Don't invite me to your straight wedding until we all have the right to marry
Updated
The other day, my gay friend received a much-anticipated, anxiety-inducing letter in the mail.
It was a letter outlining the details of an impending legal event. It was brief, proper, and full of all the oddly detached formal wording he had feared might be employed in addressing its emotional subject.
A letter that demanded a "yes" or "no" answer of him — an answer he was compelled to give, even though he resented the fact he was being asked the question at all.
Everything inside my friend was screaming "no". But he knew he would have to say "yes", lest he be flung from his social and professional circles for being perceived as difficult, selfish, attention-seeking, resentful or even hateful.
And yet he just couldn't bring himself to say "yes" to that wedding invitation.
Yes — a wedding invitation. In the middle of the same-sex marriage postal survey — this gut-churning time where the rights of LGBTQI people are being talked about as if any of us has the right to say who deserves human rights or not — my gay friend was sent a wedding invitation by Greens-voting, arts-sector-working, inner-city-living, usually progressive, usually sensitive, usually thoughtful heterosexual friends.
Planning a wedding is hypocritical
These friends had capped off the otherwise joyful Facebook announcement of their engagement with a sombre message of support for marriage equality by pledging to vote "yes" in any public vote, and encouraging the rest of us to do the same when we receive that stately, brief and ridiculous letter that we are all expecting in the mail.
These same-sex-marriage-supporting friends expressed this while they were choosing their celebrant. While they selected the venues for their wedding ceremony and reception. Their outfits. Their flowers. Their groomsmen and bridesmaids and flower girl and page boy and all of their guests and all of the places at the tables where those guests will sit.
They expressed this support for marriage equality, all while they designed their rings, those precious-metal symbols of an eternal commitment to each other — the ultimate, public declaration of being unified with the love of your life in the eyes of society and the eyes of the state and the eyes of each other.
They voiced their outrage at the dehumanising quality of this postal survey, all while they set the date for their own wedding and asked everyone, including their LGBTQI friends, to "save it".
Squirming through the ceremony
I've felt uncomfortable with the marriages of straight friends who support marriage equality for a while now.
I've also been a huge hypocrite and attended those weddings, even when I felt that discomfort.
I've squirmed in my seat and done nothing but nod my head in approval and quiet shame when those friends have mentioned their support of marriage equality during their actual marriage ceremonies. I balked at the weird contradiction of the whole thing — and said nothing.
But now, at this, the pointiest end of the situation, I can't keep silent anymore.
I have to draw a rainbow line in the sand and say: "Straight friends! If you are voting yes in the same-sex marriage postal survey, I implore you to hold off getting married until we can all get married.
"Don't set the date. Don't choose your wedding rings.
"Don't book the venues, don't buy the outfits and don't write up the guest list until all of the guests on that list can enjoy the same rights as you."
And if that request sounds just too hard to accomplish, then I simply ask this: "Don't invite your LGBTQI friends to come support what is an inadvertent lack of support for them.
"Don't invite people who will have to choose between suppressing sadness or unleashing rage to respond to your invitation.
"And don't invite me."
Genevieve Callaghan is a Melbourne writer and performer.
Topics: marriage, gays-and-lesbians, government-and-politics, australia
First posted
