#yet legal marriage - which crosses borders via presence in immigration law (in addition to obvious colonialism)

[anistarrose]

I think when a lot of queer people who aspire to marriage, and remember (rightly) fighting for the right to marriage, see queer people who don't want marriage, talking about not entering or even reforming or abolishing marriage, there's an assumption I can't fault anyone for having — because it's an assumption borne of trauma — that queers who aren't big on marriage are inadvertently or purposefully going to either foolishly deprive themselves of rights, or dangerously deprive everyone of the rights associated with marriage. But that's markedly untrue. We only want rights to stop being locked behind marriages. We want an end to discrimination against the unmarried.

We want a multitude of rights for polyamorous relationships. We want ways to fully recognize and extend rights to non-romantic and/or non-sexual unions, including but not limited to QPRs, in a setting distinct from the one that (modern) history has spent so long conflating with romance and sex in a way that makes many of us so deeply uncomfortable. And many of us are also disabled queers who are furious about marriage stripping the disabled of all benefits.

We want options to co-parent, and retain legal rights to see children, that extends to more than two people, and by necessity, to non-biological parents (which, by the way, hasn't always automatically followed from same-gender marriage equality even in places where said equality nominally exists. Our struggles are not as different as you think). We would like for (found or biological) family members and siblings to co-habitate as equal members of a household, perhaps even with pooled finances or engaging in aforementioned co-parenting, without anyone trying to fit the dynamic into a "marriage-shaped box" and assume it's incestuous. We want options to leave either marriages, or alternative agreements, that are less onerous than divorce proceedings have historically been.

I can't speak for every person who does not want to marry, but on average, spurning marriage is not a choice we make lightly. We are deeply, deeply aware of the benefits that only marriage can currently provide. And we do not take that information lightly. We demand better.

Now, talking about the benefits of marriage in respective countries' current legal frameworks, so that all people can make choices from an informed place, is all well and good — but is not an appropriate response to someone saying they are uncomfortable with marriage. There are people for whom entering a marriage, with all its associated norms, expectations, and baggage, would feel like a betrayal of one's self and authenticity that would shake them to their core — and every day, I struggle to unpack if I'm one of them or not. If I want to marry for tax benefits, or not. If that's worth the risk of losing disability benefits, in the (very plausible) possibility that I have to apply for them later in life. If that's worth the emotional burden of having to explain over and over, to both well-meaning and deeply conservative family members, that this relationship is not one of romance or sex. (Because, god, trying just to explain aromanticism or asexuality in a world that broadly thinks they're "fake" is emotional labor enough.)

Marriage is a fundamental alteration to who I am, to what rights an ableist government grants me, and to how I am perceived. I don't criticize the institution just because I enjoy a "free spirit" aesthetic or think the wedding industry is annoying, or whatever.