The fight over the use of the term "marriage" is the single battle the opponents want us to fight: Because it's the only battle they can win right now. (It is one of those powerful iconic words that invoke all sorts of deep emotions in a majority of American people when they hear it. You can't change that with a logical argument.) We can win every other battle, right now! So let's do it.
Hey PIA,
You are where I used to be on this issue, I've just stepped a little further over to the dark side
I used to be fine with the idea of "whatever we can get would be great" any advancement is a positive. Win enough small battles and then we can win the war.
Let us not forget, we had the right to marry - that was one of those small battles, and it had already been won. Then, we were put in a position to have to win the same battle again! That ain't right. Suddenly something snapped in my head and I went reeling into
All or Nothing Gay Avenger mode!
As I've said, this issue does not affect me personally in any immediate way - In fact, if I was smart, I would shut up about it, it's hard enough to find a date now, it will be impossible once they're all married. But a lot of us are just not feeling the desire or the need to compromise anymore. Been there done that.
The silly people hanging onto the word, don't even have that to hold onto. Here is a little historical gay tidbit that many straight people may not know. In the nearly 30 years I have been out (wow. I
really didn't need to put that in those terms), every gay person I have ever known in a committed long term relationship ALWAYS referred to themselves as 'married'.
Years before this battle, male partners referred to each other as husbands, and female partners referred to themselves as wives. So, the sadly ironic part of this whole semantic argument is that, even IF our legal couplings are called something else by the government, church, etc., all you will hear from the gay folks are marital terms. From a social/cultural standpoint, the word marriage and all its little terms have already been adopted by the gay community. In fact, these days, when a gay person tells me that they are married, I now ask: "officially"?
