Is romance dead for the ‘marital bliss is impotent’ crowd? Impotent in the way that it’s flaccid in its emotional girth, by the way it demands some inhumane permanent tete-a-tete between one genitalia packing person and another.  It’s not even like we were  a monogamous bunch before the 17th century anyway, and even the peeps in the Bible poked it all over town. Solomon, last I checked, had thousands of effusively romantic lays, and I don’t think they’re exactly slut shaming that wise man. Still as the gay rights  movement–the last real, major movement around to challenge this– reaches the fever pitch of a decade long struggle, it’s gotten an increasingly unyielding and narrow view of relationships where marriage is the new gold standard.  Many of us grew up in an era of queer music/art that never considered this ‘homonormativization’ a remote possibility.  And if we’re not going to ask as Rufus Wainwright put it, ‘Why do we want to be like everyone else?”, what’s that going to do to our expressive mediums?

The gay rights movement, as defined almost solely around the issue of marriage since 2004 in the US, has been running a ‘We’re The Same as You!’ campaign that worked. And by worked, I mean it defined the movement and the actions of the people within it under the auspices of the upper middle class white man’s version of being a queer person (your 2.1 kids and marriage and the kill-me-now suburbs).   We could say it’s coming back to bite us, as evidenced already by articles claiming ‘Were the Christians’ Right About Gay Marriage?’ ; and a bunch of straight people feeling ‘duped’ by queer society’s historical lack of monogamy skills, believing that gay marriages would be the ‘same’ as theirs. The queer rights movement is about making identities and love fluid, but if all we did was circle our entire movement right back to where straight society already has been for 400 years, we went nowhere. Music and movies have been plagued by the same, endless cliches of the ‘cheating partner’ and the spurious lover who can’t keep it  in their pants in straight society for decades. Are we doomed to have the cycle repeat itself as queer stories become more prominent?

Because suddenly, if you’re a long time committed queer, human rights activist, like Tegan Quin (of Tegan and Sara) being disinterested in immediate marriage is being cold to romance, as marrying becomes synonymous with romance in the queer community much as it in heteroville.  Look how many times Tegan is grilled on her position on gay marriage in this interview for Under the Radar (the inspiration for the S&S’s Pride Month coverage), all because she chose to qualify her position. 7 Times. I’m sure if she’d just said, ‘oh, I’ll marry my long time partner of four years right now!’ she would never have been asked the same things. Look, I realize it was their protest issue but that’s entirely my point: why are we so focused on limiting our own conversations musically and politically as a community? There are hundreds of other questions the interviewer could have asked her about their widely successful bands’ role as major and prominent role models for queer individuals. Ironically, this same interviewer realizes later in a talk with Johnny Pierce of The Drums that:

“I actually feel like there is a bit of a conservative thing happening among gay people. I almost believe that as marriage becomes possible, that a byproduct of it is going to be what straight people have endured for eons, which is pressure—particularly once you’ve reached a certain age—to settle down and marry. “

And yet, the entire interview is mainly about Pierce’s views on marriage.  Dude, you’re perpetuating the conservative thing your damn self.  Looking at the tenor of both talks, Tegan’s comes across considerably more adversarial, with the interviewer, after not getting what what he wanted–an admittance of a pleading need to marry her partner–meeting her rational reasoning with:  ‘So, not yet anyway.’  And then circling back as many times as he can to try and get, what, a different answer? In the vein of our community is a wide array of arteries all pumping their own opinions, Pierce’s is considerably more pro-marriage. But, honestly, he comes across littered with internalized homophobia–which doesn’t sound much like his own fault, but rather the byproduct of growing up fundie.

So why the third degree on Tegan and the heavy handed subtext of ‘But don’t you love your partner?’ Um, Tegan and Sara have made a long, and storied career of crafting heartbreakingly pure love songs. Ever since So Jealous, they’ve been my go to band for those moments when all my walls come down and the aching, smell,  warmth and sweat pouring all over a lover’s body accesses all the gushy places in my heart. Anyone doubting their commitment to this, even through subtext, just because they’re not gaga for what seems like a no-brainer to you like getting married, is a massive douche.

Love is as full of complexities and potential paths as this remix of ‘I Was A Fool’ by Duwell, allowing for darkness, light and a lack of straight lines to any one path. Like the Duwell remix, love is gritty with the pain and lust of more than a few sparks laid and laid about. And it doesn’t make you any less a romantic for not defining yourself by other’s standards. Queer music can be romantic, but it can also be (as we’ll explore in future installments) highly political, about the boundaries of the body (the conjunction of technology and bodies), fetish and more.  As Pride Month rolls on, we’d be well suited to start reopening spaces of alternative relationship patterns and thinking in the queer community before it sinks queer music and art in the same bullshit that we had been trying to escape from.

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