Breaking the Spell: Rethinking queer community

[lettertodaddy]

Just a quick note before I dash off to work. They decided to block logins to this site the other day.

One of the things that makes me feel like an outsider these days is the assimilationist politics of groups like the HRC and Marriage Equality USA. When I was younger, my queer friends and I were all about trying to create alternative notions of family. The idea that the family you chose was just as viable and important as the nuclear family you were born into. Family could take on all different shapes and sizes: it could be a partnered couple, a triad, a free-for-all multilayered polyamorous collective, or it could be just you and your cat. But the foundation of that was trying to break down the patriarchal, heteronormative concepts of marriage and family that have been used to punish queer folks for eons.

I was married (to a man), but even then marriage didn't sit right with me. I probably got out about 8 years too late, but it was that experience of being "heterosexually" married that made me realize that I'm more interested in dismantling the institution of marriage and remaking it into something radically different.

I came out of that relationship looking for similar rhetoric from queer communities and thought leaders, but now all I see is people fighting to be "as good as" straight people, fighting for assimilation, fighting for their slice of the two-parent, two-kids, house in the suburbs, subaru in the driveway, and mortgaged up to their eyeballs American dream. I'm left standing on the sidelines thinking "this is not what I was fighting for."

I am not out to malign anyone who wants this sort of arrangement for themselves. My issue is that if I'm seen as not being on board with marriage equality, that I'm looked at as some sort of traitor to the community. And I'm not sure what that means for my continued participation in it, or whether that means I've overstayed my welcome.

Did the process of rethinking and reshaping queer community that we've been going through for all of these decades lead us to whitebread, non-threatening, average lifestyles? What becomes of those of us who don't want that?

[SecretAgentMa'am]

Originally Posted by lettertodaddy

Just a quick note before I dash off to work. They decided to block logins to this site the other day.

One of the things that makes me feel like an outsider these days is the assimilationist politics of groups like the HRC and Marriage Equality USA.

This is a sentiment that I've heard quite a bit. My wife and I live in a house in the suburbs. Our fence is chain link, we don't have any kids at home, it's just us, the dog, the cats, the lizard, and a vegetable garden in the back yard. She goes to work in a big office 5 days a week. I'm a full time student. We barbecue with the neighbors and take the dog to the dog park. What, exactly, is so terrible about that? You say you're not out to malign anyone who wants that kind of life, but then you call us "assimilationists" and talk about how we want to be "as good as" straight people. Have you ever asked a queer person who lives in the suburbs and wants to get married *why* they feel that way? It's not about being "as good as" straight people or about assimilation.

I'm absolutely with you that family is more than just people who are related by biology or marriage. I'm also a realist. Marriage has quite a few benefits that my wife and I need, and dismantling marriage as an institution isn't happening in my lifetime. It's not happening in this century, or most likely even in the next several centuries. Marriage as an institution is just about as old as humanity, and it's here to stay. So, since marriage isn't going anywhere, I really don't understand how anyone who doesn't currently have the right to marry the person(s) they love can be against gaining that right for as many people as is humanly possible. And yes, for me, that includes "non-nuclear" families.

So yes, I tend to get a little hostile while a queer person tells me they don't think my wife and I should be able to get married. To me, they're making the same argument as the religious right who are fighting against us (that we shouldn't be able to get married), they're just using a different justification.

[Glenn]

alettertodaddy; As I type this, another youth was just beaten to death on the streets of Iowa because of his sexual orientation. Equality laws are not going to make us safe. I've been faithfully married for 35 years without the same legal benefits as others. As far as we've come, we can easily be catapulted back into the dark ages again in one day. In comparison to that, this thread seems like a delightfully normal picnic. So yes.. I hear you. Glenn

[lettertodaddy]

When I use the word assimilationist, it carries no baggage for me. Martin Luther King was an assimilationist. W.E.B. DuBois was an assimilationist. Anna Julia Cooper was an assimilationist. Assimilation just means being collected into the body of the whole.

If you saw something negative in my use of the word, I apologize for causing offense. None was intended.

I also want to reiterate that nowhere did I say that people who want to get married shouldn't be able to. If that's what you want, go for it. Fight for it. Don't give up, and do it anyway until society and legislation catches up with you. But to me, that is not our only fight. That is what concerns me, because so much of our rhetoric is only focused on that one issue.

It's as if the beautiful plurality of voices that I was used to hearing has been silenced by a few who want to be able to claim their place at the centre. I just want those of us who can see that the centre isn't healthy to be heard as well.

As for me, I've never wanted to be mainstream. Rather than thinking of my experiences as marginal (which is negative), I prefer to think of them as exceptional. I want to be the exception to the rule.

As far as the use of "as good as you", there's a blog and active online community for marriage equality and LGBT rights called Good As You. That's what was in my mind when I use that phrase, and it rankles me. Again, wanting to be equal and "as good as" straight folks are fine if that is your goal. I want to be better than the norm. I want us all to strive to make our society better, not to just accept the status quo.

[lettertodaddy]

I'm thinking that my contribution here is adding fuel to a fire, and isn't constructive. I apologize. I'll bow out. If you want to continue the conversation, I'm happy to do so via private message.

[ScandalAndy]

Originally Posted by lettertodaddy

I'm thinking that my contribution here is adding fuel to a fire, and isn't constructive. I apologize. I'll bow out. If you want to continue the conversation, I'm happy to do so via private message.

I don't see your posts as inflammatory, did I miss something? I thought there was constructive dialogue going on. If you bow out, how will I learn from the conversation?

[lettertodaddy]

Originally Posted by ScandalAndy

I don't see your posts as inflammatory, did I miss something? I thought there was constructive dialogue going on. If you bow out, how will I learn from the conversation?

I'm conscious - maybe too conscious - of causing offense where none is meant. I don't want to do that. And this particular issue is one that is deeply and intensely personal for some. I don't want to give the impression that I am not an ally.

[Slater]

A quick thought on assimilation vs. radicalization ... I don't really see it as an either/or. I think both have a role to play and they can complement each other, as long as there are at least some common goals or outcomes.

My personal frame of reference for this is my activity in Queer Nation in the early 1990s. Some people in the gay community complained that we were too radical, too marginal, but in a conversation I had with a lesbian who had just become Seattle's first openly gay city council member, she pointed out that without QN, she would be the fringe, the radical edge. But with us out there, pushing boundaries, she suddenly looked more mainstream to people. The combination helped push the center, if you will, helped reframe the concept of normal.

Actually the group doing this really effectively right now is the right wing. With the Tea Partiers out there moving the radical edge beyond the bounds of sanity, the "center" of the Republican party suddenly seems more mainstream, despite the fact that they are so conservative that many Nixon-era policies would be considered practically leftist by today's Republican standards.

[lettertodaddy]

Originally Posted by Slater

A quick thought on assimilation vs. radicalization ... I don't really see it as an either/or. I think both have a role to play and they can complement each other, as long as there are at least some common goals or outcomes.

Agreed. I'm rather more in favor of a both/and approach. It's the common goals idea that gets tricky.

[imperfect_cupcake]

Originally Posted by Slater

Actually the group doing this really effectively right now is the right wing. With the Tea Partiers out there moving the radical edge beyond the bounds of sanity, the "center" of the Republican party suddenly seems more mainstream, despite the fact that they are so conservative that many Nixon-era policies would be considered practically leftist by today's Republican standards.

that is a very, very important thing to point out.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Slater

A quick thought on assimilation vs. radicalization ... I don't really see it as an either/or. I think both have a role to play and they can complement each other, as long as there are at least some common goals or outcomes.

My personal frame of reference for this is my activity in Queer Nation in the early 1990s. Some people in the gay community complained that we were too radical, too marginal, but in a conversation I had with a lesbian who had just become Seattle's first openly gay city council member, she pointed out that without QN, she would be the fringe, the radical edge. But with us out there, pushing boundaries, she suddenly looked more mainstream to people. The combination helped push the center, if you will, helped reframe the concept of normal.

Actually the group doing this really effectively right now is the right wing. With the Tea Partiers out there moving the radical edge beyond the bounds of sanity, the "center" of the Republican party suddenly seems more mainstream, despite the fact that they are so conservative that many Nixon-era policies would be considered practically leftist by today's Republican standards.

I, too, was involved with QN in the 90s and, quite honestly, the me from 1993 would probably be absolutely aghast at the me from 2011. I too think that we need a radical edge. The point I was trying to make in my post is that if we should not look down our noses at those who choose to take the radical path because we should not look down our noses at people and that they do some good (and they do) we should not look down our noses at people who assimilate for much the same reasons. I believe that not only did my parents make my sister and I's life significantly easier even though that meant not being as 'authentically black' as the Black Power movement would have had them be, they made a *difference* because when we moved into the house I grew up in, no one would have sought my parents out for advice thinking that they were intelligent or wise or had anything of value to offer the neighborhood . When I left home, people were seeking my parents out because they had stopped being 'merely black' and had become pillars of the community. A resolution that probably surprised all of the long-term residents of the neighborhood.

I think I actually do some good even though I'm assimilated and even though I work for a multinational corporation and even though I live in the suburbs and drive an Audi. There I am, every day at work, this dreadlocked butch woman who is unapologetic in her love for her partner. There are some *seriously* conservative people at my workplace and I have had to learn to get along with them as they have had to learn to get along with me. I have rattled their cages by pretty much shooting all of their expectations of me as a black, butch lesbian into deep space. Whatever images they might have held of black women or butch women or lesbians generally, I defy almost all of them and that makes them think. I've already had one person--a rather conservative Christian--come to me to say that they think their daughter is a lesbian and if they are right, they would like me to talk to her because they want her to have something positive to shoot for. I think that's progress.

Cheers
Aj

[SecretAgentMa'am]

Originally Posted by Slater

A quick thought on assimilation vs. radicalization ... I don't really see it as an either/or. I think both have a role to play and they can complement each other, as long as there are at least some common goals or outcomes.

My personal frame of reference for this is my activity in Queer Nation in the early 1990s. Some people in the gay community complained that we were too radical, too marginal, but in a conversation I had with a lesbian who had just become Seattle's first openly gay city council member, she pointed out that without QN, she would be the fringe, the radical edge. But with us out there, pushing boundaries, she suddenly looked more mainstream to people. The combination helped push the center, if you will, helped reframe the concept of normal.

Actually the group doing this really effectively right now is the right wing. With the Tea Partiers out there moving the radical edge beyond the bounds of sanity, the "center" of the Republican party suddenly seems more mainstream, despite the fact that they are so conservative that many Nixon-era policies would be considered practically leftist by today's Republican standards.

This. Exactly. Neither end of the spectrum is wrong or "less than". Yes, groups like Queer Nation help make others seem more mainstream. At the same time, groups like the HRC are constantly being criticized for being too mainstream, too assimilationist, but those are the groups who can actually get in to have a conversation with a senator. Yes, we're pretty mainstream as queer couples go. And that's one of the reasons why we were able to make friends with the devout Christian couple across the street. People like us are the reason that they and a lot of people like them, all over the country, are realizing that gay people aren't a bunch of weirdos, that we're really just people, and we don't actually want anything that's unreasonable. We need both sides of that equation, the radical and the mainstream suburban, to make any real progress.

[Apocalipstic]

Originally Posted by lettertodaddy

I'm thinking that my contribution here is adding fuel to a fire, and isn't constructive. I apologize. I'll bow out. If you want to continue the conversation, I'm happy to do so via private message.

Don't leave. I agree with much if what you say and am enjoying reading the discussion.

I don't see anything inflamatory about any of your posts.

[imperfect_cupcake]

LTD sorry, I posted and now there's a few posts - I see you are in favour of the right to choose and just addressing your ire with the phrasing. and I do understand that. Please consider the below a blather

LTD - I did non-marriage when I was striaght, refused to do it. didn't believe in it. that it was a bunch of hooey and oppressive bullshit. I didn't even want to be called a "girlfriend" because of the societal expectations it brings.

I've since changed my mind, at the age of 42. I got married six months ago, in the netherlands, and my wife and I will move to canada as a couple. We could have even without the marriage, actually. My hettie best mate who doesn't want marraige and has the privilege to refuse it as an option, imported her hump-puppet from england to canada without a hitch - marriage wasn't necessary. I'm very glad about that. I'm also glad that you can import your partner even if you don't live together and have decided to never live together. there's a separate section for that definition of a commited relationship.

That means, legally, you can have three different types of commited relationships wherein your rights are recognised in canada: Married, Domestic Partnership and Conjugal Partner.

There's no need to get married to have them recognised.

I would love it, if you could also get married to more than one person or at least have conjugal or domestic rights recognised for those who are poly. I think that would be fantastic.

I personally am not asking to be "as good as heterosexuals" because I got a civil marriage in the netherlands. How absurd to see my queering of bonding ceremony as a bid for "being as good as"! Of course I am. I don't want a mortgage, I've had double mohawks, been non-monogamous from the age of 14 until the age of 38, lived in communal houses until last year, I'm socialist, traveled most of my life and in no way consider myself mainstream. Yet I wanted to marry the woman I loved.

You know how the word queer has been taken back from our opressors - reclaimed? Well, that's what we did with our marriage. It's two women, no dowery, no one being given away, no vows, all home made food, my dress cost £10 and we had DJ friends from amsterdam, london and manchester DJ the music.

Our relationship is about equality. our marriage is that way because it isn't the 1800's. nor is it the 1950's. we get to define how we want out marriage to be in terms of our dynamics. And because canada recognised the rights of non-married couples, no matter what sex they are, we get to have that choice. Don't want marriage? totally understand it's not for you. I felt that way for many years. Didn't see how it could be reformed by personal acts. Now I do. And I feel very differently. And it has nothing to do with the Joneses or straight people. I do lots of things that straight people do and it has nothing to do with approval. Considering most of my straight friends are very alternative lifestyle people, most things I do are what straight people do.

Queering a ritual and a bonding legality is something my wife and I strongly believe in. we are making marriage a wider space for people to be in. And for those who don't want to be married, they are protected by laws too. However, if you don't belive in bringing the government into your relationship by registering your love on a tax form (lolz) then of course, you won't be able to claim those legal rights as easily.

I don't ever look down on people who choose not to get married. I was one of them for a couple of decades. Most of my friends are of that ilk. In fact, most of my mates rather than saying "congrats! I know it took you a year and a half to get all the paper work and you were both depressed as hell when you thought you wouldn't be able to get married, but you did it, and although I don't want it for me, I know how much it means to the two of you, so tons of love for your hard work towards a goal you've achieved!".... most of them said "oh. oh yeah. fab. so did you see the ____ movie last week?" (ok not that bad but it sure felt like it). Yet when they've had their choice to have a commitment ceremonies or hand fastings (rather than a wedding), I've travelled four hours off to the trees and stripped half naked for them, bought gifts, baked cakes, helped cook for 30 people, etc.

So it did hurt a bit.

And personally I'm not striving for the status quo, thanks, I've been fighting for societal rights for a few decades (first strike I was allowed on was at 10 years old. lol. dad is a die hard socialist) and I've been fighting against multinationals - through direct action and protests - since I was 14. So the assumption that I'm being lazy and selling out because of marriage (accepting the status quo and not trying to to move beyond it) makes my nostrals flare a bit.

But perhaps you are only addressing the website that rankled you. And personally I find the catchphrase a bit lacking. but perhaps they are mostly addressing the mainstream straight people with that phrase? that's the jist I get. Addressing the mainstream straight people with "better than what you'd ever do with it" I don't think would win much support for the cause of people wanting the choice to be able to marry. Just a hunch.

[dreadgeek]

LTD:

You bring up an interesting issue. One that I think needs to be discussed in the broader queer community because the question of assimilation is one all minority groups have to face at various times. What I'm about to say is filtered through my experiences, growing up as an upper-middle class black kid, in a predominately white neighborhood, in the 1970s.

My family used to get accused of being assimilationist and being insufficiently 'black' because my parents were college professors and they had the same kind of expectations other middle-class professionals have. I have often wondered what alternative those folks who made that line of argument had in mind. I also wondered how those who followed their advice/ideas fared in their lives.

Not everything comes down to economics but economics do count. I often wonder if we would have been more sufficiently 'black' if my parents hadn't put themselves through college and had expressed no preference for my sister and I going to college either. I do not think we were trying to be 'as good as' whites. I do think we were trying to live our lives with dignity and in the process of doing so we were going to show that the idea that blacks weren't as capable as whites as a lie.

The things you critique may not be the idealized way of family formation but they are the ways that we have. Yes, my wife and I live a very assimilated life. I work in an office that allows me to be a nerd at work (meaning I get to wear jeans, tee-shirts and running shoes) while paying me a professional salary. My wife goes to school on her little pink scooter. On the weekends I'm not working, we put the dog in the car and drive him to the dog park. When we come home, we putter about the house, maybe have friends over for dinner. Four times a year we pick up the shipment from our wine club. Very assimilated.

I rather like that I could invite my coworkers to our wedding without fear and have people show up and enjoy themselves. I rather like that I can talk about my wife in the day-to-day office banter about the latest antics of the dog or what-have-you, and not fear that I'm going to be called into the HR office and told I no longer have a job. Because of that, I can support us while my wife goes to school full-time. That way, she can focus on her studies. If being an assimilated black lesbian is the price I pay for that, it is a price well worth paying.

Would it be better if, instead of average lives, queer people only lived at the margins of society? I've watched this play out in the black community and what I've seen in the four decades that experiment has been run hasn't really done much to recommend deliberate marginalization. What's the difference? It's the difference between making enough to live on and not making enough to live on.

At any rate, society may not *want* marriage torn down. Society gets a vote in how society is constituted so if marriage is going to be torn down and built into something else, a convincing argument will have to be made and it may have to be made over the course of generations. If it is a truly better idea, then it will be adopted and one day *that* will become the new normal. I believe--and my observations of how different black communities have fared since the 60s seems to bolster my hypothesis--that the path to the world you hint at runs through the suburban house of assimilated queers.

I say that because I believe, based upon how we were treated when I first started school in the neighborhood and how we were treated when I graduated high school, that my parents assimilation and raising us assimilated did more good for the cause of race relations than all of the fist-raising Black Power stances that were all the vogue during that period. Why? Because when we first moved into the house and until I was, probably, in the second grade our house would be egged. We had a cross burnt on our lawn when we first moved in. My dad caught one of the egg throwers, dragged him in the house and made him call his parents. They came and picked him up and they were none-too-pleased at the experience. A decade later, these very same people were showing up at my parent's door on a very different mission. This time they wanted advice because they looked at my sister and I, looked at their own kids, and figured my parents were doing SOMETHING right. Their kids were in trouble with school and the law. My sister and I were at the top of our respective classes, never in trouble with the law, and were known around the neighborhood as industrious (we always had some kind of money-making scheme going on because our parents didn't believe in allowances so we had paper routes and mowed lawns or did babysitting).

That is quite the change, don't you think? This isn't a story of gaining the acceptance of white folks. This is a story about how people's minds change. When we moved in, the people around us thought we had no business in that neighborhood. By the time I left home, my parents were pillars of the community, leaders in the neighborhood and the 'go-to' people if you were having trouble with your kids.

Cheers
Aj

Originally Posted by lettertodaddy

Just a quick note before I dash off to work. They decided to block logins to this site the other day.

One of the things that makes me feel like an outsider these days is the assimilationist politics of groups like the HRC and Marriage Equality USA. When I was younger, my queer friends and I were all about trying to create alternative notions of family. The idea that the family you chose was just as viable and important as the nuclear family you were born into. Family could take on all different shapes and sizes: it could be a partnered couple, a triad, a free-for-all multilayered polyamorous collective, or it could be just you and your cat. But the foundation of that was trying to break down the patriarchal, heteronormative concepts of marriage and family that have been used to punish queer folks for eons.

I was married (to a man), but even then marriage didn't sit right with me. I probably got out about 8 years too late, but it was that experience of being "heterosexually" married that made me realize that I'm more interested in dismantling the institution of marriage and remaking it into something radically different.

I came out of that relationship looking for similar rhetoric from queer communities and thought leaders, but now all I see is people fighting to be "as good as" straight people, fighting for assimilation, fighting for their slice of the two-parent, two-kids, house in the suburbs, subaru in the driveway, and mortgaged up to their eyeballs American dream. I'm left standing on the sidelines thinking "this is not what I was fighting for."

I am not out to malign anyone who wants this sort of arrangement for themselves. My issue is that if I'm seen as not being on board with marriage equality, that I'm looked at as some sort of traitor to the community. And I'm not sure what that means for my continued participation in it, or whether that means I've overstayed my welcome.

Did the process of rethinking and reshaping queer community that we've been going through for all of these decades lead us to whitebread, non-threatening, average lifestyles? What becomes of those of us who don't want that?

[Novelafemme]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

LTD:

You bring up an interesting issue. One that I think needs to be discussed in the broader queer community because the question of assimilation is one all minority groups have to face at various times. What I'm about to say is filtered through my experiences, growing up as an upper-middle class black kid, in a predominately white neighborhood, in the 1970s.

My family used to get accused of being assimilationist and being insufficiently 'black' because my parents were college professors and they had the same kind of expectations other middle-class professionals have. I have often wondered what alternative those folks who made that line of argument had in mind. I also wondered how those who followed their advice/ideas fared in their lives.

Not everything comes down to economics but economics do count. I often wonder if we would have been more sufficiently 'black' if my parents hadn't put themselves through college and had expressed no preference for my sister and I going to college either. I do not think we were trying to be 'as good as' whites. I do think we were trying to live our lives with dignity and in the process of doing so we were going to show that the idea that blacks weren't as capable as whites as a lie.

The things you critique may not be the idealized way of family formation but they are the ways that we have. Yes, my wife and I live a very assimilated life. I work in an office that allows me to be a nerd at work (meaning I get to wear jeans, tee-shirts and running shoes) while paying me a professional salary. My wife goes to school on her little pink scooter. On the weekends I'm not working, we put the dog in the car and drive him to the dog park. When we come home, we putter about the house, maybe have friends over for dinner. Four times a year we pick up the shipment from our wine club. Very assimilated.

I rather like that I could invite my coworkers to our wedding without fear and have people show up and enjoy themselves. I rather like that I can talk about my wife in the day-to-day office banter about the latest antics of the dog or what-have-you, and not fear that I'm going to be called into the HR office and told I no longer have a job. Because of that, I can support us while my wife goes to school full-time. That way, she can focus on her studies. If being an assimilated black lesbian is the price I pay for that, it is a price well worth paying.

Would it be better if, instead of average lives, queer people only lived at the margins of society? I've watched this play out in the black community and what I've seen in the four decades that experiment has been run hasn't really done much to recommend deliberate marginalization. What's the difference? It's the difference between making enough to live on and not making enough to live on.

At any rate, society may not *want* marriage torn down. Society gets a vote in how society is constituted so if marriage is going to be torn down and built into something else, a convincing argument will have to be made and it may have to be made over the course of generations. If it is a truly better idea, then it will be adopted and one day *that* will become the new normal. I believe--and my observations of how different black communities have fared since the 60s seems to bolster my hypothesis--that the path to the world you hint at runs through the suburban house of assimilated queers.

I say that because I believe, based upon how we were treated when I first started school in the neighborhood and how we were treated when I graduated high school, that my parents assimilation and raising us assimilated did more good for the cause of race relations than all of the fist-raising Black Power stances that were all the vogue during that period. Why? Because when we first moved into the house and until I was, probably, in the second grade our house would be egged. We had a cross burnt on our lawn when we first moved in. My dad caught one of the egg throwers, dragged him in the house and made him call his parents. They came and picked him up and they were none-too-pleased at the experience. A decade later, these very same people were showing up at my parent's door on a very different mission. This time they wanted advice because they looked at my sister and I, looked at their own kids, and figured my parents were doing SOMETHING right. Their kids were in trouble with school and the law. My sister and I were at the top of our respective classes, never in trouble with the law, and were known around the neighborhood as industrious (we always had some kind of money-making scheme going on because our parents didn't believe in allowances so we had paper routes and mowed lawns or did babysitting).

That is quite the change, don't you think? This isn't a story of gaining the acceptance of white folks. This is a story about how people's minds change. When we moved in, the people around us thought we had no business in that neighborhood. By the time I left home, my parents were pillars of the community, leaders in the neighborhood and the 'go-to' people if you were having trouble with your kids.

Cheers
Aj

AJ, are you referring to your marriage/wedding as a commitment ceremony or a tried and true, legally binding marriage?

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Novelafemme

AJ, are you referring to your marriage/wedding as a commitment ceremony or a tried and true, legally binding marriage?

It was a commitment ceremony. Oregon does not (yet) have marriage equality but I am hopeful. Consider, that when I was ~90 days old, the Supreme Court of the United States published their decision in Loving v Virginia ending, once and (hopefully) for all, anti-miscegenation laws after those being in force for well over a century in most states. We will have marriage equality one day and when we do, we're going to have another ceremony.

Cheers
Aj