Photo by Scubaben

The Washington Post has it that the mini-mass same-sex wedding that took place yesterday did not live up to expectations. Some 400 same-sex couples ostensibly intended to get married and make a statement by doing it together (and break a Guinness World Record to boot) — but only 15 couples signed up. I say: all the better for same-sex rights activists and their allies. It’s any couple’s right to wed however they choose, but after I Mao II, I’m never going to hear “mass wedding” and not shudder. The association with the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church is what does it, I suppose, but in any case I’m not at all uncomfortable with the notion of same-sex weddings but really uncomfortable with mass weddings.

Further, people reading about gay marriages from their laptops or seeing images of victorious same-sex couples at courthouses and churches are in some sense experiencing a mass wedding. It’s a lot more coverage of couples getting married than the media usually runs, of course, and from a progressive standpoint the reiteration of these images serves to impress upon people that gays do not have horns, same-sex marriage won’t pave the way to legal bestial or polyamorous relationships, and gay weddings are every bit the same mix of tedious and inspiring as their straight counterparts.

Putting this new thing — same-sex marriage, which is still the subject of debate within the LGBT community — into a familiar but still alienating context wouldn’t push the ball forward from a progressive perspective. I hardly begrudge the wedding planner for his ambition, but as it happens, there is plenty of press revealing the impact of same-sex marriage in D.C. and beyond. Here’s the Washington Post reporting on new wedding-related jobs in D.C. that this law has inspired. And MSNBC shows yet more gay couples getting hitched legally in Mexico City. Showing how normal same-sex marriage is, how big a change this really isn’t, may be the way to convincing heteros who are on the fence.