Gay Marriage

 

I’m not only for it, I think marriage should be a requirement for any gay couple claiming the legal equivalent of spousal rights.  Why should we heteros do all the divorce suffering?  Let THEM find out what a vindictive ex-wife or –husband is like!

 

Seriously, there are two kinds of marriage.  One is religious in nature, and as such that is up to the practitioners of the particular religion…the Constitution says we are supposed to make NO LAW involving the subject, either pro or con.  This didn’t help the Mormons in the middle 1800s with their belief in polygamy in their own remote state, the Union Army being sent to enforce compliance with one-man-one-woman religious marriage, but I still think that was a badly wrong decision.  Jews should marry according to their traditions, Catholics according to theirs, Muslims according to theirs, and ditto for every other religious or even social group, since who can say, precisely, what constitutes a ‘religion’?  Religious marriage confers only social status within the particular religious group, not always outside of it.  Religious rules are made within the individual religious group in order to fit its members.

 

Civil marriage, however, endorsed by the state, is done for a different purpose.  It is created in order to establish the LEGAL relationship between the individuals…contracts, inheritance, the right of survivorship, all those things for which the LAW is famous.  Civil law applies to everybody, equally…back to that 14^th Amendment, again…and the laws are made by the voters through their elected representatives.

 

So I have no problem whatsoever with gay marriage.  As for its affecting my own, what nonsense.  If gay marriage somehow affected and diminished mine, wouldn’t Muslim beliefs about marriage do the same?  If Mormons go back to adopting plural marriage, will that affect me?  (Honey, there’s this nice little girl just down the block…  NO!)  Frankly, my position on my own marriage is not affected by any of the other billions of people in the world who think differently than I do, including gays.  As we have discovered from living here in Costa Rica, these Latin males think little of transient sexual relationships…for the men, that is.  And the wives mostly pretend not to know and even if they are unhappy about it don’t rock the boat for a passing fling as long as that is all that it is. 

 

I’ve had a few gay friends in my lifetime, I liked virtually all of them better than most other people as they seemed nicer and kinder, of the whole.  Since being gay is a matter of who you ARE and not in any way a choice, what the hell is the big problem?

 

However, that said, the marriage gays seem to be arguing about is a civil issue.  As is murder, which leads back to the question of abortion.  The people of the states should decide what laws are appropriate for them to follow, the Supreme Court has no business here except to determine if the laws are Constitutional or not.

 

Always keeping in mind that pesky 14^th Amendment.