#40 Reverse Butcher

Marriage equality is a complicated issue for me. I think we should make marriage illegal for ‘straights’ too and be done with the whole mess. As a queer woman, I absolutely agree that if a couple want to get married, regardless of where they identify on the gender or sexual identity spectrum and providing that everyone is of age and is consenting, they should be able to get legally married. But I often wonder what a world, where the monogamous binary is not the most easily socially rewarded form of relationship, would look like.

Being Queer for me means that we can choose to explore different ways of organising ourselves, of loving ourselves and others. Of course, no marriage, Queer or straight, will be the same as another–and of course everybody in the world deserves equal rights. But arguably, marriage creates particular kinds of human citizens, that can interact with society in a particular kind of way. It builds particular kinds of families, which help construct a particular kind of society. All of this is OK.

The world is complex, and love is everywhere–we should build love where we can, and wherever we find it. But as someone who operates outside of the heterosexual monogamous binary, I will never have the social or legal ‘rights’ afforded to me by any kind of marriage. That is OK too, and my choice. There is room for all of us. I will still support (y)our right to marriage equality, if only because the minute it gets legalised, we can all get on with protesting for the myriad of other human rights issues that deserve our attention, too.