Get Into The Closet: A Message to Those Who Oppose Same-Sex Marriage
Today, across the world, somehow, there are people who are living openly and proudly in a way which contradicts all common sense and morality. These people want to redefine what it means to be a family and they’re trying to worm their way into education systems and government offices worldwide to support their unnatural agenda.
These people are known as bigots.
They’re everywhere and, rather unfortunately, they often walk around smiling and talking like anyone else which makes it hard to segregate them. These bigots are hardly anything new. They’ve existed in some form or another for as long as there’s been civilisation, ironically enough, hating people based on things like race, gender, nationality and sexual orientation. Why these things seem like a logical basis for hating entire groups of people escapes me when a much purer form of hatred can exist between those who pronounce “book” differently, (I’m sorry, but it really shouldn’t rhyme with ‘Luke’). Still, these bigots, obviously deluded in their views and clearly lacking in fundamental cognition, have been allowed to endure and even flourish under the compassionate care of society.
[pullquote] “I have a hard time recalling in which book you’d find the commandment, ‘Thou Shalt Not Sell Skittles Nor Carbonated Beverages To Any Of Them There Gay Folk’ [/pullquote]
Unfortunately, these bigots have mistaken our tolerance for some kind of equality with normal people and are now attempting to overthrow our wholesome family values. In the US, several laws have been put forward across certain states giving businesses the right to openly discriminate against homosexuals on “religious grounds”. Now, it has most definitely been a while since I cracked open a bible, but I have a hard time recalling in which book you’d find the commandment, “Thou Shalt Not Sell Skittles Nor Carbonated Beverages To Any Of Them There Gay Folk”, even when I was religious I was pretty happy with the whole ‘Do Unto Others’ sound-bite and left it at that.
It is of course worth pointing out that discrimination based on religious views means that a business doesn’t have to serve anyone who has sex outside of marriage, doesn’t attend church or doesn’t believe in your particular brand of caffeinated or decaffeinated God. How selling items to people you don’t agree with might infringe on your religious beliefs is a mystery. Unless of course you’re using your religion as a fairly shabby mask for bigotry and this really is where the bigots are overstepping their boundaries, by taking over businesses and long-standing institutions.
What’s worse is bigots often seem fixated on redefining the family to suit their own perverse views. Most healthy-minded people can nod in agreement that the family is a collection of the people closest to you; those who love you, teach you and support you as you grow, the people who keep you safe and happy, the people you think of when you think of home.
Now the bigot, with its frightful world view will insist that all families must have two main representatives; the male parental unit responsible for discipline, jar opening and sports talk and the female parental unit who teaches children about baking, feelings and no doubt keeps a tidy, mild-mannered household. It’s sick, like they have some skewed quota that needs to be met in order to make a family. It’s like they have warehouses overflowing with stock gender roles that they need to unload before anyone notices they’re past their sell-by-dates.
There’s talk of the unnatural effect that two same-sex parents will have on a child’s mental state. Why I certainly know that I would have been a serial killer, had it not been for the fact that my parents had three X chromosomes and one Y chromosome between them. I mean, never mind the fact that they agree on most things and played an equal part in shaping who I am. What’s more important to a bigot, is what someone’s parents do at night when the lights are off. If bigots are really so fascinated with their parents’ sex lives, they could perhaps benefit from taking up vigorous jogging, regular cold showers and, of course, praying constantly that God will remove their disturbing preoccupation with parental pillow-play.
Others will argue that children will mock the children of same-sex couples, teasing them and making them feel different. Now the people who make these assertions have possibly never been children, because I seem to recall that happening if your hair looked funny or if you spoke with a slightly posh accent… Or if you were too tall/ short/ fat/ thin/ smart/ stupid/ funny/ angry/ sleepy/ sneezy/ Doc/ unsporty.
It is also true that if children do victimise the offspring of same-sex couples, this is surely due to a failure by the tormentor’s parents to educate them. Most young children don’t really know what ‘gay’ means and will only treat it as something disgusting if that’s what they’re taught. In fact, we could perhaps solve this problem entirely if we stopped letting bigots raise children and let the rest of the children get on with playing and scraping their knees.
[pullquote] “As if it wasn’t self-evident that we’re all the bloody same… [/pullquote]
If, today, a man wasn’t served in a shop because he is black, or if a person publicly declared that people of different races shouldn’t marry, because their children would be outcasts, people would erupt in outrage. This, the consensus would surely be, is an ideology that no rational person could stand behind. Yet, much less than a century ago, these two ideas were accepted at large.
Irish people shake their heads with a scowl recalling that, in their grandfathers’ stories, people arrived to work in England only to be greeted by signs outside shop windows stating: “NO BLACKS, NO DOGS, NO IRISH”. But today, in this country, there is debate over whether or not we should allow same-sex couples to marry. Future generations will look at the youth of today in near disgust and ask how the hell we thought we had the right to bestow marriage on two men or two women, as if it wasn’t self-evident that we’re all the bloody same.
Bigots quite often seem content to move from one race, to gender, to religion, to sexual orientation whenever something becomes too much of a hot topic. Homophobia was pretty trendy for a while until society started to glamorise its own stereotypes of homosexuality. While Queer Eye For The Straight Guy didn’t do a whole lot to stop stereotyping, it did make homosexuality something trendy to watch on television and, eventually, those caricatures paved the way for gay people to be seen in popular media as just ‘people’. For a time.
Now, it seems, homophobia has made a pretty strong comeback into mainstream culture. The bigot may never truly learn, but there is still much hope that we can stop having to listen to them.
The day will come, and I cannot wait for it, when a little girl and her mother will be walking down the street and the girl will see two men holding hands, or maybe even sharing a sweet kiss as naturally as her mother kisses her father. That little girl will ask, in that mercifully loud, attention-attracting voice that children reserve for delicate public questions, “Mummy, why didn’t people used to let men marry each other?”
That woman, who will remember quite firmly voting “no” to same-sex marriage, will look all around with blood rushing to her face, aware that the eyes of passers-by are on her and mumble half-heartedly that she doesn’t really know. She will say, “They were different times, but people know better now and we better walk a bit faster, because Daddy’s waiting and you’re being such a good, quiet girl that Mummy will buy you an ice-cream. Just keep walking, a little bit faster now. Please.”
On that day, at last, the few remaining bigots will be where they belong…
In the closet.
Photo: The Wedding Couple by Mike Licht (via Flickr)
