I woke up yesterday morning and decided to conduct a bizarre (by my standards) day long experiment. For some weeks now I have been wondering how the granting of gay marriages by, both, public approval and state/sovereign legislatures would affect my life. If the status quo is a tradition to be protected then which parts of my life ought I to guard with my life?
I was in knots by 7am. This was further compounded by the fact that gays do not as yet have the legal right to get married. With the clamour going on you would think they had already and that church slots were filled up for years by gays wanting to get married, leaving 'normal' couples with nowhere else to go.
Persevere, I told myself and I drew comfort from Barack Obama's proclamation of support for gays to be allowed to get married. If the President of the USA is ok with it then what was to stop me, an ordinary South Londoner, from finding out the truth. The truth, according to the anti-gay marriage brigade who are mainly made up of Tea Party members, very CONSERVATIVE Christians and people who just hate anything gay, is because by allowing gays to get married this will have the effect of sullying our Christian faith and destroying the fabric of normality which sustains heterosexual people.
It was easy to work out the Christian faith bit because I try to live by it everyday. The second part, the fabric of heterosexual normality, was a problem. The 'traditional' argument had returned. What marks me out from the way gay people go about their daily lives? For goodness sake some of them even have children (Elton John). I opted to do the opposite of what I would normally do. Extrapolating the justification of the anti-brigade must, I thought, involve the dark side of normality.
The first act of my experiment involved preparing a different breakfast for my daughter. I normally give her something that will sustain her energy levels. I gave her bread instead, white starchy dough bread with lashings of butter. Yes, bad mother, I know. It was raining as we walked to school. I didn't put my umbrella up but walked in the drizzle instead. If adversity is the result of gays getting married then I had to walk that road. I ended up at the school steps with frizzy hair and a daughter who had as high energy levels as ever.
On the train I glared at people whom I thought were gay. Actually, I didn't. I wanted to but I couldn't. I don't hate gay people in any way but I do hate hasty commuters who push everyone out of the way. I glared at them instead. The experiment was clearly failing.
At work I wrote in pencil instead of in ink. No one noticed. This is the age of the 'everything is typed on the computer' and, consequently, someone commented favourably on my neat handwriting. There was no hardship in this even. At home in the evening I let my daughter watch 30 minutes of some rubbish programme instead of doing her homework while I read the newspaper. Normally, we would be ploughing through French or Spanish. After 30 minutes we resumed normal life. My prayers were skewed though. Was I to pray for an anti-gay marriage day or go through my normal rituals? I stuck to the normal rituals.
My verdict on my experiment - nil effect. People like the Republican candidates (ex and present) who pronounce gay marriage as being a potential existential threat to heterosexual folk should, frankly, be more concerned about the state of the economy and how their advocacy of neoliberalism in an austerity age will, without doubt, alter the fabric of life for many. By shouting from the rooftops against gay marriage Christians are already alienating faithful Christians who thought they were able to bring themselves as they were to God.
http://www.anorak.co.uk/322257/news/10-reasons-to-ban-gay-marriage.html/
