There’s nothing to be afraid of from a gay marriage

FEW word combinations cause more consternation than ‘gay’ and ‘marriage’.

GAY MARRIAGE! You can’t even write it without it jumping off the page and poking you in the eye. It automatically puts itself into capital letters, because it knows it makes people afraid. Very afraid. But of what?

It’s like we hear the words GAY MARRIAGE and think that we are going to be dragged from our beds, forcibly frogmarched up the aisle by Elton John, and made to say ‘I do’ to the strains of Judy Garland dueting with Liberace, before being forced to cut a big pink cake at gunpoint while wrapped in a rainbow flag surrounded by drag queens disco-dancing to a Gloria Gaynor / Village People mash up. (And on the other side of the hymn sheet, we have all the straight wedding cliches; bridezillas, fat bridesmaids, drunk uncles, scared grooms, sartorial car crashes, warring families, daft cake, bad disco…..but for once this isn’t about straight weddings.)