It wasn’t that long ago that the idea of non-heterosexual civil unions would have been considered unthinkable. Fifteen years ago, when I was getting together with Partner the idea that a queer couple might have their partnership recognised and protected in law just like any straight couple was something that seemed an impossible thing to happen in our lifetimes. Over the years neither of us have felt a pressing desire to nail each other into a legally and financially binding agreement. However, just 4 years ago when Civil Partnerships were sprung on us- almost out of the blue- it did seem like ‘a good thing’ in terms of equality and human rights. Surely shouldn’t we have equal access to those rights, privileges and protections that our straight peers take for granted? I thought so then but now I’m not so sure!
I’ve been reading recently about the history of the Gay Liberation movement in the USA. It started in the early 1950s with the formation of the Mattachine Society, a group of gay men whose aim was to politically organise to overcome discrimination against queer folk as a minority group. From the early days of the movement there was an immediate split. There were the assimilationists in one group aiming to win equality with straight society and dreaming of fitting into society as it stood. In the other group were the radical faeries. They believed that queer folk were fundamentally different, that we couldn’t, and shouldn’t, fit in and that society needed to change radically to fit around us.
The gay political agenda ever since has been largely driven by the assimilationists and with every new milestone we become more and more equal. We now have an equalized age of consent, abolition of Section 28, equal rights to parenting as fosterers, adopters or as biological parents.
As the years have flown by since that very first CP, I’ve attended ceremonies of friends who were clamouring to be one of the first as a political act, friends who wanted to show the straight world that they could do a CP knees-up more lavish and camp than any straight wedding could hope to be, and most recently friends who are tentatively entering into legal arrangements as the only way of finding out if a relationship with a foreign national is based on love or simply their partner’s desire for British citizenship.
With equality comes acceptance and an experience of what it feels like to be part of the majority. My problem is that the more I feel like we’re just like everyone else, the less we have our vantage point of being on the margins and the more we loose our ability to hold a mirror up to straight society to help it see what it might do differently. Our different-ness has always been our most unique value and we’re now in danger of loosing it. Maybe now we’re almost equal it’s time to pull back from the assimilationist’s equality agenda and start focusing on our radical uniqueness for a change!
