The Daily Blog 2 April 2013
Features writers such as Chris Trotter, David Slack Efeso Collins, John Minto, Keith Locke, Sue Bradford and more
When Bob McCroskrie stirred the pot by pointing out that we can’t call it ‘marriage equality’ if we’re not including anyone who wants to get married, many clever and supposedly intersectional activists went to a very strange place to prove Bob wrong. It’s entirely fair to focus this argument on same-sex marriage. This legislation at hand. This international movement of acceptance. But in order to do that, we don’t need to run screaming and emphatically separate ourselves from those poly people. Those people, who by the way, have not tried to ‘hijack’ this stage in marriage equality publicly once. Those people who are loudly supportive of queer marriage and waiting for their turn. Or, like many queer and straight folk, don’t personally want to get married, but don’t agree with a glaring legislative difference.
To separate ourselves from McCroskrie’s attempts to derail and divide, all we have to do is ignore him. Because currently the only person who IS conflating this phase in marriage equality with poly marriage, is a dude who ran a nationwide campaign in support of child abuse. He is no one’s ally. So let’s not give him any time at the big people’s table. If this isn’t the fight we’re fighting, our responses to his attempts to mess with us from his tiny swivel chair in a basement laden with Christian motivational posters, should simply say that and move on. But for “marriage equality” activists to go to great lengths to emphasize that’s definitively not going to happen so please move along oh my god don’t conflate us with that argument, it’s too far out and weird and you’ve got the wrong people, these are not the droids you’re looking for is offensive. Tell me why, exactly, poly marriage isn’t something we shouldn’t be actively setting our sights for once this hurdle is over? Is it because of the slippery slope? Is it because of ‘the children’? Is it because amending legislation to enable it would be literally the hardest thing ever and we have never needed to amend those things before in the history of humanity? Because I’m pretty sure those arguments should be all too familiar to “marriage equality” activists.
…Extending marriage to any informed consenting adult who wants to, should be something eventually incorporated in marriage equality. Unless you subscribe to the idea that loving, adult relationships should be prescribed and confined in accordance with…what, exactly? If you subscribe to that idea, then please, don’t talk about “marriage equality”. Talk about “same-sex marriage” because that is really all you stand for. If you’re at least broadly open to it, but you want to distance yourself from the poly discussion because you’re well aware that now is not the time, and that people do have super toxic hang ups about poly marriage, then sure. But do so with acknowledgement, at least internally, that you’re prioritizing this milestone over a discussion poly folk have been waiting for, and will continue to wait for. And maybe try not to spit in their face while you do it. http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/04/02/polyamorous-marriage/
