Catherine Deveny
September 16, 2009

I AM against gay marriage. I'm against straight marriage. I'm against marriage full stop. Why are we hanging on to this relic of an anachronistic system (which still reeks of misogyny and bigotry), established so men could own women to ensure their estates and titles were passed on to their kids - sorry, their sons? Time to ditch it.

Marriage doesn't work. For evidence, see the divorce rate climbing closer to 50 per cent with every click on the rsvp.com.au website. The waving of the magic wedding wand is no guarantee of a successful marriage or a happy family. No amount of confetti, profiteroles and $10,000 photo shoots will counteract the dismantling of religious oppression, social taboo and financial constraint that is making far more options acceptable, despite the beige majority's fixation on fairytale endings that don't exist and never have.

Weddings and marriage are spin-doctoring propaganda to maintain social order. Which is code for ''making sure the blokes are running the joint while women are oppressed and conned into doing the majority of the unpaid domestic and emotional heavy lifting'' (and a hefty whack of the income earning as well). Married men live longer than single ones. Unmarried women live longer than wives. Girls, read the fine print and ask yourself: ''What's in it for me?''

I'm all for love, intimacy, sex, companionship and growing into wiser, more beautiful and compassionate human beings through sharing parts of your journey with others. And I quite like going to weddings. I just prefer funerals - the chat's more earthy, you hear more secrets, you don't have to buy a present and there's no group on the balcony muttering: ''I give it three months, tops.''

Funerals mark something that actually happened.

Celebrating 20 years of being together and not killing each other makes far more sense than a ceremony that celebrates something that hasn't even started. Love needs no public statement, no witnesses. The stage-managed perfection of a wedding is the antithesis of the hard yakka of surviving a long-term relationship. Weddings are an advertisement for something that only exists in the imaginations of seven-year-old girls.

Me? No. Never have, never will, never wanted to. Better dead than wed. Wouldn't I like to be princess for a day? No thanks, I'm a princess every day.

I don't judge you if you have an ownership ceremony. I do laugh at you behind your back when you defend it with hilarious and irrational rhetoric. Decisions made emotionally but backed up rationally.

''I'm just doing it for the party.'' Why don't you just have a party then? ''Our parents want us to.'' Hang on, aren't you adults? Do you do everything they want you to? ''It's just so our families could meet.'' Why don't you just have a barbecue? ''We all want to have the same name.'' What? Why? Have you never heard of a deed poll? (And, let me guess: she's changing her name to yours and the kids will have your surname?)

Just once, I'd like someone to say: ''I'm getting married because I'm needy, insecure, deeply conservative and have abandonment issues.''

The we-got-married-by-an-Elvis-impersonator-in-Vegas brigade make me laugh. Their tragic attempts to delude themselves they're not participating in something incredibly conservative don't fool me.

Why are forms always asking me if I'm married, divorced, de facto, single, separated, or never married? It's none of their business. Don't try and baffle me with bullshit about gathering statistics for better service. They don't need to know. A contact person, that's all they need.

Referring to a de facto relationship as ''common-law marriage'' is offensive and discriminatory. It's not marriage, it's a relationship. If de factos wanted to get married, they would. They don't. Why don't they call marriage state-sanctioned or religion-sanctioned co-habitation?

As for ''it's just a piece of paper'', it's so much more than that. It's the reinforcement of unrealistic expectations, outdated gender stereotypes and proof we're still being sucked in to happily-ever-after endings. It's also a scathing indictment of our lack of cultural maturity and spiritual imagination. And proof we're emotionally medieval.

Catherine Deveny is the author of It’s Not My Fault They Print Them and Say When both published by Black Inc. Her third collection of columns Free To A Good Home will be released in December 2009.