by: 
Culture_Voyeur
Culture_VoyeurWednesday, December 9, 2009 at 2:57:00 PM EST
Facebook
In between reruns of The Golden Girls, WE tv insists on inundating me with advertisements for its reality show, My Fair Wedding with David Tutera.
David Tutera, I have come to learn, is a celebrity wedding planner who in the past has worked with Disney theme parks, catering to couples who wish to have fairytale weddings in one of the many Disney resorts. With his show on WE tv, David now has the chance to turn wedding disasters into the stuff dreams are made of for people on a daily basis.
With each new commercial promoting the series, I find myself growing a little angrier with David. These happy, heterosexual couples are using him to plan their dream weddings, while his LGBTQ comrades are unable to get married. How can he in good conscience participate in an industry that currently discriminates against him?
This conundrum is one the LGBTQ community has been wrestling with for some time, long before Queer Eye for the Straight Guy hit the airwaves in 2003. If same-sex couples are denied the right to marry, wouldn’t the socially responsible thing for us to do is to deny heterosexual couples the right to stylish and lavish weddings?
Since I have no stake in the wedding-planning industry, nor do I want to get married, it is very easy for me to say, “Stop, David Tutera! You shouldn’t be participating in this industry until you are treated as an equal!” But obviously, David makes his money from planning weddings and would disagree; and perhaps even he wrestles with this moral dilemma on a daily basis (probably while he’s lying on top of the pile of money he’s made from authoring four party planning books and from hosting another wedding series on Lifetime).
I’ve searched the internet looking for some redeeming factor to David’s controversial career path. Maybe an episode of My Fair Wedding features a same-sex couple? Not this season. Maybe David is an outspoken advocate for marriage equality? Well, The Advocate interviewed him last year, and although he married his partner in Vermont, he describes himself as “not usually a political person.” In fact, David was involved in a bit of a scandal in 2007 when it was discovered that his employer, Disney, was denying same-sex couples the ability to get married on their grounds. And while he released a statement supporting gay marriage, he declined to comment on Disney’s policy.
Maybe this is where we have room for compromise: those LGBTQ individuals who make money planning and promoting heterosexual weddings should use their down-time being the most outspoken advocates for marriage equality. Not only could David subtly remind his customers that his marriage isn’t recognized in most states, but the extravagant costs of the weddings he plans might convince fiscal conservatives that gay marriage is exactly the sort of economic boost this country needs.
Idealistic? Maybe. But if David insists on profiting from this unequal arrangement, at the very least, he and his colleagues could give some of his time back to his community. Or at least stop WE tv from airing those incredibly obnoxious promos.
Comments
[Add New Comment]
Hmm this is quite an interesting post. I did not know about David Tutera before this. I am quite surprised as you are to not see him more active in marriage equality or at least to have a same sex couple on the show. I wonder if that has anything to do with the network or other sponsors he may have? I think its cool how we have had a few posts this week about marriage equality and activism. I kind of wonder what would happen if we shared our desire for more activism with Mr. Tutera himself. At his website http://www.davidtutera.com there is a contact page where you can write him a message. Maybe he would write us back.
# Posted By vanessaaishacoleman
| 12/10/09 09:19 AM
| Reply
vanessaaishacoleman
| 12/10/09 09:19 AM
| Reply
[Add New Comment]
Get email updates and action alerts:
by AFY_Samantha
by AFY_Samantha