Time we said ‘I do’ to equal marriage rights

MUCH kerfuffle at the moment about equal marriage rights.

It’s baffling, all the fuss. The anti-equality campaigners seem to be stuck on the semantics of it, repeating over and over that marriage is between a man and a woman. Well, yes, of course it is. Nobody is disputing that. Nobody wants to ban marriage between people with differing dangly bits – that would be absurd, and unfair. Men and women can continue to get as married as they like, for as long as they like, to whomever they like. No problem. Nobody is proposing that marriage gets taken away from anybody — quite the opposite, in fact.

Duh. So why are the antis in such a tizz? It’s not like marriage is a finite resource, something that may soon run out, like oil. No, the concept behind marriage — love, commitment — is infinite, and shows no signs of drying up. Plenty to go around. Enough for us all.

Ah yes, shriek the antis, but marriage is between a man and a woman! There they go again, like funny old stuck records, their needles jammed in a 1950s groove. It’s odd how the past becomes a magical place when people are feeling scared of the present; quick, let’s all hark back to a mythical golden age that never existed if you were gay, or black, or female. (God help you if you were all three).

So back to the future. In another short while, anyone who is in love with anyone will be able to marry them (providing the love is reciprocal, of course). Then, when our children are adults, they will look back at this peculiar little pothole on the road to equality, and scratch their heads. You know, the same way we look back at the status of women and black people circa Mad Men. What was all the fuss about, our kids will wonder. Good question.

Yes, but marriage is between a man and a woman! Think of the children! There go the antis again, insisting that children need a mother and a father in order to grow up without horns protruding from their foreheads. Oh really? Actually, children need love. That is all. Love, security, respect. And to be wanted. Unlike straight couples, gay and lesbian couples don’t ever get pregnant by accident; there’s no baby wham-bam. The children of gay parents must be some of the most wanted kids alive.

The irony is that we live in an era of weddingtainment – think Kim Kardashian and her 72-day marriage – yet there is objection to couples who want to marry for love, like Emilio and Carlos, Spain’s first gay married couple, who had already been together 30 years before they could legally say ‘I do’.

But that’s not the point either. The point is that it is not the business of straight people to tell gay people what they can and cannot do. It’s that simple.