…not gay marriage. Just marriage. No tiers, no conditions, no labels. Just marriage. For everyone.
My friend asked me to help him come up with something to write in the section of a petition in favour of same-sex marriage in the United Kingdom asking for his reasons why he thought it should be legal. Here was my attempt:
A person seeking to commit to a partner of the same sex through marriage shouldn’t have to give reasons as to why they feel they should be allowed to marry the person they love, just as men and women seeking to wed since time immemorial haven’t had to answer questions such as “why is our love against the law?”, “why are we subject to public ridicule and hatred?”, and “why are we living with the pain of a relationship suffocated by the shameful silence we’ve been locked into by an ignorant and retrograde public mindset?”.
An issue on which the government can legislate to right a wrong that will cost nothing and harm nobody is rare, and unless the opportunity to allow same-sex couples to marry just as everyone else always could is seized, Britain will always offer its LGBT community nothing but a badge of dishonour, of inequality, and of second-class citizenship. That’s not the Great Britain I ever believed in. That’s not a badge I’ll ever wear.
If you like what I wrote, please feel free to copy and paste it into the ‘reasons’ field of the petition when you fill it in.
Love is love, boys and girls. Never let anybody make you think that’s not true.
:)
