I am about to shock precisely nobody by mentioning that I’m a big supporter of legalizing same-sex marriage. The way I came around to it is a bit unconventional, though, so I’ll share.
Way, way back in the day, when first Anaea pondered the question of marriage equality, she felt about marriage about the same way she feels about it now, i.e. I’m okay with other people shooting heroine in the privacy of their own home, so I suppose they can get married if that’s what they want. If we were going to mix up the legal framework for marriage, though, I was in the “get the government out of marriage entirely,” school. Turn marriage into a strictly religious and cultural event, get rid of the legal protections for marriage, this all sounded great to me. I’d spent maybe a whopping forty seconds thinking about this, but the position felt consistent and coherent and I didn’t really care.
Then one cheery afternoon I happen to be listening to a radio interview with an anti-same-sex marriage guy. He’s going off on a tear, enjoying the sound of his voice, and says something along the lines of, “If we let gay people get married, what next? Plural marriage?”
Wait one hot minute Mr. Slippery Slope Man, you’ve just made this conversation about me. And so I spent an additional five minutes thinking about the subject and concluded this: My original position was correct, valid, and worthy of an ideal world designed along Anaea’s utopian principals. It also makes me an asshole. We are never going to live in a utopia designed by me, so making real world decisions that affect real world people based on an impossibility when I’m practical in plenty of other positions is neither fair, nor reasonable. Legalizing same sex marriage could feasibly happen (see the evidence of the intervening years) whereas abolishing the legal institution of marriage is as likely as me getting a mainstream presidential candidate who doesn’t make me gag. Furthermore, there’s an element of dickery involved in saying, “I’d rather get rid of this thing than let you have it.” Not intentional in the original position, but it’s there, and must be acknowledged.
So it was that my position evolved, I flipped my flop, and came out in support of same sex marriage way back before Ellen made it cool.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is why this article has me rolling on the floor laughing. I’m not even offended, just amused beyond belief. Or breathing, really. Oh, Overton Window, how we shift thee.
h/t to Noah for the link.
Anaea Lay 