An Overheard View on Gay Marriage

To begin with I just want to put a stamp on it that I am pro-Gay Marriage. In fact I don’t think there should be Gay Marriage and Straight Marriage. There really should just be Marriage. In its basic form, Marriage is simply the joining of two people who love each other and want to spend the rest of their lives together. Meaning two people of opposite gender or same gender should just be getting married. If we have to put a Gay before something, then maybe we should have to put a Straight before things too. I have a childlike mind when it comes to homophobia, as in, I just don’t get it. I can’t understand how an opinion of someone can be altered simply by the gender they are attracted to. That however is a debate too long to get into. People are all entitled to their opinions regardless of how ignorant and uneducated they may be.

Very recently I was subjected to an opinion not only of “Gay Marriage” but of “Gays” in general. My family and I had decided to pop out and get some lunch a couple of days ago. It was a really gorgeous spring day and we were together for the first time since Christmas. There’s a lovely pub near my sister which serves great food so we got dressed and we were on our way. We went in and were seated in the restaurant, and to be honest, we’d barely sat down before my sister had overheard the beginning of a conversation of some elderly people next to us. They were discussing “Gay Marriage” and how they don’t agree with it. It began quite simple, they thought that it was something they didn’t think Gay People needed as they had civil ceremonies. My sister wanted to get up and say something but I told her to just ignore it. When old people discuss their views on Gay Rights I can’t help but defend them slightly as I feel it’s a generational thing. Like when they’re politically incorrect. I feel like they don’t know any better, they were brought up in a different time to us, so they’re ignorance can be maybe not excused but tolerated.

Their conversation became something more however; hateful overly opinionated venomous talk is something completely different. As they continued, it became difficult to put their conversation down to plain ignorance.

One woman exclaimed.

“They can have their ceremonies and whatever, and they can live together, but Marriage. No. That’s our thing, for us. If I was ever invited to one I wouldn’t go. Definitely not.”

It was the segregation in her words that really, for lack of a better word, pissed me off. It was an us and them scenario. As if she was speaking about a different species all together. We began having a conversation at our table loudly berating their opinion. They seemed to be oblivious to how upsetting their conversation was to overhear, or how angry they were making us. Just as my sister and I were weighing up the psychological damage we’d suffer to just make out to make a point we heard something that I never thought I would hear someone say in my life.

One woman was talking of how she has a gay friend and before she could even continue. The other woman interrupted and said.

“Well Yes, you would have one of them as a friend but that would be it. You couldn’t be friends with two of them.”

It was at this point I stood up and just shouted “Let’s move!”

As if having a Gay friend was OK as long as you didn’t associate with more than one! What the hell was this in her mind? How was this logical to her? If you met a second Gay person what would you do? Make them fight it out to see which one you would keep?! Could you have two Gay friends as long as they weren’t in the same room together? What would happen in her mind if they were in the same room together?

I physically couldn’t’ sit there any more. I knew that if I’d heard any more I would have had to have said something. As much as I feel I should have said something to them, to stick up for the rights of others, I also don’t make a habit of shouting at the elderly, and I know my voice would have made no difference to the opinion this horrible person had.  

In this day and age I can’t believe that people could be so rude and hateful towards another person. Towards people who they don’t know, towards people who've done nothing to them. It’s absolutely disgraceful. We shouldn’t even live in a society where Gay or Straight is even a question or an issue any more. It has no effect on how qualified a person is to look after a child or whether they should be joined in matrimony. People having any sort of judgement over others because of their sexual orientation are just plain archaic, and one day hopefully these uneducated, unbearable people will be firmly put in their place and seen for the absolute detestable, foolish people they are. It is something that gets me so angry right now I can barely articulate my feelings towards it.

After our lunch we happened to be leaving at the same time as them, and as we paid the bill we were given beautiful dirty looks, one of them even mumbling something while she stared at us. We’d made it pretty obvious to why we had moved. We even ended up telling the young guy who had been serving us what had happened, and he replied how glad he was he hadn’t heard it.

What would they have said if they knew a Gay man had been serving them?

Out in the car park they stood staring at us as we got into our cars. As if they couldn’t believe that we’d been rude to them. I thought for a moment there was actually going to be a rumble in the lot! There wasn’t, obviously. I hope I never again cross people like that, but it’s an unfortunate thing in the world we live in that people like that are everywhere, and will always be poisoning our society.