In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities.

‘I think being a woman is like being Irish. Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the same’. Iris Murdoch

Well dear Iris should have known, being as she was both a woman, and Irish, and trying to make her way in the male dominated academia of Oxbridge.

If I asked you to define yourself, what words would you use? White? Black? Western? Eastern? Catholic? Protestant? African? Muslim? Female? Male?

Write the words down. Now look at them again. How many of them could result in you experiencing some form of discrimination, in some part of the world. None? All of them? Some of them?

There is one that guarantees you will never experience discrimination: Heterosexual. Wherever in the world you go, that is not only universally accepted, but often an absolute default setting.

For Iris was not only Irish and a woman. She was openly bisexual.

All over the world, to deviate from the ‘default setting’ that is heterosexuality, can often result in lesbians, gay men, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people being criminalised, tortured or ill treated because of their sexuality.

Amnesty International works to expose these human rights abuses. We challenge governments and state authorities to fulfil their responsibility to protect LGBT people from such abuses.
I am proud to be associated with such an organisation. However the news from home, and abroad, does little for my pride in humanity.

The happenings make for grim reading.

Recently Amnesty learned that two young Malawian men, in their twenties, had been arrested for holding a traditional engagement ceremony. If they are convicted, of this ‘crime’ they face up to 14 years in prison with hard labour.

Just this month a new Lithuanian law, came into force. It defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman, and effectively means that any public promotion of same-sex partnerships, or advocacy for equality in marriage, is prohibited.

Even here on our own Island, there have been vocal opposition to the Civil Partnership Act.

I, as a heterosexual (as far as I am aware anyway) can go out with whom I like, and I will be able, eventually if I so wish, to marry whom I like: whether that be once or ten times. It is not required that my marriage be a ‘bond of love’. I can marry someone for money, or status. If I wanted to I could get married because I’m bored, and fancy the party and a lot of presents.

The point is: no one will interfere with my choice. Whatever my choice and whatever my reason for that choice, I will not be jailed or persecuted for it. It wasn’t fought for; and it wasn’t earned. It is a right. Should all humans not be afforded the same ‘privilege’?

Equality is a difficult concept because in an absolute form, it has often been aspired to, but never achieved. As humans we crave power and that very instinct, perhaps, erodes the very possibility of complete equality.

But one thing I am sure of. Surely, if I can choose to marry for money, or cake, or presents, then so should anyone else. But what if two people, any two people, want to commit to each other for the most noble of reasons: love. Well then they should not only be permitted to do so. They should be revered.