Rich Benjamin is engaged in a boycott of his friends’ heterosexual weddings because most states do not allow homosexual weddings. He thinks he’s being ideologically pure and striking a blow for equality. What he’s really doing is being an ass and alienating his friends without cause:
I picked up my jangling cellphone one recent Saturday to hear the elated voice of Zachary, my longtime buddy and college classmate. “I just proposed to Caroline,” Zach announced, inviting me to the wedding and angling to plot logistics. “So when are you flying in?”
“Oh, I’m not coming to your wedding,” I said.
It’s true. I’m boycotting all heterosexual weddings.
How utterly absurd to celebrate an institution that I am banned from in most of the country. It puzzles me, truth be told, that wedding invitations deluge me. Does a vegan frequent summer pig roasts? Do devout evangelicals crash couple-swapping parties? Do undocumented immigrants march in Minuteman rallies?
I know what he’s trying to do, but it’s hard to think of a more hurtful way of pointing out the inequality of gay and straight couples to people — one assumes because they’re close enough to him to invite him to their wedding — who are already on his side.
A poll last month showed Americans are split on same-sex marriage. A narrow majority, 51 percent, supports it, while 47 percent do not. Though Zach falls into that slim majority, he scolds me for being “peevish.” He says he resents me for blowing off his special day, for putting political beliefs ahead of our friendship and for punishing him for others’ deeds. But screaming zealots aren’t the only obstacles to equal marriage rights; the passivity of good people like Zach who tacitly fortify the inequality of this institution are also to blame.
They’re proof of a double standard: Even well-meaning heterosexuals often describe their own nuptials in deeply personal terms, above and beyond politics, but tend to dismiss same-sex marriage as a political cause, and gay people’s desire to marry as political maneuvering.
What many straight people consistently forget is that same-sex couples aren’t demanding marriage to make a political statement or to accrue “special rights.”
But you are using their marriage to make a political statement. Consistency? You make a point of explaining that you’re not an activist yet you scold Zach for his “passivity”?
