Matthew Taylor
Opinion Editor
It should be noted at the outset of this article that I do not write it out of opposition to gay marriage. It is written out of opposition to marriage itself, with Gay marriage as an obtuse extension. It is reflective of my personal experiences and encounters. Its purpose is to put forward ideas which may cause a re-examination of long held convictions, and its success is the reader’s to determine. This is an opinion piece and not a news story. My ego thoroughly cushioned with caveats, we may begin.
What is marriage?
It is basically a financial agreement between you and another person that says they get all your stuff when you die and don’t have to pay tax on it, which 500 years ago was a handy way of getting rid of your daughter when she started asking difficult questions and having “women’s things”. In its entire history, it has served as a way to stop people who don’t love you anymore from running away by adding extra layers of hassle, and whenever I speak to people who claim to want to get married this fact bears itself out. They don’t talk about wanting to make the commitment to a person they love; they talk about the financial benefits. Without the societal shaming that faced unmarried people in previous centuries, what is the necessity of a marriage beyond the tax breaks? The idea of doing it out of the desire to make a commitment carries with it the implication that the relationship is not strong enough to survive on its own without throwing a garish knees up for your friends and family. If you love someone enough to marry them, surely you love them enough to not need to marry them? If you want someone to know you love them, tell them, or bake them a cake or something. Indeed, one person I asked said that they would get married so that when they got divorced there would be a framework in place to make it as neat as possible, and he the product of one of the most idyllic marriages I have seen.
In purely semantic terms, marriage is a religious ceremony, being a Catholic sacrament, founded on the practice of imprisoning your friend’s sisters and daughters in your house. Whenever I watch “Don’t Tell The Bride” I am infuriated by the hordes of track-suited goons who whinge and moan about how much they want a church wedding “because its traditional” yet are continually denied the opportunity due to their obvious lack of faith, not to mention a poor attendance record on previous consecutive Sundays. Do they believe in God, and want his Grace to bless their union? No, its because in general churches are nicer than registry offices and hotel lobbies. If gay marriage is introduced, will churches be legally required to perform same-sex marriages? Given the Catholic churches’ still firm grip on the balls of Ireland’s politicos, it is doubtful that this would be the case. So what we are in fact talking about is expanding the rights already offered by Civil Partnerships. Alternatively you could abolish inheritance taxes, allow individuals to elect their next of kin and generally reform the few niggling legal issues that make marriage attractive to otherwise rational people.
Why, if you are gay, do you want to get married?
I fear that it may be out of, what the gay shame movement calls “hetero-normative aspirations” i.e. because its “normal”. It is not beyond reasonable doubt that the desire for gay marriage within the LGBT community is out of a desire for normalization, a somewhat ludicrous position entirely posited on the idea that gay people aren’t normal to begin with. Obviously there is the desire to have one’s love recognised, but is latching your entire cultural crusade onto a waning institution the best way to do that? No. It is only through openness and understanding that this can be achieved, and not through token gestures such as the ability to marry. It is utterly unnecessary to judicially codify your relationship if it is of genuine merit. This is true of heterosexual and homosexual couples.
If you want to have a family, who says you need to get married?
The desire to have children is natural, and felt by everyone. It is a fact of nature that two people of the same gender cannot reproduce, but there are legal and scientific ways around this and for many years now children have been being raised in a same-sex partner household with no adverse effects. The argument that children ought to be raised in a “traditional” home is preposterous because there is no such thing. God himself was an absent father who left his son in the care of a dirt poor carpenter whose morals were lax enough to not question his mysteriously pregnant thirteen year old wife. Many of my oldest and closest friends are from separated families and surprisingly enough they don’t exhibit any anti-social behaviour (at least not an unusual amount). It is the desire to have a “traditional” family with a slight gay twist that is also often cited as an argument for gay marriage, an argument which is again founded on this notion of “traditional”. Gay marriage isn’t traditional and cannot hope to become so for hundreds of years. While all about us marriages crumble to nothingness, the false notion of tradition is being exercised from our minds and should no longer be put on a pedestal as a desirable way of being. Two women can raise an army of children in a healthy and socially beneficial way, but they don’t need to be married to do it. Nobody does. Not two women, not two men, not a man and a woman or any variation thereof. All you need is genuine emotional support and love, even if it is from just one parent. You do not need to construct anthropological edifices for your emotions.
Is there a conclusion to this article in sight?
It is the right to joint custody of children and the fight for universal social acceptance that we must strive for. Marriage is a secondary issue to equality, and to say otherwise is to say that there will be no equality without applying the label of marriage to otherwise meaningful relationships. Equality can be achieved without this sacred-calf issue. I would like to conclude with a quote from Gore Vidal, who said in a interview shortly before his recent death “I don’t support gay marriage. I don’t support any marriage. It’s so boring it puts me to sleep.”
