My stances on celebrity weddings is generally a hard-line “vomit.” I have never bought a wedding issue of PEOPLE and I have never read any celebrity wedding coverage with any real interest, except for the Pete Wentz/ Ashlee Simpson wedding, which I read in horrified wonder as I realized that you can be a member of one of the most successful bands in the world and some girl’s dad can still force you to get married to his daughter cause the rabbit done died (as Steven Tyler once put it). I think big weddings, of the celebrity or non-celebrity sort, are kind of disgusting wastes of money and intellectually I am like “Why couldn’t you just give all of that money to some charity instead of using it to prove that you’re straight or whatever fucking point you’re making? What point are you even making???” Emotionally, I’m just generally like “Barf.” I don’t get the warm fuzzies and I don’t see love when I see a big ostentatious wedding (or any wedding, really)—I see a grody and goofy display of conspicuous consumption and too much fear/ too great a lack of intellectual curiosity to challenge the centuries-old property laws masquerading as the #1 way to certify “Luv.”
And yet.
I read the Portia and Ellen wedding issue of PEOPLE at the salon the other day and I fucking DIED. I WAS CRYING AT THE NAIL SALON, Y’ALL.
Which was surprising to me, since it was still a conspicuous display of wealth, and their clothes were still too expensive, and all that (though I guess it was a small wedding). I was charmed by the fact that they are apparently vegans, and enchanted by their desire to grow old in a farm where they could “take care of every kind of animal that needs to be taken care of.” Awwwwww! But really, it touched me because of the fight involved. Though all of y’all who know me in real life know that I am hard-line against marriage generally (you could use my stance on marriage to cut a steak, it is so hard and sharp!), I fucking love gay marriages. I am crazy for them, I cannot fucking get enough of them. And though it’s an emotional reaction, not an intellectual one, on the occasions that I do try to intellectualize it, I think it’s because since people fought so hard for gay marriages, it seems real to me. Heterosexual marriage seems by-and-large lazy/ worthless to me because it’s just a foregone conclusion—find someone to date that you don’t dislike too much, get married, pop out a kid, rinse, repeat, die. Honestly, I think it turns me off because there isn’t anything very romantic about it.
I mean, I know it doesn’t make you Heathcliff on the moors just because you’re gay and you went down to City Hall, but I do think there is a certain romance to fighting for the things you believe in, whether its love or whatever else. I mean, I’m still pretty appalled by the idea that the government gives any persons special rights because they’re in love with someone romantically, and I still think we have a long road ahead not just in terms of gay marriage, but in terms of recognizing long-term platonic partnerships as equally valid to marriage. But the main thing that alienates me from the idea of marriage is that straight people just do it because it’s there—I do wonder how many straight people would still get married if you had to have public officials and “religious” leaders try to humiliate you in every possible way and put every possible roadblock in your path. Gay marriage is something that has been fought for so hard, you do have to really really want it desperately, like you’ll die without it, and that really is the essence of what two people making the decision to trying to spend the rest of their lives together should be, to me anyway.
So, my modest proposal is we allow gay marriage and ban straight marriage for the next 100 years. Then, at the end, we all fill out a survey and see what we’ve learned.
PS: Okay also: I did care that Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling got back together. But so did everyone else in the world, because we all secretly believe “The Notebook” was a documentary.
