There are all kinds of parents of gay kids in the world. Parents who happily accept your sexuality with no questions and pay for your gay wedding. Parents who are surprised but willing to work on their ingrained prejudices to support you and eventually walk you down the aisle at your gay wedding. Parents who think you’re turning your back on god and refuse to come to your gay wedding. And then there are parents who don’t accept your sexuality, don’t come to your gay wedding, and then later ask you to have a whole other fake wedding for your extended family.
That’s what happened to Reddit user iseebleachwipes and her wife Mandy, apparently. Mandy’s parents didn’t take her lesbianism or relationship with her girlfriend seriously, and so they didn’t take her engagement seriously either. Don’t “waste time fooling around with lesbians” they texted her repeatedly before her big day. Well, the big day came and went and finally Mandy’s parents got cool with lesbianism. Gifts, phone calls, birthday cards, rainbow flags, Tegan and Sara tickets, the whole thing. Until Mandy and her wife went to visit.
It turns out that they were so ashamed that we pretty much eloped and had a same sex marriage, that when family members showed up with our wedding pictures they found on Facebook they had been telling everyone that we were just at a mutual friend’s bridal shower and were “pretending” to be brides. At the same time, they knew that they couldn’t keep it a secret forever, so they had been telling their family that Mandy was seeing a “very nice boy” and might be getting married in a couple years or so.
Weird, but hold onto your butt ’cause it’s about to get weirder.
I asked them what exactly their plan was now that everything was out in the open. And you guys… Not only did they actually want to have another wedding ceremony with the family invited to corroborate their fake timeline, they wanted me to dress up as a man …Â Mandy asked them what they were gonna do once the extended family inevitably found out that I was a woman, and her parents basically told us that we didn’t ever have to interact with the rest of the family again. Just invite them one time to this fake straight wedding to trick them into believing their story, so that they could save face.
Just one time. Just this one imaginary wedding this one time where you impersonate a man. Come on, it’s one time. What lesbian hasn’t pretended to be a man to get married to the woman she’s already married to, just once? It’s like a single afternoon. What were you going to be doing anyway? Playing Gone Home again? Cleaning the kitchen to the Fun Home soundtrack? You don’t even need a cat sitter. You’ll be home before midnight and then you simply have to avoid all contact with your extended family for the rest of your life. You’re telling me you’re so selfish you can’t give up one afternoon to fake a wedding? Wow. Wow.
Mandy’s wife wrote in to Reddit for some advice because Mandy was kind of feeling it. It was a free party, after all. But before anyone was forced to buy a pair of Groucho glasses and a trench coat, Mandy texted her extended family some wedding pictures and told them she was gay married to her gay wife. Her extended family was like, “Right, obviously.” Mandy’s grandpa blessed their lesbian union and invited Mandy and her wife to a cookout. “It was pretty sweet.”
This is just your daily reminder that straight people are not okay and truly must be stopped; and that you, dear queer human, are perfect, just as you are.
