I’ve had several opinions about the issue of marriage, separation of church and state, and the possibility of gay marriage, floating around in my head for decades, and frankly I’ve come to some conclusions that are different, I think, from most.
First, the state’s definition of marriage hasn’t, traditionally anyway, been the same as religion’s, going back some years. My father-in-law (deceased a few years ago) returned from WW2 and almost immediately married a woman, and then divorced her, because she forgot to mention little details about her life like her actual age (she was older than he) and a teenaged daughter (he was in his early 20s at the time). Since he was a Catholic, when he remarried the woman who became my mother-in-law, the marriage wasn’t (of course) sanctified by the Catholic church. Until my wife was in her 20s, Joe couldn’t receive the sacraments at his church, because he’d married a woman while the church still thought him married to his first wife. The marriage was eventually annulled, and he married my mother-in-law about 25 years after they originally got married; my wife baked the wedding cake and was the maid of honor. Just because an individual church doesn’t sanctify a marriage isn’t justification for the government prohibiting it. For years after the laws against interracial marriage were abolished, the Mormons frowned on the practice. The one instance where the government forced a religion to change its rules with regards to marriage also involves the Mormons: the U.S. government sent a small army to invade Utah (then Deseret) in 1857, and made them change their view of the practice. Does anyone think this legitimate, now?
Second, no one opposed to gay marriage has been able to show me how it would cause any of the other things predicted to happen. Laws can be written to allow one thing, and not allow others; any fool can see that. When the issue of interracial marriage came up (I’m not saying the two issues are identical, they aren’t; but in some ways the one can tell us things about the other) opponents predicted all sorts of doom and gloom scenarios foreshadowing the end of the world, collapse of society, etc. None of those things happened, so of course the opposition predicts them if gay marriage becomes a reality. Silly, you’d think people would catch on, but apparently not.
Third, there’s this little technicality in the Constitution called the 10th Amendment. Frankly, this is where I tell my gay friends they should be glad George W. Bush was a strict constructionist, regarding the Constitution. If he’d used the tactics of the Democrats, a law would have passed both houses and he’d have signed it, and then they’d have shopped around for a friendly Federal judge to somehow twist the Constitution to allow the Federal government jurisdiction over this issue, when there’s nothing in the Constitution actually doing so. This means it’s an issue for the states to decide, one by one.
Fourth, I’ve been an agnostic for years, but I have in the past and still do associate with people more religious than I. I have always wanted to ask a religious person opposed to gay marriage two questions, both simple but never asked (as far as I know) in public anyway. The first is simple: Do you really want to grant the government the right to decide which religious sacraments, practices, and rites are legitimate, and which ones aren’t? If you establish the precedent, what happens if (not that I’m saying he is, but for the sake of argument) Barack Obama turns out to be the Muslim that the far-right nutjobs say he is, and he declares all marriages between Christians null and void? You’ve established the principle that the government is the arbiter of which marriages are legitimate, and which ones aren’t…has anyone considered the possibility that in the future things could be turned on their head? Second, regarding the threat to the “institution of marriage” that gay marriage supposedly poses. How does it affect your relationship with your spouse, if a couple of people you’ve never met have a piece of paper legalizing, legitimizing, recognizing, whatever you wish to call it, their partnership? If your marriage is so shaky that you have to prevent other people having relationships to shore it up, you’re in more trouble than you think, and the country can’t do anything for you.
I’ll agree that gay marriage isn’t a right, at least one specifically granted by the Constitution. I’ll also agree that the gay community can survive without it. They’ve been doing pretty well for a number of years. But since when do we prohibit anything not threatening the public welfare or safety, merely because we *can*? No one will be threatened if I don’t walk the dog tonight; that doesn’t give the government the right, or need, to prohibit me from doing so. Government exists to protect the citizens from things that threaten them, not to prohibit them from doing things that others disapprove of.
Oh, and as for the issue of children in gay relationships. Not as many gays have children as do heterosexuals, for obvious reasons. I have, however, known some who *did* have children, and the kids were fine. In the one instance, the more…how to put it?…masculine of the two lesbians, was one of the tougher, more resolute individuals I’ve ever known. Kids were well-adjusted from what I saw, though I didn’t know them that well.
Oh, and by the way, to those of you who insist that marriage should only be for procreation: three of my uncles (one a former minister, two of them very religious) married after it was too late to have children (one of them twice) and myself, my grandmother, and my grandfather on the other side of my family, married too late to have kids. Are you saying we shouldn’t have been allowed to marry either? Or is this argument only applicable to gays?
