Saturday 21 January 2012

So let's get *this* straight (or otherwise)

image listing various celebrity marriages that have ended in divorce, involved extra-marital affairs, etc ends with text: 43-50% of traditional marriages end with divorce but somehow it is same-sex marriage that is going to destroy the institution of marriage. REALLY? Repost this if you are proud to support equal rights.

This image has been floating round on my Facebook feed over the past few days, and it's not the first of it's kind. And I understand what people are reacting to, and that it's primarily a reaction to the hypocrisy of those who view same-sex marriage as a threat to their - generally unrealistic - ideals of mixed-sex marriage. But that doesn't make me comfortable with that; as a queer woman one thing I really have zero interest in doing is critiquing the validity of other people's relationships. Sure, some of the practices listed above may be unethical (and others I'd need more information to determine, which I don't care to seek out) but that makes them relationships with bad things going on in them, not non-relationships.

And yeah, it's tempting to turn around, when someone says that queers are destroying traditional marriage (which is, apparently, a bad thing) and list all those examples. But that means letting people who think there are valid and invalid relationships (and that same sex ones fall into the latter category) define the terms of the argument. And the next thing you know, we're falling over ourselves trying to prove why our relationships are valid - we've been together for twenty years, we're completely monogamous, we have three kids, we own a house, we celebrate a big family Christmas...

Our relationships may be all that, and they may be none of that. They're valid because we say they are. And I don't begrudge Britney her 55 hour marriage one fucking bit.

6 comments:

Andrei said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Sandra said...

I'm sorry that anyone has to read the comment above mine by Andrei. So some people had bad manners and didn't pick up their rubbish at a restaurant. That is rather unpleasant to walk into.

It is also very bad manners to assume that on the basis of sexual orientation, a person or persons are degraded, disgusting and repellant.

Hatred of another person or persons is the road to cultural ruin.

Andrei said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
anthea said...

Andrei's comments have been deleted. Andrei, please do not comment on this thread again.

Kerry said...

I'm married, have been to the same woman for almost thirty years, we have five children. My kids say i'm homophobic but they dont know me that well.:))). All I could wish for is that two people regardless of what sex they may happen to be find true lasting love together. There will always be opposite sex attraction and marriage just as there always will be same sex attraction, so why cant they marry as well, after all, what is marriage, it's the committment of two people who love each other to each other.
Andrei's comments are really negative and only represent a very small sector of todays society, and why i dont agree with those commenst I defend Andrei's right to have those views.

Scuba Nurse said...

Kerry. people are always welcome to their own opinions, we just dont tolorate hate speach here.
I personally dont see that anyone would expect us to.