Bisexuality and marriage equality

by Harrie Farrow
BiAngle Columnist

When I come across tweets such as, “OMFG my 10 year old brother just asked ‘is bisexual marriage legal too’ LMFAO,” I wonder what the tweeter and her brother were thinking.

 As @BisexualBatman looking for what is being tweeted about bisexuals, I do indeed run into some “interesting” things. Biphobia is rampant, but so is just plain old bi-ignorance. Let’s face it, it’s way easier to come across an avalanche of bisexual stereotypes garnered mostly from porn and biphobia than it is to find any factual information on bisexuality.

Here are some facts: Bisexuals sometimes get married. Sometimes bisexuals marry someone of the same gender. Fact is, regardless of whom they marry, they are still bisexual, and fact is, it’s important to acknowledge this.

LGBTQ people celebrated Spouses Day on January 26th, so this is a good time to keep in mind that some of the people who have been able to take advantage of Marriage Equality rulings are not gay. Many are bisexual. 

Some people think that it’s splitting hairs to differentiate. What’s wrong with referring to two women who are married as “a lesbian couple?” Well when one of those women, for example, happens to be Robyn Ochs, a well-known bisexual activists who has spent decades fighting against bi-erasure and bi-invisibility, the erasure of her sexual identity by national press was profound.

In 2004, Ochs was one of the first people in the country to take advantage of the ability to legally marry someone of the same gender. Headlines referring to Och’s union as a “lesbian couple,” renders invisible the fact that bisexuals do marry, do commit, and sometimes to someone of the same gender.

Many non-bisexuals admonish that the fault of bi-invisibility lies with bisexuals for not being more out. How though, is it possible to be more out than Robyn Ochs, who even specifically told reporters that she’s bisexual and fights bi-invisibility?

Bisexuals have been in the forefront of the fight for marriage equality. Bisexual activists Lindasusan Ulrich and Emily Drennan were once arrested in their wedding dresses on the steps of San Francisco’s City Hall. Despite both members of the couple being out and proud bisexuals (Ulrich later co-authored the San Francisco Human Rights Commission’s Bisexual Invisibility Report) their sexual identity was constantly erased by the press. Reuters, for example, featured the duo in an article as a “gay couple.”

Completely ignoring (and thus erasing) the fact that Ulrich and Drennen are both bisexual, the LA Times repeatedly used the phrase “gay marriage” in reference to their nuptial odyssey:

“They wed in 2003, before gay marriage was legal. A year later, when San Francisco began marrying gay couples, they married again, only to see the courts annul their union. Last month, Ulrich, 39, and Drennen, 35, went through another ceremony in the wake of the state Supreme Court's landmark ruling that legalized gay marriage."

Not once did the article opt to use “same-sex marriage” or mention the fact that they are both proud bisexuals.

With press like this when bisexual activists wed, what resources do ordinary bisexuals have to counter stereotypes that bisexuals are noncommittal by nature? That bisexuals always chose opposite-gender relationships? That bisexuals need multiple lovers?

So please, show some respect to married bisexuals’ identity, allow them some visibility, and don’t say “gay marriage” unless you are talking only about specific self-identified gay people.

As one bisexual woman married to another bisexual woman wrote in a recent article, “Does this make us ‘officially’ lesbians? Are we ‘over’ our bisexual ‘phase’?

“Sharing a bed and home with a woman doesn’t mean I’m abandoning my love of other genders. If…I never end up playing with another cis man, trans man, trans woman, or genderqueer person, I’m still bisexual.”

The Gayly – January 31, 2016 @ 12 p.m.