Equal Marriage is for Grandma Too
Equal marriage is for your Grandma as much as it is for gay people. I was reminded of this recently when a friend recounted a story of a woman who was having a baby and the hospital put down that she was a 'single parent', nope not really even close to what she is, married to a woman is a bit closer. Just not in this country.
It is easy to get caught up in the campaign for equality, and who wouldn't want to be on the right side of that campaign? But what often gets overlooked is the rest of society and how it will affect them, positively that is. The social contract is a very powerful device, we all self police to varying degrees, whether it is someone talking in a movie, a frown at a parent with a misbehaving child and so on. These cues are learnt from many sources, but the laws of the land reflect much of it.
And so it is with equal marriage, social mores get enforced regardless of how gay people define their relationship, or how other countries define their relationships. The campaign for equality means not just recognition of existing relationships between same sex people, it also means that the social contract gets updated too. It means that your grandma knows that the government approves. And now she wants her little cherub to get married, whether she wants to or not. Welcome to acceptance.
This all sounds glib, but it is very important, much like the formalized version in the Don't Ask Don't Tell campaign, people follow orders, even if they don't (yet) agree with them. And so it will be with equal marriage, the laws will reflect the changing attitude towards same sex relationships, but it will also enforce a new social order, it will no longer be acceptable to call a married lesbian having her second child a 'single parent'.
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