BY Lux Alptraum
June 18, 2007
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2 Comments

As you’re probably aware, June is Gay Pride Month. To show our gay pride, we’re having Gay Week over at Boinkology: from Monday to Friday, it’s all gay posts, all the gay time.

I once got in trouble for saying, “Fuck gay marriage!” while walking down St. Mark’s Place.

Let me back up a bit. Before saying, “Fuck gay marriage!” I was engaged in a deep discussion of why I was opposed to the institution of marriage as a whole. Immediately after saying, “Fuck gay marriage!” I said, “Fuck marriage!” — but that was apparently lost on the angry looking gay couple who turned around to flip me off.

Gay marriage is a polarizing issue. Whether or not you believe it was the driving force behind George Bush’s reelection, it’s pretty clear that it’s a hot button issue in American politics — and that, as far as the media is concerned, there are two sides.

Either you’re pro-gay and pro-gay marriage or you hate gays and think they shouldn’t be allowed to marry.

Cut and dry. One side or the other.

Unless, like me, you’re not really on either side. I mean, yeah: I’m pro-gay, for sure. It’s just the marriage part I’m not 100% on.

It’s not that I have a problem with commitment, or the idea of being with someone for forever (or at least until it stops working): it’s more that I don’t really see why the government has to be any part of that. It’s more that marriage is public, an affair of the state; and I prefer to keep my relationships private, affairs of the heart.

And so I have a hard time seeing gay marriage as a top priority issue.

Marriage is often put forth as the best hope for equality — the quickest path to equal rights for the LGBTQ. Now, I’m all for equal rights, and if marriage exists as a legal institution, then sure: people should be able to marry the consenting adult of their choice. But is marriage really the best way to achieve equality?

Marriage means access to health benefits, yes: but wouldn’t it be better to fight for universal health care, so that everyone has access to health benefits regardless of their relationship or employment status?

Marriage means next of kin status: but why should we restrict that based on blood relation and marriage alone? Why not allow people to legally elect their own next of kin, based on their own rationale?

Marriage means having gay relationships viewed as equivalent to straight relationships (legally, at least): and here is the argument I can’t refute. Because, yes, if we are talking about marriage as a symbolic way of legitimizing a relationship, of making it “count,” then offering people in same-sex relationships access to marriage is really the best way of achieving (that kind of) equality.

But really: is that kind of equality the kind we want the most?

[photo by billycub]