Gay marriage

Hot Abercrombie Chick! makes a good point that the fight over gay marriage is really just about a name^*. Well, of course I know there is a sizeable proportion of the American population who would like to outlaw anything relating to homosexuality, but fortunately that isn't (yet) going to happen any time soon. So currently, as HAC points out, those same people just want to win the fight to keep the noun "marriage" to mean something exclusively between a man and a woman.

But what is that something?

Well it sure isn't a religious thing - for a long time now you can't just go to a church and get married, in this country and most others in the world you'll need a marriage certificate. And what is that? Well basically its a legally binding contract that you'll sign and get notarized by some qualified person. Without the signed marriage certificate your marriage in the church is worth zip.

Why should there be some special kind of contract with special privileges that only a man and a woman can enter into? I really don't know. Any rational thinking shows all the arguments that same sex marriage will "damage the family" is clearly bunk. What about all those heterosexual couples that marry and never have kids, and never ever intended to have them? Or those that are physically incapable of having them? Do we prevent them marrying because they will "damage the family"? Of course not. I can only assume there's a subtext in the "damage the family" argument that it actually legitimizes immoral activity that will damage family values. However I'm afraid that must also be hogwash. What people do within their marriage is none of the business of the government, something that has very recently been endorsed by the Supreme Court when it struck down the Texas sodomy law.

So even if those supporters of the ban on gay marriage feel this way I'm afraid they are SOL. They have to recognize that the law should let any get married and raise, or not raise children as the case may be. Indeed its often a mystery to many who choose not to raise children that the law does let just about anyone raise them in almost whatever way they please. Furthermore the US pretty much leads the world with more than 50% of all marriages ending in divorce. So why is it that anyone would believe the government should endorse an institution that more often than not leads to single parents raising children - just what the heck does that do for the good of families? Is the next step to ban divorce because that's bad for families. And then have an amendment that says that poor people can't have children because they can't afford to raise them in a healthy environment with two cars, four TVs and cable? And then how about an amendment that permits only "arranged marriages" sanctioned by consenting parents which are best for their family interests (i.e. preservation of capital) just like in the good old days. Is permitting constitutional control over marriage under the guise of "protecting the family" just a step onto the slippery slope toward a society that allows only state controlled breeding?

I have to believe not at this moment even though I do think some things dangerously like eugenics will be upon us soon thanks to genetic engineering and cloning. These will ultimately lead to calls for the government to intervene in the breeding process and take the opportunity to exert some control over who can and can't reproduce.

So ultimately, at the current time I agree with the notion that its really just about the name. They (supporters of the ban) just don't want their notion of the word marriage being sullied by its application to someone else's notion. Its basically a trademark issue. The straight upstanding churchgoers or bible bashers (and lets face it, they almost always are, or at least would claim to be) don't want to get "married" in white on a Sunday when any deviant homosexual couple can waltz or sashay into city hall on Monday and do it too.

In a way I can sort of see their point, but only if I was sitting on the church side of the fence. I mean the church laid its claim on marriage a long long time ago, for all I know it may have even invented the concept, or at least its monogamous "till death do us part" manifestation. I'm not a historian but I wouldn't be surprised if that was true - please contact me if you have a good reference on the history of marriage. But as I already pointed out the separation of marriage from the ceremony that happens in a church occurred a long time ago and since that time civil weddings without a hint of religion have lead to an identical state of marriage.

So here is my solution: I say we should divorce the government recognized concept of marriage from the word "marriage". All our government documents should be changed to remove the words "marry", "marriage" and "married" and replace them with "civil union" (or alternatively "domestic partner" if that's a better name for it). Then civil union should be made open to any couple and recognized in all states via a civil union amendment. Marriage would then resort to applying only to a ceremony which occurs in a church and that is not recognized by the government, period. If people want to get married and have a civil union at the same time then fine - but they had better bring along and sign a civil union certificate at the same time.

At this point I think the fight would be over - the religious people get back the control of their word "marriage" and their churches get to continue to discriminate in whatever way they wish. It'll then be between the church members and church leaders to fight it out just like with the current fight over ordination of openly gay ministers in the Baptist and other churches.

Of course if churches want to surrender "marriage" and redefine "their thing" as "Holy matrimony" or something like that then that's fine. But personally I'm much happier with abolition of government use of a term like marriage that is so sullied with religious connotations. At this point I'd much rather have a civil union or commit to a domestic partnership than get married.

^* Link courtesy of Net Politik