Do not go gently into that Good Light

Rage, rage against the dying of The Night

 

Dylan Thomas.  Almost.

 

If Dylan Thomas were alive today…..and gay….and was living in Soho instead of some little hut in a Welsh village…..he almost certainly might have possibly paraphrased his own poem to this effect.

 

How could anybody not empathise with us, Mark and Jason, on our special day:  People of the Night summonsed into the Light with all the burdensome expectations that involves?

 

For we are not the Good Gays.  The ones that Michelle Obama and Hilary Clinton and David Cameron all talk about when they fought for our right to marry.   The Good Gays come in matching knitwear, get involved with good causes, adopt cute Asian babies and go for long walks in rural areas that are not mentioned on Squirt.

 

We are not those gays.   

 

We are the Bad Gays.   

 

Moreover we are the gays who enjoy being bad and who don’t feel any reason to surrender our wicked ways just because we wish to get married.

 

And this is what our wedding was all about – a celebration of the gay culture that Michelle and Hilary and Dave conveniently overlooked when they defined us as lovable, sexless, munchkins in order to squeeze us through the gates of acceptance.

 

But in amongst all the silly songs and the provocative posters there were two men, overdressed and overwhelmed on the most important day of their lives.  Who wanted, as much as anyone could ever want, to spend the rest of their lives together.   And who have a deep respect for what they consider to be the core truth buried within the archaic institution of marriage.

 

And whose only real protest is that they want their wedding to best represent what they wish their marriage to be:  honest.

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Oh, and fun. To this end the doors of or deconsecrated Hampstead Church burst open and the grooms walked down the aisle to a hauntingly beautiful version of Madonna’s Like A Prayer sung by rising star of the English National Opera, Clare Presland.

 

This was followed by a sermon written by us and delivered with assured wit as well as gravitas by our friend, the actor Hugh Ross. 

 

Another friend and co-subversive, Zia Almos walked naked up the ailse and took to the stage to deliver a profoundly moving reading of Neil Bartlett’s That’s What Friends Are For. 

 

There were pop songs and Sondheim medleys arranged and performed by friend, lover and musical genius, Lance Horne. And finally there were our vows and speeches, the like of which the ancient, now retired place of god had probably never thought it would hear.

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