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linden_jayGay Marriage - pros and cons from an alternative lifestyle supportive straight person. Discuss. *makes hand wavy gesture*
Okay. I have owed![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
darknight999 this rant for... lord. I don't even know how long. Long before she asked me for it. But this is one of those subjects where my thoughts tangle around themselves, and I worry that I won't be able to get my words to cooperate properly. But because I love darknight999, and because I've promised for a long time, I'm gonna try.
There's more than one issue at play here to start with. There's same-sex marriage as a real life topic and issue, something that is happening right here, right now in our world. There's how people in fandom (and lord--is that ever a stereotype, since there is no such thing as 'people in fandom' as an opinion group, since if you asked the same ten people in fandom the same question, you'd probably get fifteen different answers), or rather, some people in fandom, view gay marriage. Then there's applying same-sex marriage to fandom, fanfic, and in particular, role playing games.
Everyone comes to this sort of a debate with their own cred and nonsense, so let me show you mine. To start with, I'm Canadian, which skews my perspective on a lot of things to do with this topic, I think. I'm married to the Academic Husband, and I've been married to him for ten years minus five days, since I was a small child of nineteen. We're appallingly domestic, ridiculously vanilla, and I'm rather idiotically in love with him.
If I'm forced to define my sexuality, I default to straight, because although I've always been attracted to women, it's not something I've ever been a position to figure out if it's an aesthetic thing of who WOULDN'T be attracted to Morena Baccarin and Natalie Portman, whether you're gay, bi, straight, or something altogether, or something that's a bit more complicated. And since the Academic Husband and I are going to be together until we both peacefully die in our sleep at 98 and 100 years of age, it's not something I'm likely to ever know for sure, if such a thing CAN be known for sure. Wow. Hi, digression, how you doin'? Back to the topic at hand.
Usually I'd write what I was going to say, and THEN I'd put in my 'except in the care of ...', but on this issue, I feel it's important to do my qualificationing first. The bottom line of this whole issue to me is that if a same-sex couple (particularly a same-sex couple who are living in a country or state where there isn't such a thing as 'legal' same-sex marriage) want to have a ceremony, a hand fasting, a civil union, a pub crawl, a whatever the hell THEY want to have, and consider themselves married at the end of it? I respect that, and I think that's 100% valid.
I am not a historian or any kind of an authority on how marriage has been treated when it comes to minority groups before, but I do know that there have been various times when people from different minority groups were not permitted to 'legally' marry, and so they had to find other ways of solemnizing their commitment to each other. I'll come back to this later, but I just thought that it was one of those things that needed to be out there right at the start of the gate.
So. Same-sex marriage. My view? Make it legal. Right the fuck now. Everywhere. Of course, I am an idealist, but it can be done, and it should be done. Everyone should have the right to marry, or not marry, as they choose. The government, the church, the powers that be, they should not have the right to define what love is, and what commitments people want to make to each other. Ever. And in my country? The government no longer does.
In Canada, anyone who is of age and consenting may marry anyone else, regardless of gender. Marry. Not Civil union, not some other half-measure, marry. When the measure was passed, not every province (like American states, only less of them, and much bigger) was in support of it. Not everyone was happy (oh, understatement). But our government decided that the time had come for this change to happen, and by God, it did. They fuck up a lot, but sometimes? They get it right. And this is one of the reasons I'm so damned proud to be a Canadian.
Because Civil Unions? Not the same thing. Not the same thing at all. They're the low-fat cookie version of marriage. And be honest. No one wants the low-fat cookie. Especially when people are trying to tell you that it tastes the same as the regular thing. That it's just the same, with just one tiny difference... the part where it's NOTHING AT ALL THE SAME.
I am grudgingly glad that civil unions exist because if nothing else, in some cases they allow same-sex couples more legal protection, access to medical benefits, and things of that nature. And for some people, they don't have time to wait for the real cookie--they need something that gives them legal protection (etc) NOW. But it's not the same. And anyone who tries to sell it as such is lying, lying, lying. The only thing that's the same is being given the right to make the same choices as heterosexual couples. End stop.
Now, going up to what I said at the top, for some same-sex couples, they have made the choice to go 'okay. Civil unions is what we've got, so we're going to take it and run with it, and damn it, we're going to call ourselves married at the end of it'. Elton John and his partner, David Furnish, to the best of my remembering, consider themselves married following their civil union. Groovy. Good for them--seriously, good for them. Have a big fuckoff party, and MAKE everyone see that your love is just as worthy of a big, ridiculous, glorious event as anyone else’s, if that's what you want to have.
But then you've got John Barrowman, as another example. He and his partner Scott Gill have a civil union, but they are not, by their own insistence, married. And what he says spells out a lot of what I feel about this whole issue as a whole (keeping in mind that I completely respect same-sex partners who choose to claim the word marriage for themselves):
"Why would I want a 'marriage' from a belief system that hates me?"
and elsewhere:
... the couple do not want to call this a marriage: "We're just going to sign the civil register. We're not going to have any ceremony because I'm not a supporter of the word marriage for a gay partnership."
John Barrowman and Scott Gill do not want a low-fat cookie. Or rather, they'll take the low-fat cookie, but they're going to insist, loudly, that no one try and convince them that the low-fat cookie is the same as the regular cookie. For them, a civil union is a civil union, and marriage is something else entirely.
Which brings me to my problem with (some) people I've noticed in fandom. I remember back when John Barrowman and Scott Gill had the ceremony for their civil union that there were an insane number of posts with people going "EEEE CAPTAIN JACK GOT MARRIED!" And I didn't want to spoil anyone's squee, but it took everything in me not to go and SHAKE some of them, and say "No. No they didn't. Know how I know that? Because the two of them flat out SAID that they didn't get married. They signed the civil register. They made their union public, and as legal as is currently possible in their country. But they didn't get married. And I feel that it's very disrespectful to them to say otherwise, particularly when they've been so clear about what their civil union is and isn't."
This carries over into fanfic and roleplaying games as well. We're talking fantasy, and because we're talking fantasy, I believe that there's some serious latitude and leeway that comes into play there. We don't (usually) write the messy and less appealing aspects of sex, we do some handwaving on clean up and recovery time, and things like that. So, sometimes, it's nice to imagine we're in a world where an actor could come out, and marry their partner, and fuck you to the rest of the world. And you know... in general, I don't actually have a big problem with that.
But at the same time, unless you're writing in an AU or true fantasy environment, if you're writing any version of RPS, it makes me do some serious furrowbrowing when people (not all, not by a long shot, I'm stereotyping here from some more extreme stuff and things) whitewash things away. If you want your characters to be in the UK, to get a civil union, and to consider themselves married afterward, I think that's groovy, and I think it makes sense.
But I think that if you're going to say that your characters are getting married, and call it that, then you've either got to have them getting married in a country where it actually IS marriage (Belgium, Canada, Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Spain, California, or Massachusetts), or you've got to call it what it really is. Because otherwise, I really feel like we're in danger of doing what the conservatives would love... buying into the concept that the low-fat cookie is just as good as the real one.
Words have power. For a same-sex couple to say screw y'all, we're getting Civil Unionated/handfasted/holding a ceremony/going to Taco Bell, and in the eyes of ourselves, our friends, anyone and everything we so please, we consider ourselves married? That has power, and that has meaning. For people who are in the majority to go 'ah, domestic partnership/civil union/whatever low-fat cookie were serving today? It's just as good as marriage, so they can just call it that anyway?' That has power too. In a really, really negative way. And I like to think that we're too smart to buy into that. I know. I'm an idealist. But I'm also Canadian. And it happened here... no low-fat cookies for us. So I'm keeping faith.
Okay. I have owed
darknight999 this rant for... lord. I don't even know how long. Long before she asked me for it. But this is one of those subjects where my thoughts tangle around themselves, and I worry that I won't be able to get my words to cooperate properly. But because I love darknight999, and because I've promised for a long time, I'm gonna try. There's more than one issue at play here to start with. There's same-sex marriage as a real life topic and issue, something that is happening right here, right now in our world. There's how people in fandom (and lord--is that ever a stereotype, since there is no such thing as 'people in fandom' as an opinion group, since if you asked the same ten people in fandom the same question, you'd probably get fifteen different answers), or rather, some people in fandom, view gay marriage. Then there's applying same-sex marriage to fandom, fanfic, and in particular, role playing games.
Everyone comes to this sort of a debate with their own cred and nonsense, so let me show you mine. To start with, I'm Canadian, which skews my perspective on a lot of things to do with this topic, I think. I'm married to the Academic Husband, and I've been married to him for ten years minus five days, since I was a small child of nineteen. We're appallingly domestic, ridiculously vanilla, and I'm rather idiotically in love with him.
If I'm forced to define my sexuality, I default to straight, because although I've always been attracted to women, it's not something I've ever been a position to figure out if it's an aesthetic thing of who WOULDN'T be attracted to Morena Baccarin and Natalie Portman, whether you're gay, bi, straight, or something altogether, or something that's a bit more complicated. And since the Academic Husband and I are going to be together until we both peacefully die in our sleep at 98 and 100 years of age, it's not something I'm likely to ever know for sure, if such a thing CAN be known for sure. Wow. Hi, digression, how you doin'? Back to the topic at hand.
Usually I'd write what I was going to say, and THEN I'd put in my 'except in the care of ...', but on this issue, I feel it's important to do my qualificationing first. The bottom line of this whole issue to me is that if a same-sex couple (particularly a same-sex couple who are living in a country or state where there isn't such a thing as 'legal' same-sex marriage) want to have a ceremony, a hand fasting, a civil union, a pub crawl, a whatever the hell THEY want to have, and consider themselves married at the end of it? I respect that, and I think that's 100% valid.
I am not a historian or any kind of an authority on how marriage has been treated when it comes to minority groups before, but I do know that there have been various times when people from different minority groups were not permitted to 'legally' marry, and so they had to find other ways of solemnizing their commitment to each other. I'll come back to this later, but I just thought that it was one of those things that needed to be out there right at the start of the gate.
So. Same-sex marriage. My view? Make it legal. Right the fuck now. Everywhere. Of course, I am an idealist, but it can be done, and it should be done. Everyone should have the right to marry, or not marry, as they choose. The government, the church, the powers that be, they should not have the right to define what love is, and what commitments people want to make to each other. Ever. And in my country? The government no longer does.
In Canada, anyone who is of age and consenting may marry anyone else, regardless of gender. Marry. Not Civil union, not some other half-measure, marry. When the measure was passed, not every province (like American states, only less of them, and much bigger) was in support of it. Not everyone was happy (oh, understatement). But our government decided that the time had come for this change to happen, and by God, it did. They fuck up a lot, but sometimes? They get it right. And this is one of the reasons I'm so damned proud to be a Canadian.
Because Civil Unions? Not the same thing. Not the same thing at all. They're the low-fat cookie version of marriage. And be honest. No one wants the low-fat cookie. Especially when people are trying to tell you that it tastes the same as the regular thing. That it's just the same, with just one tiny difference... the part where it's NOTHING AT ALL THE SAME.
I am grudgingly glad that civil unions exist because if nothing else, in some cases they allow same-sex couples more legal protection, access to medical benefits, and things of that nature. And for some people, they don't have time to wait for the real cookie--they need something that gives them legal protection (etc) NOW. But it's not the same. And anyone who tries to sell it as such is lying, lying, lying. The only thing that's the same is being given the right to make the same choices as heterosexual couples. End stop.
Now, going up to what I said at the top, for some same-sex couples, they have made the choice to go 'okay. Civil unions is what we've got, so we're going to take it and run with it, and damn it, we're going to call ourselves married at the end of it'. Elton John and his partner, David Furnish, to the best of my remembering, consider themselves married following their civil union. Groovy. Good for them--seriously, good for them. Have a big fuckoff party, and MAKE everyone see that your love is just as worthy of a big, ridiculous, glorious event as anyone else’s, if that's what you want to have.
But then you've got John Barrowman, as another example. He and his partner Scott Gill have a civil union, but they are not, by their own insistence, married. And what he says spells out a lot of what I feel about this whole issue as a whole (keeping in mind that I completely respect same-sex partners who choose to claim the word marriage for themselves):
"Why would I want a 'marriage' from a belief system that hates me?"
and elsewhere:
... the couple do not want to call this a marriage: "We're just going to sign the civil register. We're not going to have any ceremony because I'm not a supporter of the word marriage for a gay partnership."
John Barrowman and Scott Gill do not want a low-fat cookie. Or rather, they'll take the low-fat cookie, but they're going to insist, loudly, that no one try and convince them that the low-fat cookie is the same as the regular cookie. For them, a civil union is a civil union, and marriage is something else entirely.
Which brings me to my problem with (some) people I've noticed in fandom. I remember back when John Barrowman and Scott Gill had the ceremony for their civil union that there were an insane number of posts with people going "EEEE CAPTAIN JACK GOT MARRIED!" And I didn't want to spoil anyone's squee, but it took everything in me not to go and SHAKE some of them, and say "No. No they didn't. Know how I know that? Because the two of them flat out SAID that they didn't get married. They signed the civil register. They made their union public, and as legal as is currently possible in their country. But they didn't get married. And I feel that it's very disrespectful to them to say otherwise, particularly when they've been so clear about what their civil union is and isn't."
This carries over into fanfic and roleplaying games as well. We're talking fantasy, and because we're talking fantasy, I believe that there's some serious latitude and leeway that comes into play there. We don't (usually) write the messy and less appealing aspects of sex, we do some handwaving on clean up and recovery time, and things like that. So, sometimes, it's nice to imagine we're in a world where an actor could come out, and marry their partner, and fuck you to the rest of the world. And you know... in general, I don't actually have a big problem with that.
But at the same time, unless you're writing in an AU or true fantasy environment, if you're writing any version of RPS, it makes me do some serious furrowbrowing when people (not all, not by a long shot, I'm stereotyping here from some more extreme stuff and things) whitewash things away. If you want your characters to be in the UK, to get a civil union, and to consider themselves married afterward, I think that's groovy, and I think it makes sense.
But I think that if you're going to say that your characters are getting married, and call it that, then you've either got to have them getting married in a country where it actually IS marriage (Belgium, Canada, Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Spain, California, or Massachusetts), or you've got to call it what it really is. Because otherwise, I really feel like we're in danger of doing what the conservatives would love... buying into the concept that the low-fat cookie is just as good as the real one.
Words have power. For a same-sex couple to say screw y'all, we're getting Civil Unionated/handfasted/holding a ceremony/going to Taco Bell, and in the eyes of ourselves, our friends, anyone and everything we so please, we consider ourselves married? That has power, and that has meaning. For people who are in the majority to go 'ah, domestic partnership/civil union/whatever low-fat cookie were serving today? It's just as good as marriage, so they can just call it that anyway?' That has power too. In a really, really negative way. And I like to think that we're too smart to buy into that. I know. I'm an idealist. But I'm also Canadian. And it happened here... no low-fat cookies for us. So I'm keeping faith.
