Is polyamory compatible with Marriage Equality?
Playing by the rules will only get you so far.
Full disclosure, cards on the table, I'm not a huge fan of "Marriage Equality" - both in concept and the reality of a dude marrying another dude.
It's taken me a while to figure out what I don't like about same-sex marriage - and I'm still not fully able to articulate it. It started as a bit of an instinctive, gut-feeling of discomfort.
While legal recognition of same-sex relationships has been around a while, the realities of that vary greatly in different parts of the world. But there was a bit of a flurry of activity in the mid-2010s as countries such as France, the UK, the US, and Australia all grappled with the question - it was a time when the campaign for Marriage Equality became pretty much the sole focus the global LGBTQ community.
We're now effectively in a post Marriage Equality world. Gays get married - it's a relationship milestone that we can all aspire to.
I still don't like it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for equality. I'm all for protections against discrimination. I'm all for legal recognition of relationships to help navigate the complexities that come from living together and building a life together and separating from each other when that relationship has run its course.
What I don't like is marriage.
It sort of crystallised for me when I was reading Jeremy Atherton Lin's book, The Gayest Love Story Ever Told. Atherton Lin and his partner became deeply involved in the Marriage Equality journey in the United States - not because they were passionate advocates of gays getting married but because they needed the rights that marriage brought with it in order to solve an immigration issue.
As a bit of a side-note in the book, Atherton Lin highlights how the campaign for Marriage Equality sucked all the oxygen out of the room in terms of other things that queer people could be discussing or advocating for. There was an assumption and an acceptance of heteronormative marriage being the pinnacle of the hierarchy of relationships - without any debate or consideration as to whether that was compatible with queerness or not.
You don't have too dig to deep to see the way that internalised homophobia has shaped the allure of marriage: "My gay relationship is just as valid as your straight relationship because we can both get married and live happily ever after - just the way God intended."
Which brings me to polyamory.
I'm a big fan of polyamory. I love the way that gay guys have embraced the fluidity of physical and emotional intimacy - in all its forms.
What annoys me is when a gay couple has the big bells-and-whistles heteronormative wedding but then makes it clear to everyone that they're in an open relationship and embracing whatever version of polyamory works for them.
I don't know why it gets under my skin so much - I guess because it's a classic case of having your cake and eating it too, or however that saying goes.
Obviously, I'm bitter and jealous. I'm not married and I'm not in a relationship. But I just want to scream at these gays: "Pick a fucking lane, faggots!"
If you're going full heteronormative wedding, go for it balls-to-the-wall and embrace your Disney Princess fantasy. But if you'd prefer to hang on to some of the benefits of queerness and the fluidity of intimacy that can be accessed through that, then step away from the Vera Wang and just sign the papers for whatever legal recognition is required to give your relationship the protection it deserves.
Bitter and jealous ranting aside, I'm not the marriage police. Have whatever kind of relationship you want. Have whatever kind of commitment ceremony you want. Have whatever kind of sex that you want. But as a community, we're not very good at talking about what's important to us as a marginalised group of people. We're not very good at recognising the compromises we're making in order to benefit from the privileges available to some of us. I just feel that maybe it wouldn't hurt for us to start calling out the hypocrisy that sits at the heart of the Marriage Equality aspiration.
Where this could get interesting is in the United States if the Supreme Court finds a way to overturn the precedent set by Obergefell v. Hodges. That would result in jurisdiction regarding same-sex marriage returning to the individual states. Things would get messy but I can't help feeling that it might be the wake-up call that queer people need.
Playing by the rules will only get you so far. If the Mattachine Society taught us anything, it's that assimilation is a flawed strategy. You can embrace heteronormativity all you like but at the end of the day, you are not "normal" and the first people to remind you of that are the ones taking your rights away - the ones that you compromised everything for in the futile quest for acceptance.
Queer relationships are inherently subversive. Embrace the power of that. Love who you want to love. Fuck who you want to fuck. Step away from the Vera Wang.
Gareth Johnson