Viewpoint: How has marriage changed life for gay people?
from BBC Magazine:
Writer and activist Peter McGraith married his partner David in the first ceremony conducted under the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 covering most of the UK. Here, he asks what effect it’s had on gay and lesbian couples – and on marriage itself.
Do we care if marriage equality contributes to the demise of gay culture, identity and community?
I do.
We should consider what might be lost, as well as gained, if a new generation of gay men and lesbians were to rush into marriages without firstly having experienced that blast of emancipation that follows on from the realisation that you are that thing that some people loathe or pity and you feel utterly thrilled with it.
This experience of asserting a positive identity, outside of mainstream sexual morality, makes us question what we’ve been taught about gender, social hierarchies, religion, the family and the impropriety of sex. And perhaps it encourages us to have mature, rational and honest relationships.
Over 50% of gay men’s relationships are sexually non-exclusive, while lesbian women are more typically wedded to serial monogamy, which, to the surprise of some, can lead to its own problems.
A Ministry of Justice response to my Freedom of Information request for same-sex divorce statistics provides an early indication of a probable trend. For every gay male couple that filed a divorce petition, 3.2 female couples did so.
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