What Same-Sex Marriage Means to Me

Lots has been written about the case for same-sex marriage from a theoretical stand-point, from an equality stand-point, and from a civic rights stand-point.  I've done blogs on these myself: it's very easy to set out the arguments.  It's also not terribly hard to see through the arguments for keeping discrimination (sometimes alarmist, sometimes spiteful, often disingenuous).  They all pretty much boil down in essence to "we have it and you're not allowed it".

What I haven't done is explain what it would mean introducing marriage equality means to me on a personal level, and trying to speak honestly about why I care so much about this.

Wanting to be Straight

When I was a teen I desperately wanted to be straight.  I wanted a "nice" executive home (*shudder*) in somewhere like Surrey , a "pretty" wife, a son and a daughter, plus a dog or two.  I can remember falling to sleep, thinking about the exact interior design of the rooms of the house and dreaming of my nice straight bourgeois existence.

It's fair to it came as quite a shock to realise that the look of the interior design was more important to me than the look of the wife (heavens, the warning bells were chiming).  This was no choice: I was gay in the same way that you are right or left-handed.  I realised that the *only* choice I had was whether to be honest and come out, or to ruin my own life (and that of someone else) with the most fundamental deceit.  The first option meant happiness might be hard to find.  The second option meant it would be certain to never come.

I had a total absence of positive role models for "gay life".  There was nothing.  Gays were camp objects of comedy like Mr Humphries on "Are You Being Served?" or dangerous weirdos to steer well clear of.  The age of consent was still 16 for straights, 21 for gays.  We couldn't serve in the military.  I couldn't go to the Foreign Office: I was a blackmail risk.  The law allowed employers to discriminate against us.

Things Have Changed

Things have changed.  My friend Henrietta can now longer by turned away in tears with her girlfriend from a hotel in Dorset at Easter "because we don't want that sort of thing going on here".  Imagine what that would actually feel like to you.  Then try to get your head around the Christian Institute  still arguing today that the law should "be more flexible" in allowing them to discriminate by slamming the door in the face of whomever they like when they decide to open their home as a money making business.  Fortunately Parliament, society and the courts have decided that whether you're Black, Jewish or Gay that this is wrong.

Things have changed.  My friends Donald and Michael bought a dilapidated Georgian house cheaply in Spitalfields and lovingly renovated it.  They lived there for 25 years until Michael died suddenly.  The house was suddenly worth an awful lot more money than they'd paid for it and Don was faced with a £400,000 bill.  If they had been husband and wife he would have benefited from a temporary postponement of inheritance tax following his bereavement.  Instead Don was forced to sell their home and died of a heart attack 6 months later.  Thanks to the introduction of Civil Partnerships in 2004, civil partners are now treated the same as straight spouses in this respect.

I'm enormously grateful for all the changes.  They have come rapidly.  No longer do we hear Tory MPs (at least not openly) thundering that they will not "vote for the legalisation of the buggery of young men" in the House of Commons.  I may live in a bit of a bubble, but I feel that wider society has changed and I can live much more openly and on much more of a level playing field.  Being the subject of discrimination or related abuse is a vile experience.  I would not wish it on anyone.
 

Cake Decoration, Bremen Shop Window

I clocked the above pic this July in an ordinary little shop window in the north of Germany.  There were a couple of other same-sex cake decorations (even though Germany also still does not have marriage equality).  I would never have seen such a thing as a kid living there in the 80s.  My heart just lifted.  It was so mainstream, so not a political statement.  These were just cake decorations with a load of other decorations in a window in the Schnoor in Bremen.  It was very small, but was reflective of a sea-change in much of Europe.

Masses of other countries of course do not have the legal protections I do, and lesbian cake shop decorations are far from the norm around the world.  There are Henriettas, Donalds and Michaels facing considerably very real, life-destroying discrimination, even in "developed" countries such as the US. I fully realise that, but again I'm thankful for where things are in my everyday life.

Marriage Equality

The last massive and symbolic change in our country is the area of marriage equality.  Ten countries, including several of our closest neighbours have introduced it already.  I'm convinced we will look back on this time and the hurtful, sometimes vicious comments of those opposed to this change and genuinely be puzzled by what the whole "debate" was about.  Extending the voting franchise to women was a life or death issue a hundred years ago: now (I'd hope) even the most idiotic or bigoted would argue against it. 

Marriage equality is quite simply about fairness.  It is about saying that I am as equal a member of society as you are.  I pay taxes like you, I am a human being like you.  I do not think it is unreasonable that I should have the same civic rights.  I am in a relationship with a guy I think the world of.  Marriage is by no means for everyone.  However, it matters a huge amount to me to have the option, should the time ever come, to have any relationship that I am in recognised properly by the state.  If I want to go through this huge step and "tie the knot" I believe it should be with my husband.  I do not think it fair to be relegated to the status of the ugly named 'civil partner' in an apartheid style "separate but equal" institution.

Equal Treatment, Dignity, Affirmation, Respect.  Is that so unreasonable?

I see people preaching discrimination as telling me I am worth less than they are.  It is quite simply an attack on the whole of my community and it is unavoidably personal.  It hurts me, just as the stories I've related above fill me with sadness and sometimes anger.  There is absolutely no justifiable reason for the situation to be like this.  Marriage equality would cost its opponents nothing other than losing a bit more of their ever-diminishing power to dictate their world view on wider society.

I want to be able to have my dream.  There won't be kids.  I don't want to live in an executive home.  But there will be dogs, a house full of joy, and the man I love.  Moreover, I desperately want something for gay teens going through what I did back then.  This is to know that they are equal members of society and that what they face in life is not making the best of a bad thing, but the very real possibility of equal treatment, dignity, affirmation and respect.  Marriage equality quite simply means all those things for me.