SUNDAY, 3 NOVEMBER 2024

When I was growing up as a young gay man in the 1970s, those of us who were active in the gay movement tended to belong to one of two wings. The first took the view that gay people should assimilate to the sexual norms of society and focus on working towards goals such as equal legal rights; the second believed that the gay movement should be revolutionary and challenge the very roots of what queer theory now calls heteronormativity. In Britain, the main group that took the first approach were a non-confrontational organisation called the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE), with a strategy based on appealing to the traditional liberal values of tolerance of minorities. The other strand was influenced by the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) in America, was much less formal and less centralised, and used tactics such as demonstrations and street theatre as their principal way of trying to achieve their aims. In my local area, for instance, we called ourselves the Gay Activist Alliance (yes, we took ourselves ridiculously seriously in those days).

There was often no love lost between these two groups. Fifty years on, I think it is fair to say that the assimilationist strand has triumphed over the revolutionary, and in retrospect, although I feel that both strands of the movement were essential to change, I have to admit that the circumspect approach of the assimilationist wing possibly achieved more than the confrontational politics of GLF-inspired groups (although one thing the GLF approach did very well was to make homosexuality and lesbianism much more visible, although to a lesser extent regarding the latter). A perfect example of a change brought about largely through a traditional liberal campaign appealing to tolerance and respect and freedom for the individual is the introduction of gay marriage in many western democracies. However, the radicalism of GLF has not totally disappeared and there are still gay people, especially of my generation, who reject gay marriage as an adaptation to a society which remains homophobic at its roots and which encourages an unhealthy attitude towards human relationships in general, gay or straight. In this essay, I’ll look briefly at this difference in thinking, and particularly the arguments for and against gay marriage.

The first major benefit of gay marriage is that it helps same-sex partners to enjoy legal benefits that heterosexual couples automatically enjoy. One of the cruellest aspects of the days when long-term gay relationships had to be hidden away was the extra pain experienced by one of them when their partner fell seriously sick, or, in the worst case, passed away. With no recognised legal status, they were often denied access to hospitals and had no right to see and be with the person they loved, and often faced problems in terms of inheritance, with greedy families who had earlier rejected their gay family member deciding they were not about to reject the chance to inherit their goods and property, all at a time when the loving partner was grieving and often had no emotional support whatsoever. This access to a partner in extremis is clearly the greatest emotional benefit that a marriage contract brings, but there are other practical benefits such as the chance to enjoy the tax breaks of heterosexual married couples. (It can be argued that it is now partners who choose not to get married, gay or straight, who are discriminated against on this level.) It is almost impossible to over-estimate the importance of these rights now available to gay spouses.

On a cultural level, gay marriage will almost certainly further the normalisation of homosexuality in our society. When I was growing up as a teenager there was almost no public expression of homosexual love and desire, and young gay people like me felt very isolated and alone, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that I thought there were maybe a few thousand people like me in the whole of England. I know that sounds hard to believe now, but the veil of silence over the topic was almost total, with the only public acknowledgement that gay people existed taking the form of depressing documentaries on TV showing the silhouette of a gay man talking about how lonely and miserable his life was, and occasional sex scandals splashed on the front pages of the tabloid press. In contrast, in the contemporary western world, there are famous singers, actors, politicians, and public figures who are openly gay, pictures of them with their partners online, and advertisements featuring gay couples targeted at the pink pound. As always, though, there is still far less visibility of lesbianism.

Another huge boon for many gay male couples is that they can adopt and bring up children, while lesbian parents can now be publicly open about the nature of their relationship. Personally, I have to be honest and say that never having to bear the huge responsibility of being a parent has been one of the biggest pluses of being a gay man, but I’ve known so many gay men who desperately wanted to be able to raise a family (often because they grew up in a big, close-knit family themselves), and in order to enjoy this kind of family life they chose to live a secret life of fleeting sexual encounters under the cover of a bogus and often deceitful marriage. Gay marriage must surely be slowly bringing about a greater openness and honesty; it is hard to think of anything better at integrating gays and lesbians into society than meeting other parents at the school gate.

Gay marriage is also contributing to the removal of the invisibility of homosexual life (much less, though, in the case of lesbianism). For men, it has done much to dispel the myth linking homosexuality and paedophilia. It has also been one of the factors giving them the chance to live an openly sexual life without fear of being attacked in cruising grounds or arrested in public toilets, as frequently happened when homosexual behaviour was illegal. Lesbians have much farther to go in terms of public visibility, and the silence which once protected them from some of the horrors meted out to men, such as imprisonment or blackmail, is probably now limiting their public acknowledgement. Sadly, however, most gay people of both sexes still prefer to remain in the closet, most often because of negative responses from parents and family.

We’ll now turn to the reasons why some people feel that gay marriage is a negative development overall. They hold the opinion that traditional marriage is a form of possession of the partner, especially the woman, and in the 1970s the radical wings of both the gay movement and the feminist movement argued that marriage was intrinsically sexist, a way of transferring ownership of the woman from the father to the husband. While contemporary lesbian activists are often more measured in their rejection of marriage, they still criticise it as an institution which accepts, promotes and relies on sexism, while many gay men refuse to take a proprietorial approach to partnerships and consciously decide to have open relationships. They see the institution of marriage and monogamy as a restriction of human potential, forcing people into stunted relational structures which limit their personal growth, inculcate a naive, romantic view of long-term relationships, and an unrealistic and insincere view of human sexual desire.

Traditional marriage of all kinds, including gay marriage, can also seem out-of-date in a world where increased longevity means that people who marry might be expected to live together for fifty or sixty years. There are many people who do this, of course, but there is always the danger that the two people who tie the knot subsequently move in different directions and drift apart. Moreover, society in general has become much more fluid and mobile as fewer people live their whole life in one area, while women are often as keen to have a career as men and are less willing to take the traditional home-builder role, both of which can put a strain on a relationship and can trigger a break-up. This has led to what has been called serial monogamy, where people have a succession of long-term but not lifelong monogamous relationships, a cycle of marrying, divorcing and then settling down with a new partner. Also, the idea of open marriage (or polyamory, to use its more fashionable contemporary title) has spread beyond gay culture and become popular as a way of trying to avoid the secrets and lies of a monogamy that is often more a public show than a reality.

Some male gay activists contend that gay marriage is a threat to gay culture. An important part of male gay culture has always been its willingness to embrace transgression, especially with regard to sex. Sexuality lies at the core of male gay life – cruising, bathhouses, group sex, and so on – and some gay men see gay marriage as a kind of suburbanisation of gay sexuality, making it as dull and uninspiring as official heterosexual marriage, and think that a homogenisation of sexual desire is taking place. They suggest that a strange mix of stereotypes and standards of male gay life is emerging. One is highly sexualised – young, handsome, promiscuous, hedonistic – while the other is respectable, decent, conventional and essentially dishonest. Many of the old GLF generation argue that gay marriage accepts a society which is built on lies, where people cheat on their partners while pretending to be faithful, either through having affairs or, in the case of men, by visiting prostitutes. However, other people who worry about the increasing sexualisation of our culture, a culture in which girls of ten or twelve are sold clothes which look like the stuff that a street whore might wear in a movie, see gay marriage as a welcome bulwark against this increasing sexualisation.

The fact that the benefits of gay marriage have taken up more space in this essay than the risks suggests that I am broadly supportive of it, which indeed is my overall opinion. 1970s gay activism was thrilling and the arguments it spawned were interesting, provocative and serious. But when I look at society now and the place of gay men and lesbians in it, at least in much of the west, I can’t help but feel it represents progress. And hopefully it will protect us from any backlash from people who love to hate, which is a constant danger and, sadly in my opinion, will never totally go away.