I welcome attempts to create a more equal state of marriage
than currently exists, after all if it exists then everyone should have the
right to it. That is the basic way equality works. Setting aside for the moment
that the proposed new legislation still throws a whole bunch of relationships
under the bus, I want to explain why I am against marriage for me. I have no
desire to get married myself, even though as a person in a heterosexual
relationship I have that right already.
I do not want to get married because I see marriage as an
outdated institution wrapped up in a whole bunch of problematic misogynistic,
patriarchal and religious bullcrap that I don’t agree with. I don’t subscribe
to a model of adulthood that includes marriage as a rite of passage or a marker
of success and I don’t want the role of wife. I don’t want to be a wife and I
don’t want to have a husband. I want my relationship to be as authentic as
possible, as innovative as it can be and as true to who my partner and I are as
people as we can manage. I am not interested in the cookie cutter ideal of what
heterosexual relationships should be like, and that is what I feel is offered
by marriage.
I don’t want to make a sacrament with God, and I certainly
don’t want to invite the government into my relationship if at all possible. At
a legal level, what marriage boils down to is having a certificate from the
government saying that your relationship is sanctioned, it’s a proper
relationship and better than other people’s. I would rather see the whole
institution abolished so we can remove this discrimination against unmarried
couples like myself, we who do not have ‘proper’ and officially sanctioned
relationships. But that is unlikely to happen, and while ever it does exist I
have as much right to decide not to get married as I do to get married. Other
people don’t have that choice; it has been taken away from them. By denying
certain people the right to marriage the government are essentially saying that
some relationships can never be considered legitimate. And while I would prefer
a system wherein all relationships are considered legitimate and equal because
we have abolished the two tier system marriage creates, that is unlikely to
happen any time soon. Therefore the only possible course of action, the one
that ensures true equality is to offer marriage to people in every kind of
consenting adult relationship. Giving same-sex couples the right to marry is
just the first step along this road.
