I’ve been watching movies of the legally endorsed gay marriages in
California, and for the first time in a very long while, I’m feeling
hopeful about the future of this country. An America that embraces
marriage equality is an America that, for example, would think twice
before torturing as a standard procedure. But more selfishly, I’m
hoping that the gays, by setting a good example, will save the breeders
from themselves.
You see, in the last 40 years, heterosexuals have systematically
ruined everything that makes weddings worthwhile.
It all started when some anonymous jerk decided he wanted to get
married wearing a Star Trek outfit. That anonymous jerk’s
wife, perhaps tired of fighting against Kirk posters and Spock dolls
and all other things Vulcan and Romulan and Tribble, wearily nodded:
Yes, she said, she would dress up like Uhura for a bridal outfit.
Since that day, when the most solemn bond that two human beings can
forge was decorated in the style and language of a silly
science-
fiction television show, heteros have been merrily fucking
up weddings in bigger, gaudier, and tackier fashions with each passing
year. People are married on roller coasters, while scuba diving, and at
Elvis-themed chapels. Brides and grooms have been dressed as
superheroes, Hobbits, and Star Wars characters. Childhood
dreams of being a princess are dragged out and put on display,
embarrassingly, for everyone to see. For four decades, and with
increasing avarice, we breeders have done everything we could to make
the sacrament of marriage something cheap, like a casino
attraction.
Like everyone else with a working human heart, I’ve been profoundly
touched by the exultant stories of gay marriage that have been told in
the last few years, in Massachusetts and now in California. Couples
that have passionately and patiently loved each other, some for more
than half a century, are finally having their love officially
recognized as more than a freakish sex bond between second-class
citizens. History will show, and possibly sooner than we think, that
these citizens of the United States are right to want to publicly
declare their love, and those who have opposed same-sex marriage were
fighting for a monstrous, antihuman cause. But on a more personal
level, I believed that gays would bring class back to
marriage—surely, those who have fought so hard for so long would
have some respect for the mythic power and dignity of the ceremony?
Then, last year, Disney announced that it was hosting commitment
ceremonies for same-sex couples in the same places—Cinderella’s
castle, if you’re wealthy enough—as straight couples. A call to
Star Trek: The Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton confirms that they
will happily host gay commitment ceremonies on the bridge of the
USS Enterprise (with your choice of Federation, Klingon,
Andorian, Borg, or Vulcan attendants, and with an optional catered
dinner featuring appetizers like “Moogie’s Famous Ferengi Flat Bread”
or “the Holy Rings of Betazed,” which is a tower of onion rings), and
my hopes for the sanctity of the ceremony being restored by gay couples
evaporated.
One of the first signs that gay marriage has passed the threshold of
popular acceptance came last year, when GLAAD announced that every
single state in the union has newspapers that run same-sex union
announcements. Three-quarters of all U.S. newspaper readers regularly
read a paper that carries gay-wedding announcements. But as anyone
who’s read the New York Times wedding announcement section
understands, unwise couples frequently turn these blurbs into the
dead-tree-and-ink equivalent of making out with someone while in line
at an all-you-can-eat buffet. These announcements have become windows
into how quickly gay couples have adopted the sheer geeky disrespect
for marriage that it’s taken straight nerds decades to develop.
The wedding announcements in Bay Windows, a Boston-based
gay alternative weekly, are just as embarrassing as the straight
counterparts: A couple boasts of meeting for the first time at a
Fuddruckers restaurant in Natick, and their first dance was to Celine
Dion’s “At Last.” Another pair of men were married in matching
Utilikilts. “He’s turned me into a raving Trekkie,” one man exclaims in
his public announcement of eternal devotion to his husband, “And every
night we watch Voyager or Deep Space Nine or
something like that. And that’s our little quality time together, the
only thing we’re really both rabid about.”
One lesbian couple in England proudly sent photos of their wedding
cake, which was fashioned to look like the Death Star in the Star
Wars films, to local news outlets, and the cake made the internet
rounds. The bakery initially refused to fashion a wedding cake in the
image of a fictional device that killed billions of people until one of
the brides huffed, “Look, it’s my big gay wedding and we want a Death
Star!”
It doesn’t have to be this way, gays. I was relying on you, and it’s
still not too late for you to save the wedding as a meaningful,
important cultural institution.
Listen: I am not a religious man. Never once, from the day of my
birth until today, have I even entertained the concept that
there was anything remotely resembling a God or an afterlife. You might
wonder why I should care about how people get married, a ceremony that
has primarily been a religious rite for six millennia. But I
do care; I get weepy at good weddings faster than many of the
matronly ladies in the shiny peach dresses.
It’s the ceremony that really does it for me. There are so
few meaningful ceremonies in modern life (eighth-grade graduations and
other manufactured feel-good achievement-fests don’t count), and this
one meaningful chance for you to celebrate an actual, bona fide rite of
passage is too good, and too important, to mess up. Calling all your
friends and family into one place to ritualistically announce that
you’re going to make this person you love a member of your family, and
love and care for that person until the day you die, is some
serious shit. Entire bloodlines are forever bound together;
strangers are made into kin. For one day—one day in your entire
life!—you can put away the Barbie cake toppers and napkins with
Garfield printed on them and act like a goddamned adult.
It’s still early in this historic hour; millions of gay couples
around the country and the world will one day marry. As has always been
the case, as with fashion and slang and dance music, heteros will look
to the gay community for their cues. For heaven’s sake, gay people: Set
a better example for us than we have set for you. You are declaring
your love to the world. Show a little self-respect: Leave the pointy
ears and laser guns at home, in private, where they belong. 
I hope the excercise of writing this was satisfying and cathartic in and of itself, because sadly it can’t really address the fundamentals of your problem. You are imputing meaning in the act of ritual, or as you say, ceremony, as if this were some universal thing. Though not said directly, there appears to be an uspoken linking here of ceremony with tradition- a link which is often the case, though certainly it isn’t always a given. There also seems to be an implied level of gravitas and seriousness inherent in the ritual which you require as well, for meaning to be found. Unfortunately, you speak as if there were some universal sort of meaning, as if traditional ceremony and gravitas inherently confer meaning in the hearts and minds of all the participants. I imagine that neither jumping over a broomstick, a ceremony with limited ritual but with a traditional, historical pedigree, nor a Klingon Wedding with limited pedigree but ritual and seriouness to spare, would satisfy. Since deep meaning is not necessarily the same for all people, it follows that it won’t be the case for all gays and lesbians either. If anything, as the trend-setters for us all that you claim them to be, wouldn’t you expect gays and lesbians to give us even less traditional/conventional ceremonies?
All of this, of course, you knew already, but I respect your desire to see meaning be restored as the most important part in the wedding ceremonies of anyone who gets married. Even if it never really went away in the first place!
strange that you would assume marrying in a star trek costume wasn’t the girls idea?! i’m a woman and the only way i’d ever demean myself by getting married would be in a star trek uniform.
recently i went to one of those precious sacred ceremonies of which you speak where the woman was told she was inferior, made of his rib, and that it was now her duty to obey. she wobbled down the isle with her lotus-foot high heels, breath-denying white dress showing her virginal worth to be purchased, make-up making her acceptable for her comfortable-looking ugly groom.
no wonder these events make you cry! seeing someone sold into legalized slavery makes me sad too. when exactly was the time span where marriage was a sacrament? in the 50’s when wife meant slave you can buy for free? before that? no it was worse. it seems like its been nothing but a way for people to profit by trading and selling women. what would make marriage sacred? a big silly white dress that looks like cinderella? so cinderella is ok if its “classy” but not star trek because you don’t like it. a show that gave all of us non-male and non-white people hope for a future where WE mattered. maybe that’s more sacred to some than a hate filled ceremony based on a book that considers blacks subhuman and women nothing but a part of man. hopefully gay people will not be so ignorant as to adopt ceremonies that have been used to negate their worth for millennia. what’s the difference between following the doctrine of one fantasy book instead of following the doctrine of a science fiction book? leave your sexist backward ideas at the republican nation convention and let the rest of us decide what gets to be sacred on our private day.
Holy shit those were some tl;dr whiny-ass comments.
Nerds.
You think gays are not going to have theme weddings? I’m going to guess that 70% of all gay weddings will have some lame theme. They all love dressing up, You know, they’re all gay like that.