First of all, let us be clear, the idea of romance in marriage is new. It is quaint and quite irrelevant to the discussion of this legal & civil contract. Laws and the government care little about love, and who loves whom...Again, until recently and therein lays the need for discussion. We live in a land drowning in her own Puritan heritage while swimming joyfully in a selective recollection of faith and marriage and a blinding ignorance of the rules of law.
Worst of all the Mormons, with their magical underwear and their polygamous marriages are the ones leading the charge to protect "traditional" marriage. Well, I doubt most support their definition where it is "one man...and a whole bunch of women!" But that's another issue; where was I...Oh yes...
The Church, no matter which you choose, is nothing more than a window dressing on a legal contact. You can go to any religious organization to request a wedding (notice I did not say marriage) ceremony. That organization can, and often does, at its own discretion either accept your request or deny it. That's because churches deal with parishioners of like beliefs. Governments deal with citizens and equality. Faith speaks of equality, but really the selectively faithful aren't into equality for anything other than the lip-service it provides to sooth their own consciences.
Evangelicals will often argue that those who haven't accepted Jesus as their personal Savior will go to hell; even those who have no idea of his existence. Screwy! I don't think God or Jesus uttered any rules that say if you are a native in the African wilderness that has never seen a Christian; you will thereby be condemned to hell. But that is the point; your beliefs are your choice. They are personally unique; as your relationship or lack thereof, to God is personal.
In any event, as God has little to do with the beliefs of atheists, so to should marriage as a legal set of rights have little to do with attributes of those seeking to enter into the contract. All they need by law is to be Americans. What difference is there between two men, two women, or one of each entering into the civil contract of marriage?
By way of practical considerations, the only difference is anatomy of the players involved. Otherwise the reasons for entering the legal contract are the same: the protection of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, AND all the property that contributes to and ensures the aforementioned.
You see, above all else, marriage is about protecting property and relationships. Marriage isn't about God. I doubt, in spite of what you may have heard, whether God cares one way or another about who is married to whom? Those are the petty worries of man, not the lofty contemplations of a Supreme Being. Marriage is now, and has always been...Even before Christ, about the claiming, protection, and definition of property. How can so many ignore this obvious fact when you consider the history of this supposedly "sacred" union. Have we collectively forgotten about so-called "arranged marriages?" Those were not about love, God, or anything else so noble...They were about the planned & protected consolidation of power, heredity, wealth and property. Marriages are about protecting wealth and allowing for its preservation from generation to generation through a legally defined family unit. It is a construct of legal necessity, not one of religious wrangling.
Marriage is once and for all, a civil construct.
In the United States of America, marriage is a manifested by a government issued license that defines and legally binds a couple. It confers, without respect to race, creed, and we hope someday, gender, approximately 1,038 federal rights. Rights; which in the United States are by definition to be given equally to all citizens under the law. That's the ideal.
This is the reality. In many states, there will be so-called "Marriage Protection Amendments" that will exist to blur the lines of faith and the lines of government with one another. They are faith-based initiatives designed to push an agenda of hate into the legal construct of marriage. If left unchecked, this blending of religious myth and the law has far reaching and devastating potential for America. The religious-right uses so many false arguments to defend the position of need for these amendments. They claim the need for "protection." From what? They claim marriage is sacred. Then why all the divorce? They (the ones demanding the amendment) say many things, yet offer no factual defense of their own positions.
As usual, this is a cultural divide created by Americans who don't understand something, and who are praying on the fears of others who are woefully ill informed. Whenever that happens in this great nation we get anger, hate, and a call for division or punishment. Instead of growth or living up to our stated ideal of "equality" we turn to hate, and sink to the ugliest of American traits: hateful ignorance. The kind of hate that results in men lashed naked to fences. A place in our history where it is OK to hang a man from a tree by his neck as a cross is lit aflame. A place where Americans can tie other Americans to the back of trucks and drag them to their deaths. Fear has always worked to create hate in America. Fear builds towering walls between reason and logic. Hate obliterates what we know in our hearts to be right, and covers all with ignorant rage. That is the path we are on in the name of God.
I see this ignorance as the ultimate sin.
This is an act of faith that judges in place of God and takes His name most assuredly and inappropriately in vain. In any event, it is a path we must turn away from for our own salvation as American citizens held under the Constitution of The United States of America. It is our base duty; our responsibility.
Yet, so many don't understand that rights in America are to be universal; guaranteed to every citizen under the law. Equal under the law is the other way it is expressed. Somewhere along our journey a percentage of Americans got confused, brainwashed, left-behind, whatever...And began to think of marriage as a religious doctrine not a civil construct. This misunderstanding of the nature of marriage is what has gotten us to this point.
Now, combine our need for salvation with our hate for things we don't' understand, and you have a straightforward American debate; rooted in puritanical history, conflated by individual moral superiority. This is a classic cycle we have played out over and over in our history. Whenever we are afraid of something or someone we don't understand we isolate them. Americans are not the fair-minded individuals they always claim to be. There is always some class of people unworthy of what the others have. We have lost our way, and that is why I speak on this so much.
Consider this: Marriage gets to party at the church. It gets a dress. It gets guests in pews. When the party is over, people will turn to God for guidance, but they turn to the state for a divorce!
To review; you come to the government to get married, and you go to the state to legally dissolve your marriage. You may go to church in between to help you nurture a loving relationship, but that is about as far as the relationship between faith and marriage goes. Need more in the way of reasons I demand Marriage Equality? Ok...Try these on for size:
* The right to make decisions on a partner's behalf in a medical emergency. Specifically, the states generally provide that spouses automatically assume this right in an emergency. If an individual is unmarried, the legal "next of kin" automatically assumes this right. This means, for example, that a gay man with a life partner of many years may be forced to accept the financial and medical decisions of a sibling or parent with whom he may have a distant or even hostile relationship.
* The right to take up to 12 weeks of leave from work to care for a seriously ill partner or parent of a partner. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 permits individuals to take such leave to care for ill spouses, children and parents but not a partner or a partner's parents.
* The right to petition for same-sex partners to immigrate.
* The right to assume parenting rights and responsibilities when children are brought into a family through birth, adoption, surrogacy or other means. For example, in most states, there is no law providing a noncustodial, non-biological or non-adoptive parent's right to visit a child - or responsibility to provide financial support for that child - in the event of a breakup.
* The right to share equitably all jointly held property and debt in the event of a breakup, since there are no laws that cover the dissolution of domestic partnerships.
* The right to Family-related Social security benefits, income and estate tax benefits, disability benefits, family-related military and veterans benefits and other important benefits.
* The right to inherit property from a partner in the absence of a will.
* The right to purchase continued health coverage for a domestic partner after the loss of a job. Now those are just the highlights.
I ask you, if someone was coming in to tell you that because you are black, Jewish, red, green, yellow or white; you weren't going to get these rights, would you just sit back and accept it? If some supposedly equal peer came along and told you that Christians were no longer eligible to inherit property from their spouses, you wouldn't be as angry as me?
Wouldn't you feel singled out if the government told you they were going to amend the constitution specifically to write you out of the society?
Worse yet, that in America the majority was allowed to VOTE on the rights of the minority?!
Sounds ludicrous doesn't it? It's not!
This is happening right now; to me and millions of other gay Americans. It is fundamentally wrong to add exclusive language to a document designed to guarantee the rights of all citizens. It is patently un-American and that is why it matters so much. This is not just about gay marriage. Its about who we are as a nation.
It matters to me because I have played by all the rules, and now some people are going to hijack God and use Him as the scapegoat to change the rules of the nation. Notice I said "nation" not game. The separation of church and state is one of our wisest principles, and it too is endangered by this movement.
America is not God's country. It's not God's fault we live here in this democracy; nor was it His plan. It's not your job to judge on God's behalf. It's your job to love thy neighbor. It's your job not to discriminate in this the greatest land on the planet.
So after 16 years of faithful devotion to my partner I am denied the legal protection critical to my relationship and our estate. I can't even pay for it if I wanted to. I can't go to a lawyer and have a will drawn up; they don't hold up in court. They aren't portable across state lines. The bank and the mortgage don't care. To none, we are legally blood. Just roommates, with no legal responsibility for or to one another.
I have paid my taxes. I am an American. Marriage is law. Laws in this country apply to us all equally. So, it is my legal birthright to be allowed to marry and enjoy the rights this civil license confers on all Americans.
Period. End of discussion. Thank you very much!