“Marriage Equality”

The Marriage Settlement by William Hogarth

Rather, it appears to me

As special pleading, don’t you see,

Equality is not the name

For making difference all the same

And social change, go carefully

About your task, respectfully;

If to shadow-lands dissent

Is forced, we’ll find new ways to vent

And those could sting.

For social concord, here’s a thing

That could restore freedoms of old –

Instead of choosing to be told

What’s right, equal, or ‘appropriate’;

Perhaps we should de-legislate

And banish State from communal bed,

Let couples choose to state instead

What they are or wish to be –

Let clerics moot matrimony.