Gay vs. Married

Compliments to Jared for sending an in depth gay marriage post by Donald Sensing.

In an old blog, I advocated a similar position:

Got this from TomPaine.com. I feel like I'm missing something from this entire gay-marriage/civil union issue. It seems so simple: government recognizes contracts. The church sanctions a marriage. When the government recognizes a marriage, the benefits are legal. Call it gay marriage, call it a civil union, call it whatever you want, but allow homosexual couples the same right to enter into a contract that straight couples are able to. That's fair. Let the church do whatever it wants, recognize the marriage, not recognize the marriage, cover up sex with little children, who cares? I guess Lauryn Hill does.

While I appreciate her opinion, I'd respect it WAY more if she came out with another album just 1/2 as good as Miseducation....yeah MTV Unplugged didn't cut it.

And give me a break about a Constitutional Amendment. What do we have, like 20 of those over the past 225 years? We should save it for something more significant that "defense of marriage," don't ya think?

Beyond that, where are all these "defenders of marriage" when young couples are getting married...aren't these the couples responsible for the 50% divorce rate? Isn't divorce a greater societal problem than having a bunch of homosexuals running around with wedding rings and jointly filing taxes?

Sensing makes some super strong points that I agree with: 1) The roots of marriage are prehistory, as a social contract between man and women to propogate the species. Therefore, marriage does not exist because of a government contract. Legitimate government molds itself to accept the marriage contract and to encourage it. The same goes for religious instutions. 2) The value of the marriage contract shifted with the advent of the pill. Women no longer fear being pregnant and alone, the primary reason for withholding sex, in exchange for marriage (ie be taken care of financially etc.)

"Marriage" as defined by the state (or by a religious institution) therefore, needs to have a shifting definition as technological and sociological changes occur. Sensing argues that "marriage" as defined by the state and church went out "40 years ago," with the pill. No longer did marital vows mean the same thing. Homosexual marriage hightlights what has already occurred, the need to redefine marriage in the age of sexual liberation. One suggestion is to ban "marriage" as defined by the state altogether - make everything a civil union - for tax and property purposes. Sounds good to me. The other suggestion, by Sensing is that religion gets out of the marriage business and leaves it to the state. Sounds fine to me also. The state can still call it marriage, but the true meaning is essentially the same as a civil union.

The private aspect of marriage will always be that...private, two people sharing their lives together. The public aspect of marriage, these days, is basically a big expensive party and a contractual financial relationship. Any adult, straight or gay, ought to be able to have a big expensive party, jointly file taxes, and bequeth their books and furniture to whomever they want - shoot, they don't even need to be sexual partners as far as I'm concerned, they can simply be roommates...which probably is the case for a lot of married couples.