The State and Marriage

Since the whole flap about gay marriage began, opponents have claimed if gays were given marriage licenses by the state, if the state consecrated or legitimized their unions as "marriages" this would somehow mean the end of the legitmacy of marriage.

I could not understand this line of reasoning.  What difference would it make to the married heterosexual couple if their neighbors, a gay couple, were recognized as "married" by the state? What's it matter to the heterosexual couple if the gay couple gets health insurance, visitation rights? Does that make the heterosexual couple's health insurance less valuable?   How does the gay couple's benefits impinge on the heterosexual couple's benefits?

For that matter, I did not quite understand why gay couples wanted to be called "married." If all the legal benefits of marriage were granted a couple through something called a civil union, what difference would it make to the gay couple? What's in a word?  You got all the privileges, what difference does it make what you call it?

The argument came forward if the state recognized the gay couple as "Married," this would be a formal legitimization of the uninon. This would be consensual validation. After all, what is marriage all about if not going public with your commitment to one another? What is marriage if not the community saying, "We understand you are a couple and we respect you for that. We respect your relationship."

So the anti gays wanted to say, we don't approve of you. And the gays want people who do not approve of them to be forced to approve of them? How much sense does that make?  What do the gays care what anyone thinks of them? Do conservative Bible thumpers who think gays will burn in Hell care what gays think of them. Why should gays care what the Bible thumpers think?

To me, none of this made sense.

When two people start dating, sleeping together, it's between those two people. I never understood those advertisements where the man starts shouting to all the people in a city square, "I love this woman!" Who cares? It all smacked of exhibitionism. It called into question the real psychological motivation for why this man wants a relationship with this woman. Is it because he sees value in her or in what she can do for him in the eyes of the community?

Personally, when I was young and unattached, I loved the part of dating when nobody but me and the woman knew we were an item. There might be speculation, but we were alone together and very discrete, and careful about how we were seen in public and she might confide to her friends and the secrecy was part of the fun.

When I did go to weddings I was jarred by that part where the priest or judge says, "And now by the power invested in me by the state of New York, I pronounce you man and wife."  And I thought, what power does the state have to connect two people?

Is this not the most personal choice these two people will ever make? What business is it of the state?

Now, I can understand, if you buy a house together it becomes someone else's business and certainly if you have kids, it's everyone's busienss. But why should you need a license until you have kids? A license? Like a driver's license to prove what? That you are fit to be married?

Made no sense to me.

Why people would want to have a wedding and a party for all their friends, why women would look forward to their wedding day as some magical wonderful transformative moment, I could never figure.

In fact, as soon as a woman started talking about wanting to get married, I sensed immediately she didn't like me for my good looks or my engaging mind--she wanted some sort of social status from a connection to me. And I never had much in the way of social standing, but somehow if you could say, "Wife" that is "Mrs." somehow you were worth more.

Maybe in Jane Austen's day, but women are no longer worth only what they can marry. In many cases they make more money than what they can marry.

I can understand the New York Times marriage advertisements. I think they are called "announcements" but they are advertisements. Those people are saying, "Look at us. Look how successful we are and look how we have arrived at the upper stratum of society. I went to Harvard undergrad and Stanford law and my husband is Princeton and Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons."  Okay, I get it. You guys are a power couple and you will have power children who will have to go to Sidwell Friends school. Got it. You two deserve to be "married."

I mean no relationship between two people means anything until time has passed, bridges have been crossed together, hard times labored through. What is the idea of a big send off, a celebration of a promise which, statistically is more likely to be broken than kept?

Part of this has to do with my not having been brought up in a church.  Religions tend to say marriages were made in Heaven. Religious people know God intended for these two people to be together. What God has brought together let no man set asunder.  But of course, that is the ultimate audacity, to say you know the mind of God. 

Maybe, in retrospect, you might believe God had a plan for you and your mate, but you have no idea on the wedding day if you made the right choice.

In fact, it would make more sense to me if rather than needing a marriage license, you got a progressive license: maybe one for when you move in together and one for when you have kids.

If there was ever a threat to heterosexual marriage it seems to me the Lee Marvin palimony case was it. When the court ruled the live in partner who never had a judge pronounce her Lee Marvin's wife, was entitled to half his possessions, in essence entitled to the same things as she would have been had they been legally married and then divorced, the state was admitting, marriage can be something that has occurred in retrospect.

In Europe, we are told, especially in Scandinavia, people have simply stopped bothering with marriage; it just doesn't seem necessary.

So maybe this whole gay marriage thing is a threat to marriage. Maybe the defense of marriage act is not such an absurdity, because what the push for gay marriage has done is start a discussion of why we need marriage at all.

I would submit, we do not. And if we do, it should not involve the state. No one should have the power invested in pronouncing anyone man and wife. That power rightfully rests only in two people, the two most intimately involved. It's nobody else's business.

In fact, pronouncements are a fairly strange practice. You can "pronounce" someone dead, which does seem to be rather beside the point. After all, the person most concerned, really does not care what you pronounce him to be.  You "Pronounce" a man and wife, and who are you fooling? Only those two will make it mean anything or nothing. Your pronouncement is all solemnity and no substance. 

If people want to get married in a church and have a priest or rabbi or judge bless the procedings and say God is happy about this union and maybe even planned it all, well that's fine, if it makes the couple happy. Religion is religion. But the state ought to stay out of the church on that fine day. By the power invested in me by the church of, you name it, as God's deputy, I pronounce...all fine. Just don't let the priest be the guy invested with the power of the state of New York or wherever.

This need for the support of others to keep two people together strikes me as defeatism and fear.If you need a crowd to keep you committed to a relationship, maybe you ought to think again about how much you really like that mate you're all ga ga over.

Why is it Hollywood was the first to see the irrelevance of marriage? Maybe because in Hollywood you had women who made enough money to not need men. So they could have sex, have kids and hire their own help to watch over the children. And the Hollywood star did not need a husband to by a house or a car or to go out to a party. She was free and marriage become an encumbrance. Maybe when she got older, marriage appealed to the lady.

Gloria Steinhem, when asked why she had not married, famously replied, "Oh, I can't breed in captivity."  But then she got older, less physically attractive, and she got married. Go figure.

Of course, when you have legislatures involved in passing laws, you get politics and you get people who are only too happy to make speeches about motherhood, marriage and apple pie because it's so much easier to know what to say about marriage than about something complicated, like healthcare or the war in Afganistan or closing a prison in Cuba on an American military base which has no business being in Cuba--but that's another story and another blog posting.

All you have to say is, "I'm for marriage" and that's an applause line.

And here we have this sweet couple whose been married for fifty three years! Hooray. Huzzah. Huzzah.

Who cares? That's their business.