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Our marriage does not need defending.

I don’t need to know that long-term gay couples are denied partnership benefits to feel secure in our marriage. It does nothing for my conjugal self to know that gay men and lesbians are routinely denied access to rights I myself am entitled to in any state of this union, like visiting my spouse in the hospital, and having some say in her care—knock wood—should she be so ill she is unable to speak for herself. Such as being covered as a spouse by her employer’s health plan. Such as—God forbid—the right for one of us to have a say in what happens should the other of us die.

It does not weaken my faith in our marriage one whit to think that men could marry other men, or women marry other women. I don’t think honoring their relationships as mine is honored will lead to the degradation of our bond. It is only basic human decency to honor every such long-term relationship equally in the eyes of the law; if anything, such equality would make me feel more proud, more secure, more entitled to the privileges of our marriage, not less. (I will not bother to answer the specious logic that gay marriage is a “special” right, because gay men have the same right to marry women, and lesbians to marry men, as the rest of us.)

Our marriage does not depend for its strength on the blessing of a church whose tenets I do not accept and whose faith I do not share. It is a compact between the two of us—of respect, and love; I got your back, babe. You are home to me—when you come to me, I will take you in. This I promise and swear. (It was also an excuse for a great party and a chance to lovingly scam a complete Fiestaware dinner set off relatives.) —And make no mistake: gay men and lesbians throughout this country already have all that. For all that they cannot sign a license in a city hall, they already have the heart of marriage, and it can never be taken from them. And their celebration of it and participation in it has done nothing, nothing at all, to weaken marriage. It has strengthened it, if anything.

To deny them, then, the legal recognition of their relationships, their basic equality before the law, is nothing more than mean-spirited pettiness. Is to cheapen the very idea of marriage, as rite of passage and, yes, as sacrament.

Look to your own marriage, Senator Frist, and defend it if you must.

But leave ours the hell out of it.

—Filed 2017 days ago to ; .

  1. I do think that there's a lot more ignorance and fear out there driving these decisions than mean-spirited pettiness. but then, there are also quite a few really cruelly small-minded people out there.
    — Glenn Peters    Jun 30, 03:31 PM    #
  2. We're having exactly the same debate here in the UK and from the sounds of it we also have the same mean-spirited narrow minded bigots who think that a legal union between gay people is somehow going to 'undermine family values', whatever the hell that means. (I think it means 'You're going to legally recognise these people? Damn, you're undermining my feelings of superiority.')

    Here those lobbying for a change in the law are at pains not to call it marriage in an attempt, I suspect, to try sneak it past at least a portion of the supid and bigoted without them noticing.

    It seems, though, that the faction who are anti this reform are basing their reasons almost purely on the bible, using the kind of playground logic that thinks 'well, the bible says this is bad so it must be bad' is a compelling argument. It constantly amazes me how divorced from reality (ha! no pun intended, honest) some of these people are, how little they understand human nature, how easily they condemn that which they do not (and haven't take the time to) understand.

    Still, we have Britain's first gay bishop here in Reading, which has incited a huge row which currently the conservatives appear to be losing. So maybe there's a little hope after all.
    — suw    Jun 30, 09:55 PM    #
  3. Ethics of Straight Marriage
    Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, proving he is no great improvement over the last majority leader, publicly announced his support

    — Blargblog    Jul 1, 06:26 AM    #
  4. If you happen to take the Bible as first principle, then there's nothing flawed in the logic of "Bible says, bad, must smash!" What scares me is how low on their list of priorities they actually put humanity -- lower than service to a diety. So even if they did care about humanity, it's more important to obey a spectral voice that could tell me to do pretty much anything at all -- for or against humanity.

    Of course, I'm of the sort of bent that would question that first principle. In fact, I'll question just about anything given the chance... or would I?

    It's this sort of refusal to hew to the Obvious Truth that has co-workers posting diagrams explaining why I'm going to hell. (No, I'm not kidding, and they're not being ironic.)
    — Glenn Peters    Jul 1, 07:33 AM    #
  5. So, can we have tax breaks and other goodies for folks (adults) who set up house together but don't have sex together ? I think that's an idea whose time came long ago;It's just that we haven't noticed.

    I believe someone coined the a term like "personal incorporation" to describe the phenomenon of an adult living with an elderly friend, or two woman friends or two unmarried/widowed sibs consolidating households to save funds and resources. But the exact term/source of this escapes me now. :o

    The question to me is not which sex practices should sanction benefits but why sex practices *alone* should sanction them at all.
    — Amy S.    Jul 3, 07:37 AM    #
  6. Interesting that I was let go from my company one day after the post above, and days after making my first comments in public about The Family. Mayhaps the ACLU has a lawyer for me.
    — Glenn Peters    Jul 4, 08:50 PM    #

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