The victory of the ‘me, me, me’ marriage

Brendan O'Neill, Daily Telegraph


The government’s fervent promotion of same-sex marriage has led some rather fusty, intolerant men of the cloth to claim that homosexuality is being “foisted” upon us all. In truth, if anything is being foisted upon society through the increasingly bizarre Tory-meets-radical-queer campaign to legalise gay marriage, it is the idea of the “me, me, me” marriage, the notion that marriage is about “two people” and nothing more. This relatively new, highly bourgeois idea, which runs counter to how great swathes of Britain’s more traditionally minded or working-class communities view their marital unions, is being unilaterally promoted by the Tories and their cheerleaders as the ideal form of marriage. Question it, dare to suggest that for some people marriage is about so much more than companionship, and you will be branded a dinosaur, a throwback to an ugly past.

The most striking thing about the government’s consultation report on gay marriage, published yesterday, is how casually and cockily it redefines the institution of marriage. The Tories now decree that marriage is simply and definitively “about two people who love each other making a formal commitment to each other”. That’s it. It’s about you and your lover, nobody else. It isn’t about having children or raising a family or binding yourself into the broader community through taking on responsibility for creating and socialising the next generation; it is simply about “two people”, ensconced in a loving bubble, making a “commitment to each other”.

To that end, the report makes absolutely no mention of creating a family. It uses the word “children” only eight times, and its every use of that word is merely part of a response to (and criticism of) those groups that petitioned the government to recognise the importance of marriage as a means of raising and socialising children. It doesn’t mention procreation, or family bonds, or communities (except when it refers to the needs and aspirations of the “transgender community”). Marriage is depicted as something which takes place in a vacuum, between two people wrenched from any broader notion of social or generational responsibilities, where the aim is merely to satisfy an individual’s own needs. Marriage, the government decrees, is about allowing “two people” to “express their love and happiness”.

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