Finally, all of the reasons have been collected in an easy-to-read list of 12 simple why-nots. Now the whole gay marriage controversy can be put back on the shelf and we can continue to live our wholesome little lives. Here are some highlights:
4. Straight marriage will be less meaningful, since Britney Spears’s 55-hour just-for-fun marriage was meaningful.7. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are always imposed on the entire country. That’s why we only have one religion in America.
8. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people makes you tall.
Ah, humor, sweet humor.
Now, let’s not get bogged down in a marsh of semantics. The arguments about preserving the sanctity of marriage through legislation are attributing holiness to something secular and municipal in nature. It is codifying marriage and removing its complexity. Yes, every marriage results in a change of legal status for the two people involved. Taxation changes. Employee benefits are altered. Ownership of property takes on a new dimension. Rights of decision and influence are expanded. There are several other alterations of condition, and I’m sure you can do your own research. These are under the pervue of the state, benefits granted from your government. Sanctity doesn’t reside in these civil rights. They mark the line where the concern of the state officially ends and something actually sacred begins.
Apart from these legal facets, there are other possibilities with every marriage. There is a joining of two families — unless your names happen to be Montague and Capulet. There is a unification of two lives, a promise to share and love that goes far beyond granted permissions and stipulations on a printed page. If performed in a place of worship, the two are joined in the eyes of God Almighty (or whatever diety is applicable). Please note that God doesn’t reach down with a glowing celestial hand to sign any necessary forms in triplicate.
These are not guaranteed, of course. And no written law could even begin to secure the components of a marriage that make it successful. How would it even be written? By law, you will be incredibly understanding to your partner’s moods and feelings, making them hot tea when they are curled up on the couch with a headcold and sending them flowers on the third monday of every 31-day month.
And please, let’s not take this down the road of protecting procreativity. Saying that the purpose of marriage is to propagate the species through offspring is outmoded by modernity and frankly reduces us to sanctioned breeders. Several couples marry and don’t have any children. Others adopt. Are we to say that a couple that fails to birth a child is not worthy of marriage either? And is a single parent no longer a viable guardian?
This deserves a more lucid post. It really does. The core of what I am trying to say is this: marriage does not need to be defended. People need to be educated. People need to think more before they agree to proposals. The still-rising divorce rate in this lovely country of ours is higher in the midwest, where the living is clean and the common man resides, so I just cannot see how the actions of 3,000 westcoast couples are driving a wedge between men and women. If there is a threat to matrimony, it is much more complex and much more personal than expanding the word “marriage” to include non-hetero unions.
