Marriage, or why I really really want same sex couples to be able to marry.

I’ve kind of been stewing for the last couple of days.  Say, since about Tuesday, when I found out that the voters of Maine had decided that they were going to deny marriage rights to same-sex couples.  And I keep going back to this question that my dad asked me when I went on a rant a couple of years back when Michigan decided to remove “common-law marriage” and ban The Same Sex Marriage, essentially ensuring that gay people and straight couples that didn’t really want a government sanctioned relationship were doomed to be legal strangers.  He asked me “Why the hell do you care so much?  It’s not like you’re gay.  Just suck it up and get married if you want those rights.”

I responded with whatever had seemed right at that particular point and time, but it’s a question that always comes back to me whenever the subject of gay marriage comes up.  My emotional tie up is more than wanting equal rights, and it’s more than fighting against religion having a bitchfit that they can’t make the government their happy fun-time bigotry playground.  I guess I have a little bit of a confession to make – I want same-sex marriage because I’m selfish.

Perhaps I should explain.

I got married at the ripe old age of twenty one, after dating the boy for over five years.  I also do not have the greatest opinion of marriage – I feel culture kind of hands us this shit ton of baggage regarding marriage and a lot of it falls on the woman.  Marriage is about “until death do us part”, not getting caught cheating instead of having honest conversation and exhibiting slightly stalkerish behavior about finding your fulfillment in one person for the rest of your life.  And there’s something wrong with you if you deviate from this.  You become a failure, a fallen woman, a harlot or a frigid bitch if your marriage doesn’t end with one of you in the grave.  If my marriage fails, society tells me it’s my fucking fault for not being/doing/whatever enough.

Before I got married, I literally sat down with a two page list with the man and went over things like religion, child raising, chore breakdown, and my big huge freakouts.  After we got through that, I realized it wasn’t him that I was worried about – it was everyone else.  It’s the government tacitly supporting women giving up their maiden name if they feel their families should be united under a single name.  It’s about the presumption that if I’m married, then you should talk to my husband, and that of course I’m running the household.  And, of course, the woman in the relationship should be giving birth to the children (who belong to her husband), and should stay at home and raise them.  If she’s going to work, she damn well better do it all – work, handle the house, raise the children and have dinner on the table when her man gets home.

These are all the things that acknowledging same-sex couples threatens.  Not that women can’t have kids and stay at home if we legally recognise gay marriage – but same-sex marriage forces all of us to have a conversation about all of this bullshit baggage that comes with the word “marriage” right now.  To decide what we want to keep and what we want to make anew.  There will be plenty of people out there who want that old-timey traditional marriage of “until death do us part”, but it shouldn’t be a foregone conclusion.  So I’ll continue to fight for marriage equality for same-sex couples, to hit the pavement and talk until people’s ears bleed, because without it, my marriage isn’t equal.  Not even close.