(reprinted from my website May, 25, 2009)
Does it seem like a firestorm of controversy is surrounding the institution of marriage?
Tomorrow (Tuesday) the State Supreme Court of California (yes the close to bankrupt, snail paced, 2/3rd majority to approve a budget bureaucracy State) will pass a judgement that will uphold or overturn Prop 8 (California's 2nd voter mandated will to define marriage as being between a man and a woman the first was overturned by 4 judges as being unconstitutional) as being illegal and unconstitutional (to change the California Constitution). Dizzy yet?
Saturday...I will be walking down a sandy aisle myself, and the very nature of the institution I am buying into (and by the amount of fees and insurances this very same broke State is charging me I mean BUY) may be radically reconfigured one way or another when I get there.
Although, I can make one point I think everyone can agree on up front. I think marriage ought to be to “love, honor and cherish one another, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, for better or worse til death do you part...” It’s amazing how many problems we seem to have just getting that part right... All the other stuff seems rather secondary don’t you think? And I’m not sure the legislature of the State of California (or any State or Nation on the planet) has ANYTHING to do with that definition...
The government is here to say what legal ramifications entering into the CONTRACT of marriage entails. That’s it. When you get down to it, our government doesn’t really have a say in the above definition of marriage. Do they care if two people are in love? There is some lip-service to it...but how the blazes do you enforce that? If California could find a way to ticket “apathetic” couples I’m sure they would. NO, our government simply handles the court cases and money connections associated with the customs...that’s pretty much it.
There is SO much more to marriage than that. Marriage carries a NUMBER of separate but intertwined meanings and definitions.
- Cultural - (ever go to India and see what their marriage traditions are like? If you want to take one in, better book a month and half off from work...) and cultures have traditions that mean things to people...even if they are outdated (ever see Fiddler on the Roof?) or nonsensical (why do we have a Groundhog Day???) but there are strong ties to a sense of identity and security and comfort in traditions. Groundhog Day doesn’t seem to harm anyone (unlike Weasel Stomping Day...) so we keep it going cause it’s fun and Bill Murray immortalized it...
- Religious - (yes there is a faith based component that has existed a LOT longer than the U.S. government),
- Legal - Your tax return status changes among other things (visiting rights, next of kin, extended family, etc...etc..)
- Emotional - Huh? Of course there is a LOT of emotion tied up with marriage. I’m not just talking about the aforementioned love, honor and cherish between two people who want to make a public declaration of their newfound identity as a twosome. There is a lot of emotion over the issue involved right now in simply stating that marriage validates people in the eyes of society. They are capable of love, of being loved, and in this particular time issue, of being equal members of society.
The problem is, an inherit need to be recognized and validated on an emotional level by those around you ISN’T a CIVIL RIGHTS issue. It’s a HUMAN issue. All humanity wants to be accepted and respected. No one (that I know) wants to be seen as inferior or second class.
But does the government law actually GIVE people respect and acceptance? It can make acts of discrimination illegal, but just as a piece of paper doesn’t mean two people will actually love and honor and cherish one another, nor will that same piece of paper validate the and equalize the oppressed minority.
Cultural attitudes will ultimately be the battlefield that is truely wanting to be won here. It’s why I think the popular vote IS the best way to decide the issue. The changing attitude of the population is what really needs to happen.
Back to the whole marriage issue, there is again a bunch of conflicting ideas of what marriage is. And it is true that there are some legal ramifications that amount to unequal treatment of a sub-set of the population at the current time.
However many, many, many people have other ideas of marriage outside of a civil rights issue* that their own good conscience and beliefs cannot allow sway on. however, I will speak primarily of religious and Judeo Christian in particular. I can’t really change the words of the Bible, and I don’t believe the government has the right to tell the church what the word marriage is going to mean.
HOWEVER, I don’t think the government has the right to determine the definition of marriage PERIOD!
The word marry and husband and wife should be stricken from every legal document across the land from sea to shining sea.
Instead, the government DOES have the authority to enact the legal ramifications of two people being joined in a CIVIL UNION and all the benefits / drawbacks that comes therewith.
All this wind and I may now sound like this is just a matter of semantics to me...but it’s not. Marriage means something...a LOT of things...to a LOT of people, and to the best of our country’s ability we should try to respect and abide by all, by getting out of the way entirely.*
A number of you may be wondering (or have already dismissed out of hand) the opinion of a never married, WASPy hetero, conservative(ish) person like myself as not having the life experience or perspective to speak on such an issue.
Believe me when I say I do have some personal experience with gay marriage...(no not what you think)...but I’m going to start a new blog entry to get into that....
I will say, it all began with a parrot...
* for the sake of brevity I will leave the issue of polygamy out of the arena.
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