Let me be blunt, for most people I am not a big believer in marriage, I think they should just skip the wedding and stay single. When I hear the debate over gay marriage I find it hard to defend a system that I believe is historically and specifically meant to be between a man and a woman but is on the brink of absolute destruction not because of homosexuality but because of the absence of sanity and values that accompany the practice with heterosexuals. Marriage has been turned from a sacred union to a freak show used as an escape from reality and a continuation of the void that is many peoples continuing lives. Half of all first marriages fail; second and third marriage are just as abysmal. It is difficult if not impossible to defend marriage from those who wish to change its definition when its practice for most straight people ends in failure; I do mean failure too, we need to tell it like it is. Despite the rash of celebratory ‘divorce parties’ divorced is failure and unless a union ends to remove oneself from real abuse, it should not be celebrated but reflected upon and given serious internal review.
Now let me just say that I am happily married to a woman I adore. We’ve known one another for over a decade, though we did not date throughout and carefully took nearly two years of engagement to reach our wedding date. I know her like I know myself; we have been open and honest about our hopes, dreams, beliefs in reality, objectives, desires etc. We have seen one another at our best and worst, gone through tragic moments together and those of pure bliss. We walked down the isle having obsessed over every detail of our future, knowing that the world would throw us curve balls and change our direction but building a foundation for how we planned to take control and direct our lives. Most important we talked about money and how we would pay for the things we not only needed but wanted in life; because marriage is as much a legal and financial union as it is one of love, this part cannot be ignored!
We’ve seen life and death together and I honestly view her as a partner, someone who builds me up, challenges me and fuels everything I do. We cannot wait to produce new life together and have had endless discussions on what values and beliefs we want to impart to our children. I would never wish for divorce and would only accept it in the face of infidelity or a complete breakdown of trust. There is no solution I would not try before accepting defeat because I have committed my life to her and my future children. I have given all of myself to her and we will in turn give all we have together to our children.
On the other side I have already seen immediate divorce from weddings we have attended and am counting down the days for more. I have attended weddings I have known would end in failure and frankly if those people had asked I would have told them what I believed would happen; probably why no one ever asks me what I think. My love of witnessing a good freak show is always in conflict with my genuine distaste for watching people misuse this institution and I can imagine a time when I stop accepting invitations to most weddings because I just don’t believe in their commitment.
One thing I have observed is many of those in the religious community who fret the most about the decline of stable households are all too willing to bless these unions despite knowing little if anything about those they join. Faced with declining attendance I have seen many weddings performed in a church where people who are 100% not religious pay a fee and have the church pretend to embrace them for a day. Marriage is treated as a service to be performed for a fee, not as the union of two souls before God.
Personally my wife and I are not religious but we were respectful enough of church to never entertain the idea that we would get married in one. We felt it would be exploitive of a community and a house of worship to pretend we were religious in a house of God. Our spiritual and philosophical beliefs did not bring us to a church before our wedding and it would not be right to ask someone of faith to stand before God and attest to something different.
Last year I actually went to a wedding where the couple married secretly months before. The Pastor who married them in private then performed the ceremony once again pretending as if this was the first time. He even handed around a fake certificate to be witnessed and spent the night interacting with the family never acknowledging the truth. He took a check while checking values at the door. That couple divorced just a few months after the second wedding. We all knew it wouldn’t last but people make their decisions. Had the Pastor known them, had he spent time with them and offered counsel and spiritual advice, he would have seen what we all saw. Had he chosen truth over a check he would not have allowed himself to be a part of something that cheapened the institution.
In my mind it is one thing for governments or tawdry Vegas tourist stops to marry those without convictions or promise, another for religion to do so.
There will always be those who exploit marriage just as they exploit everything else in our society; but we must begin to decide how those of us who believe it is more than a piece of paper and a nice party are going to do better and how we deal with those we know are not truly committed. I am curious about how others deal with this issue, if they simply go along as I often do watching this system fail but feeling powerless or if they chose the scorn of others for the principled belief that marriage should be more than two people lost in temporary lust making a terrible choice.
Any thoughts out there?
Everything you say about heterosexual marriage is true. But back to the question of homosexual marriage…
Marriage is two things – to the law, it’s a contract. To the church/synagogue/mosque/etc, it’s a sacred vow and union.
If two consenting homosexual people agree to enter into a marriage contract, the law should be amended to permit them to enjoy the rights, privileges, and responsibilities that go along with that secular contractual union, and we shouldn’t stand in their way as a society for any reason. That union doesn’t cheapen anyone’s heterosexual marriage, and doesn’t affect in any way the institution of marriage. If anything, it strengthens it.
However, the state should not – and legally cannot – force places of worship to perform or recognize homosexual marriages if it is forbidden to do so in that faith. I think that a lot of the demagoguery over this issue from its opponents assumes that the state will force churches to perform gay marriages, which is simply not possible. The “if they let gays marry, they’ll let people marry their sisters/pets/inanimate objects” argument is simply awful, mean-spirited, bigoted, and wrong. I’m sorry to see it used ever, by anyone.
So, while you’re right about marriages in general, that doesn’t justify prohibiting gay people from entering into that marriage contract if they so desire, any more than we can impose some sort of test on hetero couples marrying to see if their marriages are sincere or will last.
Jeff, thanks for your piece. I see gay marriage in a different light. I believe it is nothing more than another attempt by the left to exert control. Control, need not be overt; forcing society to acquiesce to new or different standards and accept new definitions for long established words, diction and terminology, is subversive.
For thousands of years the word marriage represented the bond between a man and woman. Its origins include the concept of procreation and the strengthening the particular nation within which, the marriage was consummated. The definition of the word marriage never included a legal coupling between members of the same sex.
I fervently believe that each of us must possess certain unalienable individual rights. One of these rights, is an individual’s right, to chose who he or she wants love. In turn, I am strongly opposed to any government restricting a private benefit from going to people who the owner of the particular award intended it to go. The majority of States have rectified these unfair regulations and I am certain that our entire nation, including the Federal Government with soon follow suit. Some examples of the aforementioned are: certain Money Purchase, Profit sharing, etc., retirement plans (as well as SSI) which by law, follow blood lines as opposed to the wishes of the party who earned the seed funds in question. In turn, according to some jurisdictional laws: an executive, totally cut off from his family, living with his same sex partner of 40 years, who had put away $5 million dollars into his retirement plan over his 30 years on the job, in some instances- upon death, would have his fortune paid out to a distant cousin, he had never met, rather than the partner he loved. Regardless of my feelings on sexual preference, such a scenario is unacceptable and must not represent the law anywhere in our great Country.
However, securing equal treatment under the law is not enough for the gay marriage supporters. These folks need to force their desires on everyone, including people who have nothing to do with their plight, so to alter their understanding, personal religious interpretations and teachings to their children. If the element of control was not the primary goal of those in support of homosexual marriage, than they would have chosen a new word to define this new union, minus the ability to procreate. For example, Garriage, Prarriage, Narriage are all available.
Then by pcisbs’ definition, childless marriages are improper “garriages”.
Gay marriage has never been one of those issues that I haved cared much about but let me explain my train of thought on the subject.
Marriage has historically been between a man and a woman. In known history, even in societies where homosexual relationships were acceptable, has homosexual marriage ever been considered a right. So the “contract” or legal status of marriage has always been in history something granted to a man and woman. So when almost all laws governing it were written they were written with the intent of it being between a man and a woman.
Additionally the federal constitution leaves marriage to the states; nowhere does it guarentee marriage or say anything about it. Federally the only thing we truly have to go by is DOMA which defines marriage between man and woman. That has yet to be knocked off as unconstitutional. So it would then take a constitutional amendment or future act of Congress to define marriage as anything else to the federal government.
This is why I have said before and maintain that this is a state issue. Each individual state decides how they want to define marriage. Obviously there is an equal protections argument to be made and sought but that goes back to the historic definition and the current federal definition. As long as the federal government maintains man and woman as the definition it is hard to argue that Kentucky must recognize something different simply because Mass does.
I fully understand the desires of homosexuals to be married and I have known and I am sure will continue to know many who say they are because of a ceremony performed. With that said there is no federal guarentee that this “right” of marriage applies to them. The definition of marriage legally has always been between a man and a woman. One can argue it “should” include homosexual marriage but I do not see an overwhelming argument that it “must” based on legal precident or even an overwhelming moral argument.
One can claim the health care coverage or other rights that typically extend to a married partner should go to cover a homosexual partner and by denying them our states and nation are somehow violating a human right. While an interesting argument such benefits are negotiated by employer to employee as compensation. That is largely an employer/employee issue and as for federal we have DOMA.
All roads legally lead back to marriage as being exclusive to man & woman. However if a state choses to change its definition of marriage, that is its right as long as there is no constitutional amendment to say differently.
I don’t think it’s a state issue.
It’s a personal, individual issue.
Therefore, the law of the land should allow for it under the same terms and conditions as it allows for heterosexual marriage, because it’s no one’s business.
What I will never understand about this line of thinking is why republicans, the party who used to tell the government to stay the hell out of their faces, now suddenly wants the government to impose a moral fascism telling people what they can and cannot do.
It just doesn’t make any sense to me at all. Then again, neither does the republican party these days.