A brief departure from the usual levity.

Many of you will have the chance tomorrow to vote on a definition of marriage amendment in one form or another. By and large, these are initiatives that seek to define a marriage as a union of one woman and one man, with the idea being that other kinds of couples, like two dudes or two ladies, should not be entitled to the same privileges as straight couples. If you are considering supporting such an initiative, a few thoughts:

     1) Supporting same-sex unions does not make you gay. You might be a dude who thinks sex with another dude is totally icky. However, that seems like a poor reason to deny a couple the right to make medical decisions on behalf of one another.

 2) If gay people make you uncomfortable, are you less comfortable with gay couples refinishing antique furniture and grooming their pets, or with single gay folks hanging out at rest areas? Is allowing same-sex partners to claim survivors’ pension and Social Security benefits likely to lead to an explosion of gay sex where your kids will see?

 3) You may feel that the purpose of marriage is procreation. By this logic, infertile couples would not be allowed to marry either. Indeed, under this logic, couples would have to prove they were fertile before they could get married, raising the specter of compulsory premarital sex to uphold the institution of marriage. Also, the last time I checked, there was not a population shortage. Should health insurance be a special treat for potential baby-havers?

 4) It says “Adam and Eve” in the Bible, not “Adam and Steve.” True enough. Yet, many hetero couples are not named Adam or Eve. More generally, I would argue that arguing from a genital identity degrades the very idea of what marriage is. If marriage is a union of two people who are uniquely suited to one another, why define that bond in terms of what your spouse has in common with every other member of their gender? If it is your husband’s penis or your wife’s vagina that defines that person for you, your marriage is in trouble.

 5) If you want a special, hetero-only blessing for your union, there are many churches that would be happy to help you out. Have your religious ceremony, and thumb your nose at the gays all you want, but depriving other folks of their civil rights is a pretty lame way to make your marriage more special. The Fesser and the cinetrix tied the knot in Massachusetts before the gays could marry there, and that state’s subsequent sanction of same-sex partnerships has not undermined our relationship to any significant degree.

I will clamber off my soapbox now. Don't forget to vote tomorrow.

Comments

[Abi]

This is why I don't like living next door to Virginia. This is also why I'm semi-revelling in the fact that the DC voting populace is so far left that something like this should never be an issue in the District.

Unfortunately, every freaking law/budget thing in DC has to go through Congress. Ugh.

[Fesser]

Stop ten people on the metro tomorrow and ask them if gay folks should be allowed to get married. I bet you five say no, depending on what stop you are at. The whole thing that makes this thing philosophically abhorrent, beyond the obvious moral abhorrences, is the idea of civil rights as a popularity contest. Fundamentally, it seems like putting a referendum on making it legal to kick Basques in the nuts whenever you felt like it. A majority of non-Basques might support this bill, but that does not make it right. The whole idea of civil rights is that they guarantee that minorities have the same rights as majorities. (This principle is the source of my hope that the solution to all of this nonsense will come through judicial, rather than electoral means.)