Are You Part Of The Marriage Boycott? (Straights Refusing To Marry Until Gays Can Too)

[ruggerson]

The New York Times reports this morning on how more and more twenty and thirty year old heterosexual couples are showing solidarity with their gay brothers and sisters by refusing to marry until those rights are extended to all American citizens.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/fashion/03delay.html?_r=2&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

<snip>

LAST July, Kelly White and her boyfriend became engaged. They had a cozy picnic of wine and cheese on a hill before he presented her with a watermelon-flavor Ring Pop and asked her to marry him. “I’d rather not say if he got down on one knee or not,” she said. “It’s embarrassing.”

But they won’t end up at the altar anytime soon: they said they would not marry until gay and lesbian couples are also allowed to. “I usually explain that I wouldn’t go to a lunch counter that wouldn’t allow people of color to eat there, so why would I support an institution that won’t allow everyone to take part,” said Ms. White, 24, a law student at the University of California, Davis. “Sometimes people don’t buy that analogy.”

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These couples have gone mostly unnoticed (except by parents waiting to send out wedding announcements). Then Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie took up the cause. In an Esquire article in October called “(My List) 15 Things I Think Everyone Should Know,” Mr. Pitt writes, “Angie and I will consider tying the knot when everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able.”

They are not the first celebrity couple to have the idea. In 2005 on the television show “Extra,” Charlize Theron said of her relationship with the actor Stuart Townsend, “We said we would get married the day that gays and lesbians can get married, when that right is given to them.”

<snip>

[dddem]

1. too late for me

I've been married for 20 years. However, I'm doing my part - postcarding for Mass Equality, covering my family station wagon with bumper stickers supporting equal rights, and basically opening my big mouth to anyone who will listen. The fact, as I understand it, is that only 35% of Americans are opposed to Gay Marriage. If that's true, then it's time for the other 65% of us to speak up.

[twilight_sailing]

2. Old saw: Marriage is a great institution

if you like institutions.

[TechBear_Seattle]

3. Marriage is a great institution. But who wants to live in an institution?

A man is not complete until he is married. Then... he's finished.

[drmom]

4. I know two straight couples who are also waiting on marriage for this reason...

...both from Northern California.

[Zensea]

5. No

At the age I am (50) if I meet someone who wants to marry me, I'm going to do it.
Particularly since I've never been married.
Marriage is about love, not politics, at least for me.
It's also about me and one other person, not the entire damn world.
Even though I somewhat understand the sentiment of boycotting marriage, I basically think these people have no sense of perspective.
I try to steer away from engaging in regret about the past, seeing as how there's nothing you can do about the past, but I can think of at least one person that I should have gotten married to many years ago. Bad enough that because of my youth and stupidity at the time I didn't do so, if it had been because of some silliness such as boycotting marriage until everyone could get married ...

[ruggerson]

6. Kind of like

sitting in the front of a bus is about travelling, not politics. And it's about YOU getting where you want to go, not the whole damn world. Who cares if some people are forced to sit in the back of the bus, you didn't have anything to do with it, therefore you needn't sacrifice anything to rectify injustice.

[Zensea]

7. That's right

Everything is about politics.
Everything.
Screw that.
Besides, the two things are not particularly analogous at all actually.
My not boycotting or boycotting marriage has much less connection with whether others are allowed to marry than sitting in a particular place in a bus since when you sit in the front of the bus you are actually taking the seat away from the person who could have sat there.
Boycotting marriage is more like saying that I'm not going to ride on the bus to protest that people have to sit in the back of the bus.
Like that would have done a lot of good.
Marrying someone doesn't take away the right of someone else to marry, laws against marriage do that & those laws aren't going to change even if people boycott marriage.
It's going to take something a little more substantive than that.
Boycotting marriage is an empty gesture that may make the people doing so make themselves feel like they are doing something but essentially they're not doing a damn thing.
Who is really self-involved in that case?

[LeftCoast]

8. While I think it's wonderful what these folks are doing

I wouldn't expect anyone else to follow in their path. I know how dearly my partner and I would like to be married and I can't in good faith hold anyone else back from that.

[Swamp Rat]

9. Here you go:

[cwydro]

10. Very interesting.

I had only heard of Brad Pitt saying this and didn't realize it had become a trend.