QOTD: Why gay people hate marriage
"One of the joys of being gay and having lots of gay friends was the knowledge that at least half our acquaintances would never encumber us with wedding lists at Peter Jones or the social obligation to spend the better part of a Saturday in enforced merriment in the company of a crew of people we didn’t know and would never meet again, and in a cause — a marriage — whose prospects we secretly knew to be patchy at best, but that we were obliged to celebrate as the beginning of perpetual bliss.
"After the mid-point of one’s life an understanding dawns that there are only a finite number of Saturdays left. Those tempted to invite an older person to their wedding should ponder the possibility that they are asking for the commitment of an appreciable portion of someone’s remaining leisure-time to compulsory jollity on another’s behalf. A marriage can be dissolved. A bachelorhood can be regained. A lost Saturday never can.
"At the core of the celebration of a marriage is a half-lie. This thing may or may not work out — but guests are obliged to pretend otherwise, and in a ceremony that goes on too long and is followed by hours hanging around for a ghastly reception to start, where one will have to explain again, to increasingly drunken acquaintances and for the umpteenth time, that the reason one declines to dance is that one really doesn’t want to dance."
--Matthew Parris, "Hurrah for the new gay 'weddings'. But please don't invite me along"
posted by Lachlan @ 1:03 AM
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