…… but gay people won’t be able to have gay affairs if they aren’t allowed to wed in the first place!
You may have gathered that I am straight. I am a female and I have spoken about my boyfriend on many occasion – who is male. So I am not a gay man or a lesbian woman using my blog to try and get my views across. No. I am a straight woman, using my blog to give my views on the matter. Giving the homosexuals an extra voice if you will.
It seemed a good time to write this today. The political debate has been going on for a while now, plus I went out for my GBF’s (Gay Best Friend – referred to in prrevious posts) birthday on Friday. Also, last night, I showed the said GBF an essay I wrote at Uni about the origin of the word ‘gay’. So I am going to combine all thoughts of these subjects into today’s post.
I’ll start with our Friday night out. It was a real ‘gay affair,’ I have to say. We had Tepanyaki at a Japanese restaurant, which was served to us, funnily enough, by a very camp Japanese chef. Me and a few mates spent the night guessing if he was gay or not. He put cups under his top at one point and blew kisses at the males and femles, yet wouldn’t come and feel my boyfriend up – I’m not sure who this says the most about 😉
The night was fun, followed by Karaoke. I took the piss a little out of my friend for this saying it was all a very themed night 😉 He likes various langauges and cultures, so the night wasn’t a surprise, I just loved how it was all inkeeping with the Japanese idea – but that was partly the restaurant I guess 🙂 The first song to be sung was Papa don’t Preach by one of my GBF’s lesbian friends. She homosexualised the lyrics with, ‘Papa don’t preach, I’m a lesbian.’ – you’re all singing that to yourself now, aren’t you?! I felt it was a bit ‘much’ for the first song of the night as some of the lyrics were very female love explicit 😉 – maybe I just hadn’t drank enough! But the homosexual supporter side of me was filled with admiration for this girl. She was singing in a public place about her homosexuality with pride, confidence and joy. Why shouldn’t this girl marry who she wants to one day? Across the room there could have been a very unhappy, hetreosexual couple – stuck in a marriage they are unhappy with. Who is the happiest?
That’s what I think it all comes down to. Happiness. To quote the picture at the top, ‘Why can’t people marry who they want to?’ There have been subjects arising such as religion, kids, society – blah blah blah. People should have the free will to love who they want and celebrate it how they choose. To touch on the ‘kid’s’ subject, I also think that a child in today’s society is likely to be just as happy with two loving dads or two loving mums than they are with a mum and a dad who are fighting, or with a single mum or dad or even with the whole ‘conventional’ family. Let’s face it, the idea of ‘family’ has changed over the last fifty years anyway, so why shouldn’t the marriage rules?
Someone said to me that ‘marriage is between men and women.’ I replied with, ‘it has been up to now, yes. But why can’t that be changed?’ Men were only allowed to vote until the suffragettes came along and until then ‘voting was just for men.’ That changed, so why can’t this? My friend’s reply was that gay people can have a civil ceremony and they should be happy with that. Well, why can’t they have the same as anyone else? If marriage is just a piece of paper then it is down to the inidividual to decide if they want that piece of paper. It shouldn’t be a case of ‘marriage is just a document and won’t affect their lives anyway so there is no point in fighting for it.’ If that’s the case then just aboloish marriage altogether then.
This is where the church comes in. Religion has also changed over the years and less people are involved in organised religion. There are many religions and beliefs and people are more confident to explore and believe in what they choose. The Christian (and other) church need to stay with the times, or they will lose even more ‘custom’ so to speak. They believe that God treats us all equally – well then let them marry equally. MPs are saying ‘we can’t redefine marriage.’ Why not? It is only a case of gender. Man loves woman. Woman loves man. Man loves man. Woman loves woman. All the same service give or take a prefix.
To finish I’ll share with you a little about the history of the word ‘gay,’ which my GBF was very interested to read last night. In 1310 the definition of ‘gay’ was:
‘Of persons, their atributes and actions: Full of disposed to joy and mirth manifesting or characterised by joyous mirth; light hearted exuberantly cheerful, sportive.’
It was nothing but positive back then. To be gay was to feel joy – no matter what the gender or sexual preference. The word was used frequently to display happiness pf charcters in work’s of literature. For example, Chaucer described someone as ‘gay’ in 1386. By Shakesperian times, the term ‘the gays’ was commonly used to refer to men on stage who played the female parts. My GBF and I talked about the fact that these men may have had to feminise themselves and put on female voices but at same time they were over enthusiastic and joyous. Explaining a little about how the two definitoins have had a crossover. Also in the 19th Century, female and male prostitues were referred to as beinig ‘gaily’ dressed. This again gives the idea of the lable ‘gay’ in our modern society: to be feminine, smart, flamboyant (even if they aren’t actually a homosexual.)
So, if we take the old, postive definiton of ‘gay’ to be happy and joyous – then, in my opinion, if we are going to wed, we all need a very gay marriage 😉
XSXS
Samantha Holmes' Writing 
Ok firstly, not opposed to Gay marriage here but I take issue with several of the things you said there.
Most notably the fact you said that Christians and the church need to get with the times. You are effectively saying that their religious views are wrong. Losts of people in history have called a religious groups views wrong. It rarely ends well. If you are gay you have no right being a member of a religious group that believes being gay is wrong. You have no more right to tell them they are wrong than they do to tell you you are wrong. If you want to be gay and religious then thats fine but dont try and force a religious group to change its views.
I think the issue of gay marriage a little skewed by our modern interpretation of marriage.
Back in the old days when there was no such thing as a world religion, marriage was most literally a promise to care for each other and be faithful to each other. In this sense me and Tan are already married. You can get married in this cultural sense whenever you like, no ceremony or legal approval required. Lets face it the ceremony and legal approval are the least important part of marriage anyway.
Now marriage in the UK, from a legal perspective, is largely based on the religious ceremony even a registry office ceremony is based on it, they just sucked out all the religious references. Really I feel you should be able to get married without a ceremony. This would leave you free to have any form of ceremony you wish regardless of any particular religious or cultural relevance. I’m not saying there should be no ceremony just that attaining legal recognition as a married couple should not require it.
Apparently though we need some random guy we have never met to perform the ceremony as if what he thinks of a couples vows to each other should mean something more than it does to the couple.
While we are on the subject though what about multi partner marriages. This isnt always one guy several women as its portrayed in the media, in fact in many cases it could be two girls who both love each other and both love the same guy, or two guys one girl. The point being in this situation they are not allowed to marry. Many are married in the cultural sense where they share everything and care for and love each other but the law does not legally recognise them as married. Some even have a marriage ceremony even though it is not recognised by law,
Really if gay people want to be take seriously I think they should go ahead and start having the ceremony and forget about the legal implications. They cant stop you having a ceremony they can only stop the legal recognition. If the legal recognition is the part that is important to you then maybe you shouldn’t be getting married.
If there are a million gay weddings next week (even without legal recognition) then the people trying to stop gay marriage will quickly forget about fighting to prevent legal gay marriage, there would be no point.
Interesting – don’t believe I said the religious views were wrong, just out dated. People have always been gay throughout history but it is now, in the modern age, that they are being given rights and recongnitions that they deserve. Let’s not talk about them as a different breed here but strip them of the label ‘gay’ and say they are people – who just so happen to have a different choice of love companions – who want to marry who they choose. In that case, the religions are out dates because they aren’t treating people equally, like so many of them believe God intended.
As for marriage only being important because of the legal part, nope I didn’t mean that. But personally, for me, marriage is about the joining of two famillies and two people and a declaration of love in front of said families. It is not the piece of paper I would be bothered about but that. And I’m sure that people – gay or not – feel the same and should have this choice to celebrate in their own way. It is not the point that they ‘are like’ a married couple (btw, I don’t think Tanya will see that as a way out 😉 ) but the fact they have the choice. As for not worrying about the legal part at all, well in our society it is normal for it to be legal – so I would want that too. Therefore, everyone should have that. Marriage can be seen by the eyes of religion, family, each other and the law – and each individual should be able to have any/all of those as they choose.
As for multi-partner marriage, I’m not sure how I feel about that. I don’t feel I know enough about it to comment to be honest!
Thanks for reading! x
Saying they are out of date is as good as saying they are wrong. Religion is not about keeping your customers happy or changing your views to fit, although it does happen. Religion is about following your beliefs.
If a religious group feels gay is wrong they are entitled to their opinion. It does not make that opinion correct but they are entitled to it
It is however wrong that this religious view has so much impact on the laws of this country.
I didn’t mean to suggest your only counting the legal part as important just that a lot of these gay rights campaigns seem to focus on the legal part. Marriage existed before law existed. You can have a ceremony, call it a wedding and regardless of what the law says as far as you, your family, and anyone close to you are concerned you are married. Screw what the government thinks (My inner anarchist is coming out).
While it may be “normal” in our society for marriage to be a legal proposition that isn’t what is important about it, and its only normal now because a long time ago someone decided they would force everyone to register a marriage. Registering a marriage with your religious institution makes sense but in todays society law should have nothing to do with the union of two people.
While I’m sure Tanya and I share very different views on the relevancy of a marriage ceremony and the legal implications.
Just for the sake of argument, if me and Tan had a wedding ceremony, she changed her name to match mine, we wrote wills to mean we were each others next of kin, BUT did not sign a marriage certificate. I really don’t give a damn that the government would not recognise us as married. Tempted to get her opinion on this.
As far as the multi partner marriages go I don’t know a huge amount about it but, and this goes for any potential couple/group/whatever…. if everyone in the group is happy with the way they are doing things then who is everyone else to judge.
But Christianity, for example, like many other religions is old. Many if us change our views and beliefs as we become older/wiser things happen etc, so I don’t see why religion can’t be a little flexible. People change and don’t have the same filxed beliefs on everything all their life.
Is it true that marriage existed before the law? Get Nathan involved 😉 lol. A marriage of form of it may have been around very early on, but some form of rules or laws will have too surely.
Take the law bit aside anyway No matter us ‘straight’ people do – as it seems, wrongly, that we are still ‘the norm.’ Whether its for love, law, religion, or whatever – what I am mainly saying is that homosexuals such have the same option too.
Yeh you say you don’t give a damn what the government think etc but sadly the rules are there for a reason and often, only in event of emergency or terrible incident does it matter that you are legally married – and you need to be for diff reasons then.
I started writing this last night before the girls arrived, drank a lot of wine and now finishing the comment lol – so not really sure what else I planned to say! Ha!