Is now the best time in history to be lesbian or gay? With the introduction of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013, lesbians and gay men enjoy the same legislative rights as heterosexuals when married. They can foster and adopt, put same-sex names on their children's birth certificates, enjoy protection from discrimination and harassment at work and join the armed forces.

In all the celebrating and discussion of bride-on-bride fashion, no one seems to have raised any objections to the institution itself, an institution that has curtailed women's freedom for centuries.

When I was young, I wore badges and T-shirts bearing the slogan "Y B A Wife?". We were not the first feminists to critique marriage. Writers such as Sarah Fielding, Mary Hays and Mary Wollstonecraft labelled marriage during the Industrial Revolution as "little more than a state of legal prostitution", and argued that poorer women in all societies suffer the most oppression within marriage while at the same time being under more pressure to marry. So what's going on?

During the 1970s and 80s, lesbians were more likely than they are today to be part of an active women's liberation movement, during which the issue of marriage as a patriarchal institution was oft-discussed. There was the Lesbians Against the Clause group who campaigned against Clause 28 on the grounds that the heterosexual fabric of British society ought to be undermined. They produced an anti-marriage poster with the slogan: "They say marriage is a bed of roses ... beware of the pricks", and organised several conferences and seminars to discuss the issue.

But in recent years there has been a distinct lack of debate about marriage as potentially problematic for women. In contrast, there seems to be an almost total acceptance of it by lesbians today.

I wanted to find out whether I was a lone voice objecting to gay marriage and if so, why. Last September I posted two surveys on the Guardian website (and a couple of other publications) to find out what was behind the widespread desire to wed, as well as a number of other issues. In total, 5,492 participants completed a poll aimed at lesbians and gay men while 4,036 completed another aimed at heterosexuals, making it one of the most meaningful surveys of attitudes to homosexuality ever undertaken in the UK. An overwhelming 89% of the 9,528 responses (roughly split between male and female) supported equal marriage, meaning that the majority of straight respondents, as well as lesbians and gay men, support marriage for same sex couples.

The survey also found that many gay respondents have a desire for "ordinariness" and do not want to be seen as living "alternative lifestyles". A number of respondents who said "yes" to the question: "Do you support gay (equal) marriage?" added comments about how marriage will make them equal to heterosexuals, and that they were looking forward to being viewed as "the same".

Civil partnerships and marriage offer that; the latest Office for National Statistics figures show that civil partnerships in the UK reached an all-time high in 2012, with 7,037 tying the knot, and equal numbers of gay men and lesbians opting for formal coupledom.

This heavy support for gay marriage comes in spite of the fact that 93.01% (gay survey) and 93.69% (straight) were aware of feminist arguments against marriage.

Nicola Barker, a senior lecturer in law at the University of Kent and the author of Not the Marrying Kind: A Feminist Critique of Same-Sex Marriage, says that she is sometimes misunderstood as being against equality as opposed to marriage. "What gets lost in the celebrations about 'equal marriage' is that marriage is not about equality; it's about perpetuating privilege," she says.

"Few feminists would have been surprised by David Cameron's assertion that to support gay marriage is conservative. Same-sex marriage fits comfortably within the conservative ideology of the self-sufficient family and contributes to the politics of state austerity."

The writer Shelley Silas, who is in a civil partnership with the novelist Stella Duffy, says they both wish to convert to full marriage as soon as they are able, and that they have long referred to each other as wives and taken each other's names; "I want to be able to say the word 'married' and know it is within a legal context," says Silas.

There is, within this overwhelming support, an assumption, as some of my survey respondents and interviewees argue, that lesbian marriage somehow subverts the heterosexual, patriarchal narrative – but does it?

Isn't marriage merely a clever ploy to keep us quiet about the trickier issues such as the deportation of lesbian asylum seekers, and the still prevalent anti-gay bullying in schools and religious communities? While so many lesbians are busily getting hitched and drawing up wedding lists, while being featured in the pages of newspapers, have we lost sight of those within our community suffering in silence? A shocking 78% of lesbians and gay men have experienced prejudice during their lifetime, according to the survey, with more than a quarter of them suffering physical assault.

In her 1993 paper, Since When is Marriage a Path to Liberation?, the late Paula Ettelbrick, a US-based lesbian and human rights lawyer, came up with one of the greatest lines about state interference in relationships: "Marriage is a great institution – if you like living in institutions."

Julie Bindel's Straight Expectations: What does it mean to be gay today? is published by Guardian Books on 26 June at £12.99. To pre-order a copy for £8.99, visit theguardian.com/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846.