“Gay marriage,” which in the US is about the most divisive social issue there is, has quietly become legal in the UK. Everyone seems neutral-to-pleased about it, and controversy in the papers is limited to impish speculation about how splashy Elton John’s wedding might be. But before Sir Elton or anyone can tie the knot, there’s a mandatory waiting period, just like the straight people have.
Turns out Northern Ireland has the shortest matrimonial registration deadline of any of the provinces, so the first weddings will take place there. And so they did. Yesterday, Grainne and Shannon, two radiant ladies with big corsages and even bigger smiles, were the first to get married. They did it in style at Belfast City Hall.
Belfast City Hall and the Continental Market: Perfect for Your Wedding Reception
This momentous event occurred here in large part because Northern Ireland still languishes in a bureaucratic purgatory of not knowing—in many quarters, not really caring—whether it’s going to be an independent country or not. It’s provisionally tacked on to the rest of the UK, and in this case it’s borne along by legislation that it would likely never pass on its own.
Northern Ireland is now what the rest of Britain used to be, before money and technology and immigration, before new ideas and new values systems and all the modern realities of life. And so, living in another time, people are pretty conservative. Not in a rabid or confrontational way, mind you, but simply because their society has been in stasis for the past forty years.
It’s a charming place to visit, but maybe not an easy place to be different. Or gay. After a while the propriety and restraint can get to be too much. And then…I’m suddenly aware of being an American. Yes, there’s this rebellious and independent streak I didn’t know I had, the one that advocates jettisoning good manners and dignified discourse in favor of exposing abuse and discrimination and systemic mismanagement. In favor of shaking things up.
But things do not shake up easily. Because the sweet and polite Northern people don’t seem to complain. Confrontation is to be avoided; pointing out shortcomings is not the done thing. I’m not sure how that folds into—or perhaps arises from—the past forty years of low-level religio-politicial insurgency and counterinsurgency. If everybody knows their place and no one sticks out, you register your complaints —and a debate ensues—via explosives and assassination?
So here we are, in an old-fashioned backwater that’s already swaying in the tides of change. And here come Grainne and Shannon, the standard-bearers blazing the way for the 687 couples registered to be married in the next few days.
And look! There are protesters. Nowhere else in Britain would you see them, but that’s exactly the point: there is nowhere else like conservative Northern Ireland, where unusual bedfellows frequently join forces to advance an agenda of “traditional” (read: Biblical) values.
And nowhere else are there protesters like these ones. When was the last time you heard a protester say, “You have to repent, love. God bless you, but first you have to repent of your sins.” ? Or heard the object of this friendly warning come back with, “You would be so happy to have this lady, love. I’ll see you at the gates of heaven, mate.”
So—old-fashioned, restrained, even hidebound—Belfast is far more civilized than we are. Both for being the unlikely locus of a long-overdue matrimonial revolution. And for the relative warmth of the dialogue about that social change. Oregon was a bulwark of progressive values thirty years ago—about the same time that Northern Ireland turned away from the modern world. Now, Northern Ireland embraces same-sex marriage, while last year Oregonians amended the state constitution to declare it illegal. Perhaps it’s time to agitate for good manners, civil discourse, and an overall turning-back of the clock.
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