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Let Them Eat Cake by Holly Hughes

There’s a look I get when I tell friends that my new show is about gay marriage. It’s a lot like the look I think I’d get if I said “I heart Sarah Palin, and oh, by the way, where’s Obama’s birth certificate?” It’s the look that says, “What happened? You were one of us! You were the poster child for the cultural wars, or at least one of them along with Robert Mapplethorpe’s asshole! How could you do this to us?”

“Us” is the group of gays, queers, inverts, perverts, extroverts, and questioning who thought that there were some perks about being a ‘mo: you couldn’t be in the army, you couldn’t have children and you couldn’t get married. Okay, there’s a downside to the adventure, but these are serious perks.

The later two activities seemed to be, as a child of a loveless marriage who grew up surrounded by the products of other loveless marriages, well, something to be avoided, death by casserole. Playing house was a staple activity, but I was half hearted; I didn’t want to be the mom or the dad or the kids, I was always the dog. This should have told me something:

I’m at my best on all fours.

But then something happened. Someone SAID I couldn’t get married. I mean it’s one thing to take a pass yourself, but having 31 states saying I couldn’t get married, even though I already couldn’t get married, and finding out that the rules about double negatives don’t apply to legalese, well. The bridezilla in me rose like a tattooed riot grrrl shaking her three chords at the outrage.

First there was 2004. The re-election of George W. Bush, assuming you think he was elected in the first place. Referendums on gay marriage pass in several states, including the state I live in, Michigan. Then various lefty bloggers started blaming the “selfish gays” for Bush’s 2nd term. Okay, there’s no gay marriage in Michigan to take away but there were domestic partnership benefits which were part of the reason I was willing to live in the same area code as Jeff Daniels. So those went away.

I would have gone to a demonstration, if there had been one.

Fast forward to November 2008. It’s the National Day of Protest following the passage of more anti-gay initiatives, and I’m in Chicago. By this time my position on gay marriage has shifted. It’s boiled down to this: I think we should have it, it’s a basic civil right and you can put a period at the end of the sentence. Nothing left to say. It’s not the fight I would have picked, but it’s where we are. It’s what’s for dinner.   Read the rest at  Velvetpark

Also check out video interview with Holly Hughes at Shewired