Its Getting Crowded at the Altar.

My, it’s getting awfully crowded at the altar of gay marriage advocacy. We now have four LGB organisations jockeying to take the lead on same sex partnership rights. It would seem that NLGF is no longer content to wrestle only with the financial ups and downs of GCN but they too have entered the fray as the champions of same sex marriage. That makes three by my reckoning. MarriagEquality from whose website one would be forgiven for thinking that Ireland is the 51st state of the USA, (Mary Harney would be pleased- “closer to Boston than Berlin”), LGBT Noise whose idea of youth rebellion is to be just like dear old mum and dad, and then of course there is GLEN with their particular approach to same sex partnerships borne of their grace and favour relationship with Fianna Fail.

Meanwhile, in the real world, queers are contending with homophobia, harassment, poverty, bullying in schools, isolation in rural areas, abandonment by their families, denigration from pulpits and St Peter’s Square, victims of hate crimes and bigotry, queers are members of ethnic minorities, are senior citizens, have disabilities, have children and are afraid to come out of the closet. But they’ll obviously have to wait in line for attention because the money and the kudos is in the gay marriage industry.

And that’s really what this is all about, another LGB organisation wanting some of the power and action and of course the limelight. Gay marriage is sexy, working to support elderly gays in rural areas who have no support networks or challenging Catholic schools who discriminate against lesbian and gay teachers just doesn’t pull in the dosh or the guaranteed divadom that wedding bells do. Arrogance and egotism are the driving forces, neo-liberalism and we- know- what’s- best- for- you, the modus operandi. The result is an absence of listening, the desertion of the most vulnerable in our communities and the demonization of those with a dissenting view.

In pursuit of the cause of gay marriage, I have heard its public advocates undermine single parent families in order to extol the virtues of two parent same sex families (LGBT Noise). I have squirmed as privileged, middle class, white women compare themselves to the victims of white supremacy and of South African apartheid, demeaning the experience and abusing the language of those generations whose very lives have been on the line in the fight for black civil rights (MarriagEquality & KAL). I have watched as the experience of lesbian and gay families have been reduced to a bargaining chip to exalt the positions of a few gay men with aspirations to power (GLEN) and now the NLGF steps up to the plate in an effort to give itself meaning and a slice of the pie.

Civil marriage should be available to lesbian and gay couples, but so also should a range of options to formalise our intimate relationships as same sex and heterosexual couples because the right to have choices is a much more fundamental and democratic principle in need of recognition and protecting. I have a problem with the hypocrisy that underlies a lot of what passes for campaigning on the issue, whether it is the irony of ardent advocates of gay marriage who have exploited the absence of same sex partnership rights in their past relationships to ensure that their material gains outweighed any natural justice or, who pontificate about coming out after having sat closeted in public positions for many years, while others did the dangerous work of making it safe to be out and proud, or those who are so intent to sanitise being queer that they eschew any meaningful political connection with their own community.

No one seems to mention that since the passing of civil partnerships in the UK, including the North, there is no appetite for civil marriage. In fact the only people fetishizing marriage are the extreme right and the gay marriage movement. Strange bedfellows indeed. In fact, they both appear to draw their inspiration from the same school of dogmatism.