Brody's Scribbles... Tim Trent OnThe Marketing of Bigotry - Where the Gay Marriage Campaign Derailed Itself

By Tim Trent (Bracknell, UK) Nov 5 | I have asbestos underwear. I know I'm likely to get some flak for this, so go for it. Flame away.

Let me nail my colours to the mast. I am wholly in favour of those ladies and gentleman who wish it, for them to enter into a contract not unlike a contract of marriage that ensures that their same sex commitment to each other is registered as a contract and that they have the same partner and inheritance benefits accorded to heterosexual partnerships. 

I support total equality of rights for the same sex couple. I support hospital visitation rights to equality at work, to, where appropriate, paternity and maternity benefits. 

In short I support everything except the formalisation of that contract with the word 'marriage'. 

Ok, there went the outer layer of clothing in the flames, but the asbestos is still holding good. I fully expect you, if you disagree with me, to fail to read any further. And, if you fail to carry on that says that you, too, are  bigot. 

I fully accept that anyone entering into the contract I've described, whatever it gets called, we can call it scringling for all it matters, anyone who scringles someone else of the same sex will still be called 'married' by the entire world anyway. No-one will use the term 'scringling' in a conversation, they'll use the word 'marrying'.  Wedding invitations will be sent, not scringle invitations. Everyone knows it's marriage, and the technical name will never matter. 

That's where LGBT rights campaigned has gone badly wrong and derailed itself. 

I know we want the right to marry the person we love. When I was 13 there was a boy named John whom I wanted to marry and spend the rest of my life with. That was in 1965. 

But, if he'd been willing, I'd have happily scringled him instead. 

LGBT rights folk have gone for a bastion too far. They have made the heterosexual folk who think it matters afraid that the marriage contract will be devalued.  Somewhere along the line the campaign for equal rights became a war about a word, the word marriage. 

That's when the hate came out. That's when the knives were sharpened. I almost expected big rough tough men in white robes planting burning lower case 't' symbols on queer folks' front lawns, and lunchings. (Lynchings are so passé this year). 

And in Maine that happened. Only metaphorically, but it happened. 

In Maine a load of panic stricken bigots started to market their bigotry with zeal, and vigour and verve. Well, not verve. They just used standard fear tactics. They made all right minded folk, the moral majority, overturn Maine's law that allowed queer folk to marry each other.  They made it seem as if we'd hurt someone, or frighten a horse or two, and they turned the law on its head. 

The thing is, that law was about marriage.  And we fags, dykes, queers, nancy boys, and poofs had already ~gasp~ stolen the word 'Gay'. Stealing another word was truly a bastion too far. 

I only wanted to marry John because that was the only term I knew at 13. I'd have been perfectly happy if we were, today, an old scringled couple. What I wanted was to spend my life with him. And I would have wanted, had I known I wanted it, full partner rights me to him and him to me. Being scringled would not have been second best, it would have been everything. 

But someone decided to go for broke here. They heard that old "Shoot for the moon, and if you miss you'll land among the stars" banality, shot for the moon, missed and fell back to earth to land in a sewage treatment works.  To land among the stars you have to escape from Earth's gravitational field. They didn't. 

So, in uncivilised nations like the USA, LGBT rights have had a setback. Here in the UK we are substantially more advanced than that. We have Civil Partnership. And we call it... Marriage. 

Just like we were always going to. 

That's what the strident campaigners for Gay Marriage don't seem to understand. Most people truly simply want an equal human right. The strident ones want a word, too. 

Who wants a piece of Scringle Cake?

Tim Trent is a Data & Privacy expert as well as an independent freelance marketing consultant based in Bracknell, UK. He is one of Europe 's leading experts in compliance with data privacy regulations, and is in the forefront of implementing Permission Based Marketing. He publishes regular articles on Data Protection.
A regular contributor to Brody's Notes & Scribbles, more of Tim's opinions can be found at his website, Marketing by Permission. [Linked Here]