The Awful Threat of gay Marriage

 

 

I really didn’t want to get into the marriage controversy.  The argument has always seemed too stupid to deal with. I mean who cares who marries who? What difference could it possibly make to anyone, who his next-door neighbor married? How does it affect your life when somebody else, somebody you don’t even know, gets married?  I mean the logical arguments against gay marriage just don’t exist and that leaves only the political and religious ones. So God hates fags. So what? What does that have to do with your life or mine or the couple’s down the street? I mean it’s too stupid to waste time thinking about, except that all the dumb, overly religious, fools out there, who are campaigning to take away people’s rights, simply because they want to marry someone of their own sexual orientation, can’t be allowed to do that. That is not how this country is supposed to function.

 

Marriage can be defined by either religious or political measures. The people who want to define marriage by religious means certainly have a right to do so, but only in cases that pertain to them. They just as certainly have no right to bring their religion to bear on anything in this country that happens outside their particular church. Separation of church and state is a bedrock principle on which our country is founded. No matter how much the evangelists yell, scream and stomp their little feet, this is not a Christian country, it’s a secular country and that’s what keeps it free. So if your religion says that same sex people can’t get married, that’s fine, but that prohibition only extends to those who are unfortunate enough to actually believe in your religion and it has absolutely no influence outside the parameters of your church.

 

Marriage, in this country, is a legal contract between two people, No where in the constitution does it say that those two people have to be of different sexes. We added a little something called DOMA that says that, but it has always, clearly, been unconstitutional. We, as a nation, have always assumed that, and have based our prejudices on that assumption but it just ain’t so and anyone who thinks it is, is just misinformed.

 

For years, people in this country thought that interracial marriage was a horror and an affront to God. Then we realized that the only affront was to the constitution and got rid of that stupid restraint and started producing bigger, stronger, more beautiful children then we had ever seen before. Gay marriage is pretty much the same situation (rights wise, not necessarily kid wise) and of course, the same people oppose it as opposed interracial marriage.

 

The line I really love to hear is that it will ruin marriage as an institution. Really? With an over 50% divorce rate is it actually possible to ruin marriage as an institution? I think not. It seems that marriage, as the religious right sees it, is already in the can.

 

I watched a discussion the other night in which the traditional family backer was trying to make a point that a child was the reason for marriage and that a child needed two parents, one male and one female in order to be raised correctly. He must have made that statement five or six times but he could never say why a child needed two parents or why they had to be one male and one female.

 

I can see why two parents are better then one. They give the kid more personal time, they have a better chance to make a better living, etc but I couldn’t find a single reason, other than more diverse points of view, that a male and a female would make better parents that two males or two females. It’s really all about who those individual parents are, not about what their gender is.

 

Let’s face it, there are many bad reasons why people get married but the three that stand out in problems and numbers are, one of them has a lot of money, one of them has to get a green card or one of them is knocked up. You can pretty much whittle those bad reasons down to two with a gay or lesbian couple.

 

Right now the whole thing is in front of the Supreme Court and I love all the pundits and experts who have theories on what the court will do. Unfortunately, most theories have it that the court will push off a real decision until there is more of an agreement on the parts of the citizenry. This is wrong and cowardly. The justice’s job is to interpret the constitution not judge the feelings of the people.

 

It has long been accepted and in 1967, Loving vs Virginia, reiterated, by the Supreme Court that marriage is a civil right and as such, the states cannot infringe upon it. There is no place in the constitution or in adjudicated law where there is any reference to marriage being between a man and a woman. It is simply a civil union and that’s all anyone should be interested in. As soon as you move marriage into a church, it loses all its constitutional protections because it is now a religious ceremony and the state no longer has any say in it.

 

If Catholics don’t want gays to marry in their churches, that’s their business, but by the same token, gays getting married in a civil ceremony, is none of the Bishop’s business. It seems to be a very clear-cut situation. I just don’t see what all the noise is about.

 

The Defense of Marriage Act, that fraudulently named piece of ridiculous legislation intrigues me. What are they defending marriage from? Are they defending it from being used as an immigration scam, or are they defending it from being a veil drawn over a sexual indiscretion? How about a simple business arrangement? You want to defend marriage, defend it from all the mis-uses to which it is currently being put. It doesn’t need to be defended from two loving people who want to spend their lives together, regardless of their sexual orientation.

 

If your marriage is so weak, that it will be endangered by having someone of different sexual orientation adopt the same title for their civil union, then you have bigger problems than they could ever cause you. That’s why over 50% of heterosexual marriages end in divorce. Let’s give the gay’s a shot. Maybe they can do better.