Mass weddings show mass confusion
CommentsIn the past 20 years, if you heard there was going to be a mass wedding you could usually figure out who was participating if you had two guesses: Moonies or gays and lesbians.
While there were a variety of joint weddings of straight couples here and there, only the Unification Church and the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community staged events like those at the 1993 and 2000 marches on Washington in which literally thousands of couples exchanged vows.
Other examples include the mass weddings held in San Francisco after that city’s mayor, Gavin Newsom, started illegally handing out marriage licenses on Valentine’s Day 2004, and a mass wedding, concert, and fundraiser for a group of parents of gays and lesbians scheduled for Balboa Park in San Diego this October.
Even if the government recognizes such unions, those taking part in them simply do not understand what marriage is. A wedding is a deeply personal event in which two people join together with a promise to devote their lives to caring for each other. They invite their loved ones to join in support of their specific union. There’s no fundraising, unless you count the loving gifts shared by friends and family to help the new couple get a head start in life.
A wedding is not a political demonstration, and no, a wedding is not a circus.
There’s at least some progress, now that a few LGBT voices have begun to discourage mass weddings, given the unfavorable publicity received by such events in the past. In 2004, openly gay Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) criticized the events in San Francisco as “spectacle weddings” and told the New York Times that “The thing that agitated people were the mass weddings…. It was a mistake in San Francisco compounded by people in Oregon, New Mexico and New York. What it did was provoke a lot of fears.”
After the 2008 California rulings, San Francisco wanted to avoid repeating its mistake. Among rules about looking “normal,” the Mayor’s office told the San Francisco Chronicle they were trying to avoid mass weddings: “The only people who do mass weddings in our culture are Moonies - and they don’t exactly have high poll numbers with the public.”
Note they’re not concerned about being faithful to what marriage means. They just don’t want to hurt the cause with bad publicity and, Heaven forbid, bad poll numbers.
I have never seen an LGBT complaint about mass weddings that pointed out the ignorance of what marriage is supposed to be that is shown by those who plan and participate in such carnivals. Instead, the complaints all focus on what will help convince the country that same-sex couples are “equal.”
I stand by my statement that most of the people fighting to change our country’s marriage laws have no idea what marriage is.
hat tip: GayPatriotWest
I agree with you that mass weddings, Moonie style, are rather weird. But you seem to be confusing mass weddings with lots of individual weddings happening at the same time, as happened in San Francisco and Portland a few years ago, and in West Hollywood Park last week. Having attended a San Francisco wedding in 2004, and a WeHo Park wedding last week, I can assure you that those were individual, private, solemn ceremonies. They were undertaken by participants who have a firm grasp of what marriage is. I say that because most of those participants, unlike a typical wedding, were making vows that were not just prospective but retrospective, reaffirming many years and even decades of having lived as married couples, lacking only state licenses. Your glib dismissal of the devotion of these couples is frankly insulting.
Most of us would love to have a wedding that is not a political statement, but given the currently politicized nature of SSM, it is simply not possible at the present time for even the most discrete, private, and solemn same-sex wedding not to be a political statement. If Californians do the right thing in November, then it will become possible next year.
David, yet again, you completely dismiss the notion that marriage will change gay people. The reason straight society “understands” marriage is that they get a lot of practice at it (for better or worse, as they say). If you want gay people to gain an appreciation for the gravity of marriage, just let them marry. I guarantee they will “get it” in very short time. By not letting them marry, you make essentially tautological arguments–gay people don’t understand marriage, being married is the best way to gain an appreciation for marriage, don’t let gay people get married so they can’t ever get that appreciation, complain that they can’t get married because they don’t understand.
You view marriage as an incredibly fragile institution that will come down like a house of cards if you let a few unconventional gay people wed. I view marriage as a powerful social force that will do for gay people exactly what it does for straights–provide a common and healthy way to organize our relationships and families. It’s a shame that so many traditional marriage advocates have so little faith in marriage.
A wedding is not a political demonstration, and no, a wedding is not a circus.
Marriage is not a wedding, and a wedding isn’t marriage. Wedding is the presentation of a couple’s love. Marriage is everything that follows–the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Weddings are many things to different people–I agree with you that, at its heart, a wedding is a deeply personal event in which two people join together with a promise to devote their lives to caring for each other, however, that event can also be a public display, and commonly it is.
Hell, The Today Show just married yet another couple the other morning. Maybe not quite a circus, but that couple competed with several others in a modern game show style in order to get the privilege.
Fundraising? If the couple wants you to donate cash to a charity–celebrities have done that for years, and for seemingly controversial causes (I’m trying to remember which celebrity it was that had guests donate to PETA–not the couple I’m thinking of but Don Miggs/Lisa DeBartolo did just that very thing last year). Hell, what’s a money tree other than out and out fundraising for the couple? Sure, it’s helps them start their lives together, but it’s straight up cash money handed over. Italian mob movies are great at illustrating my point.
Circuses? The celebrities who have non-circus weddings are the ones that are in the minority. What did Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes celebrate? Wasn’t some private intimate affair in their living room, that’s for sure.
I stand by my statement that most of the people fighting to change our country’s marriage laws have no idea what marriage is.
I stand by my statement that a marriage isn’t a wedding and a wedding isn’t a marriage.
Jewish Concern for ‘TZEDAKAH” (Charity) and Social Justice: Most Jews are aware of the traditional story about the great Jewish scholar, Hillel, who was asked by a Roman soldier to summarize Judaism “while standing on one foot”–in other words, to put all of Jewish theology in a nutshell. Hillel’s response was to repeat Judaism’s original “Golden Rule”: “That which is hateful to yourself, do not do unto others. That is the heart of the Torah; all the rest is commentary. Now go and study!”
Time to be nice, David. . . .
Tom-
I don’t question the devotion of the couples. Based on reading several articles on the Web, as well as having talked to people who attended the mass weddings at the Marches on Washington in 1993 and 2000 (which I attended), I concluded that these weddings are more for public display and political purposes than to consecrate the relationships involved.
Dan-
What is the evidence that marriage will change people? More than half the civil unions in Vermont, with all the benefits of marriage, have consensual non-mongamy arrangements. I printed just four of the many letters responding to my “Monogamous same-sex adultery” piece in the Chronicle. They signed their own names and said (most of them) that they plan to change marriage, not to make marriage change them.
Why can’t we let domestic partnerships, with all the rights and benefits of marriage except the name, work in California for a generation and see if gay couples, in fact, change, before we make a final decision? Who is hurt?
TJMcFisty-
I believe it is legitimate to interpret a marriage in part using the way it chooses to begin - the wedding. If you are suggesting that it’s a good thing to make more marriages start the way Tom Cruise started his marriage, I think that’s more evidence that gay people by and large have no idea what marriage is.
Rusty-
I always try to be nice at GaysDefendMarriage.com. Nice, without compromising my beliefs or my argument. If you have an example of name-calling or not allowing the other person to speak on this Web site, let me know and I’ll try to do better in the future.