Finally, after a long and painful battle, the equal
marriage law has past its final hurdle in the commons and the lords and it’s
heading for royal assent
Royal assent is a rubber stamp, even though there’s a
petition from the homophobes to try and encourage Her Maj not to sign it – that’s
just ridiculous. Even I, at my most paranoid and cynical (which is very very
paranoid indeed and cynical beyond measure) don’t believe for a second that
royal assent isn’t going to happen.
David Burrowes, the eternal homophobe, was the last one
to try and derail this and he failed. It has been an exhausting and soul
destroying fight. The homophobes in the media, on the net, in parliament, in
daily life and most certainly from the churches have been overwhelmingly
vicious. It has been a trial these last few months while the bigots did
everything they could to hurt us, to attack us, to say grossly unacceptable
things about us, to do everything they possibly could to stop our rights
advancing.
Their fight shows that our fight cannot stop- there are
still so many battles to fight, we still have to battle for our place in
society, our place as full members and our place as people due respect and even
safety. We also have to expect that they will push back against us, they will
launch their stealth attacks, their exceptions, their loopholes for bigotry –
and they will certainly try to claim that homophobia has disappeared.
Remember how ridiculous that claim is. Full legal
equality (which we don’t actually have due to some holes) does not mean
prejudice and persecution dies, nor does it mean we’re going to live in a
country that fully respects us as people. In truth, full legal equality merely
brings us to the same place that other persecuted minorities already occupy in
the UK – and only the most privileged, delusional or bigoted (Daily Mail
readers) would claim that sexism, racism et al have disappeared and there’s no problems
left in the country.
We still have to fight – but this battle? This battle we
won. I can still scarcely believe it, at every stage I expected one of the
innumerable attacks to succeed in derailing us… but we got there.
We’ve taken a step forward – but there’s a long way yet
to come. But I’m going to stand on this step and feel the joy for a while.
We will be able to get married in summer 2014, most
likely. I don’t think it will truly sink in or I will be able to relax until it
actually reaches then – but we’ve passed the hurdles.
