Gay Marriage Should NOT Be Legalized
(Nor Should the Heterosexual Variety)
The government should not legally recognize any marriage. There is simply no need for it and it just causes trouble. Any required legal status for any sort of partnership can be conferred through applicable contract law, and need never use a word as charged with religious connotations as “marriage.” Leave the word “marriage” to the churches.
In our society, people who attend one church seem to be able to get along pretty well with the blasphemous heathens next door who have different religious beliefs. They are quite happy in the knowledge that their beliefs and rituals are the correct ones, and that everyone else is going to hell. As long as the government doesn’t decide to start legislating about who is or is not saved, and what constitutes a proper ritual, or whom should be allowed to participate, everyone seems quite happy. But there would certainly be an uproar if the government decided to declare that women had the right to be priests and men could become nuns – even if their was no mention of specific religious denominations, nor any requirement for any specific church to follow the government guidelines.
This is exactly what is happening when we allow the government to make ANY laws about “marriage”. It is offending people on a religious level.
If we let each church define marriage themselves, everyone will happily believe that the church next door does not perform “real marriages” like the ones done by the right thinking people over here. They may be sad for those poor lost souls, but not really too upset about it. They certainly won’t bother any of the rest of us about it.
I happen to be married to someone of similar age, racial type, religious beliefs, and of the opposite sex – a union that is fully recognized by pretty much everyone everywhere as a “legitimate marriage” – yet I’d still very much rather that the government had no business in recognizing or not recognizing the nature of my relationship with my wife. We should (all of us) be able to freely define our own relationships, not have government approved relationship templates legally imposed upon us.
Having the government legally sanction any definition of “marriage” is a violation of separation of Church and State and/or an absolutely unnecessary governmental approval of just one of the many possible relationships within which free people should be able to choose to associate. Once you grant that the government has any business defining marriage at all, it should not surprise you that their will be significant non-productive argument about that definition and that it might not end up defined the way you would want it defined.
Stop trying to get marriage legally redefined and start trying to get it legally undefined.
If you happen to be a heterosexual person who wants to protest the different treatment of gays, the proper way to show your solidarity is to NOT get married (or if you are married – get divorced) and just enter into a domestic partnership, the same way your gay friends are required to. Then fight to get the applicable legislation on domestic partnerships changed to be just as good or better than current marriage laws and to get all laws involving the word “marriage” removed from the law books.
Then no one will ever again have to argue about what is or is not a “real marriage” unless they happen to be into arguing their religion with non-believers.
