time and place
During the wedding ceremony, our registrar held a speech. We were notified of this plenty before and even got to submit more info about how we met to personalize it. We didn’t know the speech itself though.
So, on the fateful day, we were surprised by an overall really nice wedding speech. The guy has always been enthusiastic and very forthcoming and he clearly loves his job, and I don’t think I would trade him for another one. However, there was one part that made me cringe a little: Opening the speech with acknowledging and mentioning homophobia.
It’s not super bad, and acknowledgement of that does have its time and place, but I am echoing a sentiment here that I also see among fandoms of TV shows, music and the like: Sometimes as a queer person, you don’t wanna be reminded of that all the time. Because we know! It’s impossible not to.
Sometimes you just wanna watch media with queer characters without something homophobic happening to them, without the characters being used to beat “love is love” down the throats of straight viewers. No attacking on the street, no hateful family member, no teary eyed coming out, just normal stuff happening that happens to the straight characters too. It’s annoying to have to see this stupid baby lesson on basic human respect all the time, and be reminded of your own trauma all the time, as if being queer just consisted of these unhappy moments. We want more queer joy and peace in media.
And during what’s supposed to be one of the happiest days of our life, do we need the reminder that this marriage was only legalized in 2017? Sometimes you just wanna marry in peace and joy without remembering that until 8 years ago they openly permitted discrimination against you?
I mean, these parts about homophobia, no matter if speech or media, are never really for us. It’s for the writer to take a stand, to perform allyship, and it’s for the straight audience. The takeaway for them is “See, queer people are normal too and you shouldn’t be mean to them!”
But why on a wedding? I sure hope any attendee of a gay wedding is fine with a gay wedding? What else are you doing there? Are you gonna yell “Boo!” when we kiss? Are you gonna shake your head during the entire ceremony to show to everyone how not okay with it you are?
It’s a little alienating too. We are going through a process that is so common, so normal, so traditional in our society and something that also the straight people who are married can relate to. We’re on equal footing during that ceremony in regard to marriage. So why include something that feels othering again? We don’t always want to be reduced to suffering and fighting for rights or be a stand-in both in real life and fictional to teach the audience a lesson on the horrors of humanity. We wanna move on some time from always regurgitating historical wrongs.
It also begs the question: Does he always pull that one? We can’t possibly be the first gay marriage there. What does it say about the whole thing that maybe all gay couples get this part of the speech?
The intentions are absolutely good. The delivery wasn’t horrendous, and it was short, but it still took me out of the moment. This is just a gut feeling, but I think this is the stuff you write that, while supportive, comes from a place of seeing queer people as the exception, a rarity, a chance to pull out the well-intentioned but slightly cringy straight anecdotes (iykyk). I don’t think you’d do this if you have normalized them in your head and if they are people you are surrounded by daily. Then it would just be a wedding, and you’d do your normal wedding stuff. I doubt he brings up the oppression of interracial couples.
This is also why people saying “Stop making everything political and stop talking politics with friends” falls flat for me. Hey, I can’t even marry without it being political. I can’t even marry without the registrar mentioning politics in the speech. And that’s just common, that’s how it is. It shouldn’t be, but as long as my existence is politicized, politics will be brought up in connection with it.
I’m not mad at him and he didn’t ruin anything. But I was a little taken aback. I don’t think this was a popular part among the audience either.
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Published 08 May, 2025