Within its powerful, liberating message, the Marriage Equality referendum regrettably communicated the implication that although all gays were now equal, the married ones are more equal than others. Such coupleism is endemic in our society where ‘The Big Day Out’ is the be all and end all of too many people’s life and personal goals. As Belgian psychoanalyst Paul Verhaeghe, argues in Love In a Time of Loneliness: “Family life has changed drastically, the couple of yesterday has almost vanished and paradoxically the main defenders of marriage are to be found in the gay community.”
Even this month’s GCN could reinforce this idea that the only good or successful gays are the married ones, and for LGBT+ folk who carry such a legacy of shame and marginalisation, the big pink wedding is the perfect way to validate your entire existence to yourself and to everyone else. Suddenly all those lonely Christmases, all that bullying at school, all those years of invisible, silenced, impossible intimate desires are validated in declaring not just ‘I do’ but ‘I am’. We are trapped in a repetitious Muriel’s Wedding parody, but without the comedy, where the married gays are valuable and those left on the shelf go unmentioned, and are at best stuck at a corner table.