DO YOU TAKE THIS ……PERSON

Soon we may live in a world where the only people opposed to gay marriage will be gay people who are married.  Craig Fergison

I do not support same sex marriage. The discussions I have had with proponents of SSM have attacked my position as you would attack a homophobic Neanderthal. If we were in the same room we would have had to remove all sharp objects, or I am sure they would have gone for my jugular.  This is not a group you want to mess around with.

Here is my position:   I don’t care what sex or number of  people want to come together in any kind of legal contract. That is certainly their right to pursue “happiness.” You lose me when they want to call that union “marriage.” I believe in the traditional definition of marriage, a union of one man and one woman.

 If you are for same sex marriage, how would you define it? If the proponents of SSM say marriage is a union of any two people who love each other, then I would have to ask, “Can only two people love each other?” What are the limits, if any, of your definition? Is there any combination/ number of sexes, and /or ages where you would no longer feel comfortable calling it a marriage? Once we vary from the traditional definition of marriage, where, if any, is the limit? We would have to know that polygamists won’t be far behind. How about the cast of Glee? North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA)? OK, now we have crossed the line, but we have to admit for each of us, there is a line over which we don’t feel comfortable crossing.

I’m sure this has to do with my age. My wife Jean and I have been married a couple of months short of 50 years. When we were young and dating, marriage meant something special. Marriage meant you found that person (of the opposite sex—anything else was never considered) with whom you wanted to spend the rest of your life. Living together was relatively unheard of, jumping in bed on the second date earned the woman a not to flattering name (the guy, on the other hand, a very flattering name). It was all saved for the institution of marriage. Marriage was what your parents did, and what their parent did, and theirs etc. etc. Marriage was for the sake of children and society as a whole. Children born of a happily married man and woman is as good as it gets. Any other combination is a distant second. Marriage is custom, it is tradition, it is an institution. To me it is something special.

As I said, I don’t care who or how many choose to form a special bond and choose to have that bond “legalized,” but I am totally against usurping the word marriage. That word, and its meaning, is already taken.

Less than 4% of the US population is currently in SS couple relationships. Only 40 % of heterosexual couples believe in marriage anymore, (which is why they don’t care what it means, and why someday SSM will become the law of the land) so we can assume that only 40% of 4% of the same sex population would even want to get married. That’s approximately 1.6% of the population, which I feel is too small of a number to redefine the entire institution and history of marriage.  Also, consider that if SSMs are as successful as heterosexual marriage, 50% of them will be able to experience one of the 1138 benefits of marriage—divorce.

If you love someone cherish, cuddle, stroke, kiss, write songs and poems, dream, and talk about him/her all the time, cry and laugh over/with,  feel lost without him/her,  commit to,  we just shouldn’t get to “marry” him/her.

I firmly believe that in my life time people of the same sex will be able to legally marry. We are a society that if somebody wants to do something, and they make enough stink about it, the majority will concede. Very little today, it seems, is worth the majority  fighting over.

If a same sex couple can have all the legal benefits of marriage, why the insistence on calling their union a marriage?  Is it because it’s a club others are in and they aren’t allowed in?  MENSA is also a “club” that, believe it or not, I can’t join even though my exclusion is unfair because they are discriminating against 98% of the population. I can’t get in because I don’t meet the criteria. If I can’t get in and I want to be in a club of others with my intellect (I’ll leave a space here for you to fill in what you’re thinking), I’ll have to call it something else because MENSA is already taken.  I’ll leave it to somebody in MENSA to come up with an acceptable name for the union of same sex folks.

 Quote from an article written by a gay man:   We should not attempt to force into an old construct something that was never meant for same sex marriage. We should welcome the opportunity to christen a new tradition, beginning a new chapter in the history of Gays and Lesbians within American society.

Amen.