Keep your labels to Yourself

I’m writing today about a topic that is easy for some, difficult for others. I’m talking about marriage. Many people will say to their friends who happen to be in a relationship with a person of the same gender “Oh, I think “gay marriage should totally be legal” or “I support “gay marriage”. Fuck that. I don’t Want a “gay marriage”, I don’t want a “same sex marriage”. I want a marriage. Just because the person that I want to marry happens to be of my same gender doesn’t make us special, or in any way less entitled. If you were to view a married couple, made up of opposite genders and Also of opposite ethnic origins, would you call it a “bi-racial marriage” or an “african-american and white marriage” or an “Asian and Hispanic marriage”? No, you’d call it a marriage, as it conforms to the standard acceptable vision of what marriage is. Now, let’s look at “marriage”. Many people today in the U.S. have been divorced. Some more than 1 time, some several times. Did you forget, that you swore an oath, before your god, your state, and your friends gathered before you, that it was “Until DEATH do us part”? Was there an unspoken subtext that also included “or until it becomes inconvenient for either of us”?

Now, I have been with the same individual for over twelve years. We own a home, we share pets, we share internet, we share a bedroom. What we don’t share, is the same acceptance that our friends and family get, simply because we both happen to have an X and a Y chromosome, instead of one of us having double XXs. Our relationship isn’t a “gay” relationship”, it’s not a “homosexual relationship”, it’s a loving relationship, of Over a decade. I don’t want to get Gay married, I don’t want to get Same-Sex Unioned. The fact that we may have intimate relations randomly is no ones business and should have no bearing on the fact of our commitment to one another. What I want is marriage Equality, I want the Same Marriage as anyone else can get, perhaps without a few of the preceding divorces, and possibly without the “god and country” bits.

I feel that until people realize that what we want isn’t “special, different, or alternative”. What we want is equal, Not separate but equal (as that’s also not equal). I’d like for everyone who has access to read this, and share this. Spread the words, Gay marriage is not marriage, it’s a label that people want to place on us, to isolate us, to keep us different. To me, a label of “gay marriage” is equivalent to sewing a pink triangle to the chest of all my shirts (look it up).