Aw Mawage…
Be the Change, Domestic Bliss, Gay-dar June 16th, 2006…is not wot bwings us togevver tooday.
There is quite the debate going over at MSCB. I think it should really be split into three subjects, to better clarify (in a more serious manner) my thoughts on the subject(s).
A. Marriage
B. Corporate-Sponsored Marriage
C. Same-Sex Marriage
A. Marriage
Breaking it down to the simpliest of terms,
For example, did you know…
-Some traditional cultures still practice marriage by abduction, a form of forced marriage in which a woman who is kidnapped and raped by a man is regarded as his wife.
-In other (non-Western) parts of the world
-China didn’t shift to supporting only monogamy until 1953. Most African and Islamic societies continue to allow polygamy (around 2.0 billion people).
-In the state of Kerala, India, the Nambudiri Brahmin caste traditionally practices henogamy, in which only the eldest son in each family is permitted to marry.
-Other unusual variations include marriage between a living human and a ghost (Taiwan), a living human and a recently-deceased human with whom they were emotionally involved (France), and between a human being and God (Catholic and Orthodox monasticism).
Sooo, my point being that marriage, like most everything else in the world, means many, many different things to many different people.
B. Corporate-Sponsored Marriage
This had Lach fired up pretty good but I have to, at the risk of couch-sleeping, agree with UpTown Girl’s outlook on the subject…
Weddings are EXPENSIVE…. So what if this couple has figured out a way to pay for theirs? We should applaud them for working the system!…Could you imagine being able to afford to invite every single person you wanted to without taking out a loan or refinancing your mortgage to pay for your wedding?…Also, no one has mentioned that this couple is giving a considerable donation to charity on their wedding day.
Now, don’t get me wrong, the
C. Gay Marriage
Racist laws adopted by some societies in the past, such as Nazi-era Germany, apartheid-era South Africa, most of the southern US and Utah (prior to 1967) prohibited marriage between persons of different races.
Many people, including myself, see these same kind of biased restrictions placed on their desire to legally and publicly commit to their partners. In 2003, when Lach asked me to be her wife there was no national debate on the subject. It wasn’t until a few months later that all hell exploded and our plans and relationship was suddenly target of everyone’s opinion. At the time, there was little thought that our ceremony would or could be a legal one. It was more about sharing our union and commitment with our friends and families. Now, in Washington, we are holding our breathe as the state courts decide on whether or not to uphold the DOMA.
As Elizabeth so aptly noted, there are so many rights that we in same-sex relationships are barred from…
Hospital Visitation Rights: Same sex couples can be denied the right to visit a sick or injured partner in the hospital. Health insurance: Same-sex couples cannot even buy a family health insurance policy on the open market. Spousal Privilege: Spousal privilege, granted to married couples, is the right of a person to refuse to testify against their spouse in the court of law. Inheritance rights: Without marriage, a same-sex partner has no automatic right to inherit. Family leave: Workers with same-sex partners have no right to family leave. Pensions: Surviving same-sex partners get no pension support for their surviving partners. Nursing homes: An unmarried and elderly same-sex couple does not have the right to spend their final days together in a nursing home. Home protection: Laws protect married seniors from being forced to sell their homes to pay high nursing-home bills; seniors in same-sex relationships have no such protection. Retirement savings: While a married person can roll over a deceased spouse’s 401(k) or IRA funds into an IRA without paying taxes, surviving partners in
same-sex relationships must withdraw the entire amount, pay income taxes on it and also lose the tax deferral benefits of these accounts. Taxes: A spouse who dies may leave an unlimited amount of property to the surviving spouse without paying any state or federal estate taxes.Social Security benefits: Married people receive Social Security payments upon the death of a spouse.
These rights, that so many don’t even think twice about, is not why I want to share my heart and soul with my anam cara. But they are why it is so important to us to be able to do it legally. We’d like to think that nothing could stop us from caring for each other but as of now, the truth is that the law can.
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June 18th, 2006 at 7:17 am
My name is Inigo Montoya… heh!
It’s disheartening to hear people I know who are intelligent and generally kind-hearted, get upset about the words “gay” and “marriage” strung up together. They don’t object to civil unions, just the idea of “gay marriage.”
Maybe the concept is too wrapped up in emotion for most of this generation to accept. Perhaps in ten or twenty years everybody will say, “Heck, what’s the big deal?”
In the meantime we should make sure gays can obtain all the legal rights married couples have, through civil unions. I think more people would support it as long as the word “marriage” is left out of it.
It’s an imperfect compromise and it’s unfair, but the most important issue right now is to guarantee those legal rights, and pronto. The term “marriage” might have to wait.
June 19th, 2006 at 9:01 pm
Bonnie, I think you’re right. I suspect this is will how it’ll suss out, and in a generation’s time, everyone will shake their heads at the insanity of the current debate.
June 22nd, 2006 at 10:38 am
We can certainly hope that is the case and that our rights are recognized.
June 25th, 2006 at 12:46 pm
I confess, I’m a conservative and a Republican. But wait, before you delete this comment, hear me out. Because I’m all for gay marriage.
Why?
A lot of reasons. For starters, if you love each other and commit to each other, why not? Who cares who is of what sex? What difference does it make in the grand scheme of life?
But the key piece of knowledge that allowed me to get past my conservative Catholic/Presbyterian upbringing regarding the matter is the following: Before the Middle Ages, Christian marriage wasn’t a religious sacrament, much less an institution. Early Christianity celebrated celibacy, not marriage. Marriage was something people did who couldn’t control their passions, and the rules were society’s rules, not the Church’s rules.
The problem with marriage began in the first years of the Middle Ages. When a third of the population died of bubonic plague, the European economy sunk well beyond the toilet and deep into the sewers, and society fell completely apart, there was no moral truth strong enough to hold men back from unceremoniously dumping their wives for younger, prettier, less argumentative women. So they did. And that left a lot of destitute divorced women out on the streets wearing tattered shawls and begging for alms with their little tin cups.
Somewhere between the 7th and 13th centuries, the Catholic Church decided this was an unhealthy thing for both women and the economy, and marriage as the “sacred union between man and wife” evolved into one of the seven sacraments. It was a tough sell, since marriage generally involved exchanging a dowry and grace, in theory, couldn’t be purchased. The sacred part was intended to make it more difficult for men to dump their wives and leave them on the street to beg. (BTW, I learned of this from a priest who is both a canonical lawyer and an expert in church history.)
So, why not afford gay couples the same legal rights as heterosexual couples? There appears to be no legal or religious reason to do otherwise, and every possible moral reason to do so.
Now you know why I’m so entertaining at Republican political meetings.
June 26th, 2006 at 2:56 pm
Ha! Elizabeth, we don’t round up Republicans or Conservatives THAT easily around here.
Not only are you entertaining, I suspect you make a lot of people think very hard about these issues. The ones who want to listen, anyway. You can lead a horse to water and all that…
June 27th, 2006 at 7:20 am
Elizabeth, I would never delete a comment without hearing you out no matter your political stance. I appreciate the diversity of my commenters and I thank you for your support in this matter. I think that there are many people that approach the issue with blinders on… many who don’t want to see the true history and evolution of the “sacred union”.