ICYMI, on Saturday thefirst gay weddings in England and Wales were finally allowed to take place – sparking midnight wedding picnics across the UK. So how did one couple choose to celebrate? By turning their wedding into a musical and airing it on Channel 4 of course. We spoke to the amazing Nathan Taylor who married Ben Till on Saturday after 12 years of waiting, and he told us about what 29 March meant to him, what comes next for gay rights and how the hell he and Ben managed to write a musical and turn it into a wedding narrated by Stephen Fry for primetime TV in just seven weeks.
Can you tell me a little bit about what 29 March means to you?
It's less than 50 years since being gay in England was illegal and now Ben and I can get married on prime-time television. We’re not actually making a film about our wedding, we’re making a film about 29 March and our wedding is in it. It’s not just going to be a celebration of two people that no-one's ever heard of, who want to get married on the telly, it's very much telling the broader picture. We’re showing some quite hard-hitting footage of the ups and downs of the gay rights' movement and the journey towards equality over the past 50 years.
Do you take a look at what’s happening around the world?
Yes. We’re very lucky to do what we’re doing in this country, but around the world people aren’t so lucky. Being gay is punished by death in five countries around the world – let's name and shame, it’s Mauritania, Sudan, Yemen, Iran and Saudi Arabia, and it's punishable by death in parts of Nigeria and Somalia as well. And you can be put in prison for life in 70 or more countries. And 40-something of those countries are in the Commonwealth. We’re featuring a photograph in the film of two men in Iran standing with their heads bowed and their hands tied behind their backs and nooses around their necks. Just for being gay. And when you start to see those stark reminders you realise that we are so very fortunate in this country, but the fight is far from over.
So why the musical theme?
There’s lots of criticism of us – ‘What a stereotype - gay men and musicals’ and: ‘Why do they think that all gay men love musicals?’ And of course we don’t. We are two gay men who happen to really respect and love musicals. I'm a musical and theatre performer, while Ben’s a composer. It seemed to us the most logical way actually to get married in a way that represents who we are as people, allied to the fact that music is such a fantastic catalyst for emotion.
Can you tell me a bit about yourself and Ben as a couple?
Well it all goes back to musical theatre. We met working on Boy George’s Taboo back in 2002.
That's such a long time ago!
Yes we’ve been waiting all this time. We chose not to have a civil partnership. I do think it was an incredibly important first step, though. I don’t think we as a society would have been ready to jump into marriage. I think it needed to be baby steps. We’ve proved that by lowering the age of consent, which of course when I was growing up was 21 and then it got lowered to 18 before finally it was made equal at 16. But that was 2001 when the equal age of consent came in. so just before Ben and I met.
That’s crazy!
I know! I feel strongly that once we realised the world wasn’t going to come to an end because gay people were given their own legally recognised partnerships, it was time to abolish all difference and just make it the same. 29 March is the start of the real healing process for us as a community, and for society at large because younger generations of children will grow up never having the stigma. I think that’s something that our generation was very much affected by and we felt like second-class citizens because we weren’t given the same human rights as anybody else. One of the things Ben often says is if people want to check to see if their beliefs are homophobic or not try and take the word ‘gay’ out of the sentence and replace it with ‘black’ and see if its still an acceptable thing to say. So, is it ok to say ‘I don’t think black people should get married’? Of course it’s not.
So what’s organising the whole thing been like?
It’s been quite full-on! Channel 4 originally didn’t think we could do it in the time. We had nine weeks at that point and when we finally managed to convince them we had seven weeks to plan a wedding, write a musical, organise a film, structure everything, and make it all happen. And so we threw ourselves into it, completely and utterly. Getting up on our laptops at 8am in the morning, going to bed at 2am every night, then getting up at 8am to start again!
Are there going to be any stand out moments?
We have a duet by our mothers. They’ve been so brave and we’re so very proud of them both. The song is called Changing Expectations, and it’s their story about how they found out that their sons were gay and how they came to terms with it. Its really, really, tough work to watch that without a tear in your eye.
Boy George is going to be your ‘fairy scary godmother’? What does that mean?
We worked close with George on the Taboo musical – he’s essentially the reason why we got together in the first place so he’s got a little message for us. He can’t be there for the day, he’s in Australia, but he’s filmed a message for us where he takes all the credit for our relationship and our wedding. And calls himself our fairy scary godmother as a result. Lovely touch.
Our Gay Wedding: The Musical is on Channel 4 tonight at 9PM
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.