Marriage was and is a huge fucking issue for the gay men who died of aids alone because their partners couldn’t visit them in the hospital because they weren’t family
The audacity
Also, being able to be on your spouse’s health insurance can be pretty important if you’re a sick person.
Also the ability to retain custody of your own children or foster children if your partner dies. The ability for your partner to make medical decisions for you instead of your parents. The ability for your partner and their legal children to inherit things from you. The ability to jointly file taxes. The ability to live together if working in the military.
And general like. Acceptance and legitimacy in the eyes of society. You can personally not like the institution of marriage all you want but legal recognition of a relationship is massive in the current world and the ability to have your relationship with someone officially recognized by a legal or religious institution is incredibly important to a lot of people regardless of socioeconomic status. The normalization of gay relationships is important on a global scale in terms of the safety and personal well being of many queer people. Even if it’s not important to you personally.
All of this is true. The original tweet is ridiculously ignorant. And they didn’t even mention a genuine way “gay marriage” solved nothing for some of us.
“Gay marriage” is unavailable to a huge chunk of queer ppl who rely on benefits to survive. I have none of those positive aspects of marriage available to me. SSI is BRUTALLY means tested. If I marry, my benefits will get slashed. I can’t afford to take the hit and still be housed AND fed.
I may never marry the person I love. If you can, do NOT take that for granted. Not for one MINUTE.
Keep fighting, your siblings still need you.
End survival gatekeeping.
My marriage looks cishet from the outside, and it still made a major difference to how we were treated to get married. My husbandwife was waiting for a transplant, and the difference between how medical staff (some of whom had know us for years!) treated us before and after our wedding was huge! Suddenly I had a legal right to help them make decisions on their care, and even to make decisions for them while they were incapacitated. This despite the fact I was giving them dialysis daily for months before the wedding and us being together for a decade and me being next of kin.
So it’s pretty obvious to me being married makes a huge difference for sick and lower class people, since it did for us. If it makes that much of a difference for a cishet passing couple then it will make at least that much difference for a gay couple, probably more.
