons may ensnare the body, but the part of the soul that consents to wedlock evidently stays free.

However, the idea of marriage among prisoners isn't likely to go down well with officials-- who may see matrimony's unto-death-do-us-part bonds as undermining their ambition for total control. Massachusetts Department of Corrections policy number 492, for example, says inmate marriages are approved-- unless the union is "found to be unlawful or present a security risk to the department and/or institution."

But even if prisons couldn't ultimately prevent an otherwise legal union, they could insure that the happy couple could never see each other, or even communicate, for the duration of their sentences. Massachusetts's DOC, like many others, refuses inmates mail- or phone-contact with other prisoners anywhere, according to spokesman Justin Latini. And like most American prisons, Massachusetts's officially prohibit all sexual contact inside their walls (rather than accepting reality, handing out condoms, and saving lives). Latini tells The Guide that the DOC is currently reviewing the wording on all its regulations to see how same-sex civil unions or outright marriage will affect them. But gay marriage won't affect conjugal visits in the Bay State-- Massachusetts doesn't allow them for anybody.

Brother hoods in matrimony

So unless authorities waken to its advantages, same-sex marriage among prisoners looks like a nonstarter. But outside and prior to prison, gay marriage would offer benefits for pairs of men or women engaged in extra-legal pursuits. The legal principle of "spousal immunity" makes the marital relationship a natural basis for criminal conspiracy. Under normal circumstances, spouses can't be compelled to testify against each other, nor can their private communications be entered as evidence without the permission of husband or wife. The law fancies a married couple as a being one flesh. Forcing spouses to testify against one another, the reasoning goes, would be like making an individual self-incriminate-- anathema in the Anglo legal tradition. And don't worry about not having fully-fledged gay marriage-- the civil-union provisions drawn up for same-sexers in Vermont and Massachusetts contain the immunity provision, according to Lambda Legal.

It's true that in recent decades, spousal immunity has been trimmed by US courts. Critics have argued that the idea is rooted in a sense of women as just the property of their husbands. Certainly, the days when a man's home was his castle are long past-- the family today is rendered in law as a veritable crime scene, subject to specially energetic scrutiny. Many states makes domestic crimes immune to spousal privilege. But immunity survives now as an option for a spouse to exercise-- the right not to be compelled to testify against a mate. And spousal immunity still packs enough punch that aggressive prosecutors often will charge both spouses-- even if they only really have goods on one-- in order to up the pressure on the less-implicated wife or husband to cooperate.

If marriage becomes sex- neutral, then the taking of vows among partners in crime could replace other sorts of initiations. Wouldn't it be better for two Bloods to gay-marry, rather than earn their spurs by, say, killing a Crip? Ingrained heterosexuality need be no obstacle to same-sex matrimony, marriage having traditionally impose few practical limits on with whom one actually sleeps. Planning ahead is essential, however-- immunity applies only for the duration of the marriage-- so no shotgun weddings among defendants right before the trial. Two mobsters publicly tying the knot-- like donning a nose ring or dyeing their hair green-- might find the undertaking difficult, given their cultural backgrounds (perhaps they'd want to talk about it with their therapists). But really, the more angst the better: commitment rituals-- whether to a groom or a gang-- are intended to be anxiety-inducing as a signal of their importance.

So while same-sex marriage probably won't do much for people in prisons, it could help enterprising criminals keep one step ahead of having to go there. The officials administering gay marriage vows in San Francisco's City Hall-- in a long and grand tradition of civil disobedience-- knew they were operating on the slightly shady side of the law. But if and when gay marriage gets the official nod, those on the law's shady side could find gay matrimony giving them welcome relief from the heat.