Andrew Sullivan's Essay: My Big Fat Straight Wedding

My Big Fat Straight Wedding

“Even political rights, like the right to vote, and nearly all other rights enumerated in the Constitution, are secondary to the inalienable human rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence; and to this category the right to home and marriage unquestionably belongs.” Hannah Arendt(Sullivan.) This is a quote that Andrew Sullivan included in his article, My Big Fat Straight Wedding, he explains the history behind the perspective on the gay community and his experience when he got married. His article is effective because he explains the history behind the community, shows how being straight and gay aren’t as separate as everyone makes it and shows that there

The distinction between gay and straight is abolished when you think of it this way. He then begins to talk about how the thought of homosexuality was thought of as a way that men behaved badly or that they had an illness(Sullivan). It was thought that it was the men’s choice to be gay and “behave badly”, but once gay label is taken off the person and they’re thought of an individual he says the question become a matter of how we treat a minority with an involuntary, defining characteristic along the lines of gender or race(Sullivan). He says the understanding the gay community began to change organically, he says it started with the sexual revolution of the 70’s, then it came crashing down onto families with sons, uncles and fathers died in the 80’s and 90’s from AIDS(Sullivan). As younger generations of people came out earlier and earlier others began to see the gay community as fellows and siblings rather than people of some alien culture(Sullivan). When these changes of understanding began, the California government, at the time, did not recognize the right of same-sex marriage(Sullivan). This had caused a lot of outrage, because the right to marry has such a deep and inalienable status in American constitutional law(Sullivan). Sullivan then quotes Hannah Arendt, half of which I put in the introduction, in her quote she says that the right to marry is something that must be put even before the right to vote. Many people of the gay community see it this way as well, they see the exclusion as unimaginable, just like straight people would find it if they were told they had no right to