It puts the lotion in the basket.
I was throwing out some garbage when I spotted my neighbor’s boyfriend coming back into the apartment building after having thrown out his trash. We greeted each other and exchanged a few semi-awkward pleasantries [as is always the case when talking to someone so on the periphery and yet so close to your life]. I don’t remember how our conversation leads to the following revelation, but I do remember him springing a surprise on me in regards to my neighbor and himself.
“You know we’re engaged!”
I had a thousand questions for him, the most important being, “what do you mean, ‘engaged’, exactly?” He said they had exchanged rings, but I didn’t have the slightest idea what sort of union this could be
A civil partnership?
An alterna-gay alterna-Christian wedding ceremony?
A homosexual pagan bloodletting?
This sort of VIP news needs an overly cheerful, and more importantly, speedy knee-jerk response, and like a good citizen of the U.S.A, I grabbed his arm and congratulated him heartily and in a higher-than-usual pitched voiced.
“Well, con-gra-tu-laaa-tions!”
We live in New York where gay marriage is still a no-no thanks to the—and let’s be honest here—double-faced hypocritical trepidation of our state and local politicians. Our dear Mayor Michael Bloomberg pledged full support for gay marriage just before appealing a lower court’s decision to allow the practice, which is a very similar tactic used by hackers who claim their invasive attacks help companies reinforce their computer defense system.
Unfortunately, we only arrest hackers.
[Focus on the Family]
Political grandstanding and bureaucracy aside, I’m always surprised at the public reaction to marriage, especially when people tell me that it is ridiculous to worry about the state of gay marriage in America when there’s a war going on, as if worrying about other things in life during a war makes one an idiot.
You’re laid off? Chin up, stop worrying—we’ve got a war going on.
Your mom has cancer? Stop your whining—our boys are getting killed!
In pop culture the acceptance of gay marriage is so predominantly high that everyone who supports it sounds like they’re being terribly bothered with a question that has such an obviously accepting answer, “well of course gay marriage should be legal, that’s so dumb! Everyone should marry whomever they want in life, I’m shocked anyone would ever think the opposite!”
Well they do of course, which is why people have gone out of their way to ban gay marriage in certain States, and you know what? I’m glad they’ve done that. I’m glad because banning is such a desperate move on a subject that 20 years ago would have been, at the very most, laughed off quietly in polite society. I’m thrilled to know that gay groups are so loud and outspoken on this issue that there needs to be a frenzied opposition to the very idea of such an alleged abomination.
[Mesa County, CO Commissioner]
Plus, everyone knows that getting banned is the height of coolness.
Indeed, more than a few gay people are anti-gay marriage as well, what a shocker huh? I have a suspicion that most of them hold this position because it makes them feel special within a special group [see Jews for Jesus]. I’ve heard many mature and intelligent gay men and women expound the virtues of pursuing other problems in society, such as gay worker’s rights, and others make even more sense when they say that gay men should accept civil unions as long as they receive all the same rights as married heterosexuals.
I don’t know about you but most of that seems really dull. Gay worker’s rights just doesn’t have the same tingling sensation as “GAY MARRIAGE.” And if civil unions become completely equal to marriage, why even differentiate the two? It’s like holding up two apples and saying one is an apple and the other is a civil union, later on down the line we’ll find a loophole to screw you over because they’re named differently, and also there’s a worm in civil union.
Getting back to the lovely couple, after getting engaged to be civilly united, my neighbor and his future life mate [giggle] moved to a suburb in Long Island that is surrounded by overgrown shrubbery, trees, and mom & pop pharmacies. I wager that’s a little too extreme for my tastes but my neighbor is very much the settling down type, and here was his big chance.
I am going to be at their wedding waving my freak flag high, despite the fact that I’m one of the people you’d least suspect to be so pro-marriage; I love to go out, I love having too many friends, I despise clingy boyfriends, and I’m the one responsible for holding us back on the time-spent-in-a-relationship scale when compared to heterosexuals.
Nevertheless, I am reminded of how I felt when I first came out to myself, there I was sitting in front of my computer watching a porn clip, and after various lewd thoughts crossed my mind, my one first poignant belief as a gay boy crystallized in my mind: “I will never get married now…”
I then imagine how many other young gay people across the country shared the same thought at the moment of their “gay awakening,” and then I wonder if this thought was the first step into depression.
The lucky idealists tell me they always dreamed of their white wedding to their dream man, with the huge cake and the kitchen full of designer dish gifts. They don’t want religions or governments spoiling their ceremonies and their celebration of love, and I envy their romantic inclinations.
However, the reality is that gay marriage will change everything, no doubt about that, marriage will change, gay people will change, straights will too, and not because of some nefarious plot or loss of morals, but because it is quite simply the way of the world. Society’s change and they’ve done so since the very concept began.
My one hope though is that there will be a point where no young gay boy’s first concern will be “I will never get married,’ it’ll be “who’s going to wear white at the wedding?”
