My boyfriend, Jeremy, and I are getting married this summer. The California Supreme Court’s ruling this week reinforces the strength of the 14 Amendment, providing equal protection under the law for those seeking same-sex marriage.
The fantastic irony of this is that Jeremy and I have no other reason to get married than the valuable certification it allows us as we seek qualification for emigration to New Zealand.
Anyone who knows me knows I’m opposed to the queer obsession with being like the Joneses (mainstream heterosexual life, marriage and all). There is no defensible reason for the government to be involved in issuing contracts for marriage. The contract two people make to share their lives and rights is enforcable and legitimate without government approval. And if you want to coat this contract with a circus of religious incantations, terrific, that’s also none of the government’s business.
If the government weren’t in the marriage business, we wouldn’t be wasting our time with state-constitution amendments or court rulings related to sexual and emotional agreements between private citizens. But because we live in a country whose citizens wallow in this nonsense, I am perfectly happy to take full legal advantage of their idiotic diversions.
So, I thank you, California, for making it that much easier for Jeremy and I to move to New Zealand together. Certainly, a domestic-partnership registration would have sufficed, but who can resist using the weapon of normative moralists to escape their very influence. Fools.
On a completely different note, I will admit, now in my 40s, a surprising attachment to old conditioning related to the excitement of “getting married.” Although I know that I am cynically exploiting the marriage system, I am rather chuffed at the idea of marching into City Hall and paying for papers that say Jeremy and I are bound, shackled, and now eligible for that most gorgeous of marital antidotes: divorce.
I’ve invited my sister out for what will invariably be a public civil ceremony. We’ll party in our own way afterward, imbibing lots of fine kiwi wine.