When was the first time in your childhood that you became aware of marriage? What was the occasion for the subject arising? Did it have to do with mommy and daddy? Maybe you were going to attend some sort of party where you would see the rest of the family; aunts, uncles, grand-parents, cousins, et. al. What was going to happen? Why did this have any relevance? Was there a fundamental necessity?
I'm willing to bet it was some sort of quasi-religious ceremony. A minister or priest or rabbi was going to go through a ritual and two people were going to pronounce some solemn words and then you were going somewhere for a rubber chicken dinner and to watch Uncle Joe make an ass of himself again. A band played, people danced, there was a cool big cake and a woman in a wildly extravagant white dress.
Why?
It has to do with society and custom. There is a benefit to stable family relationships when children are born. A nurturer and a hunter/gatherer mate and the offspring turns out a lot better when the symbiosis has a chance to work. We ritualize and sanctify so that there are encouragements for the desired stability. We created marriage. It is a social custom.
Realistically marriage is not necessary. We don't need to have a religious ceremony. We don't need to have a cake and party or a white dress and tuxedos. We could simply move in together and if children appear as a natural result we would take care of them responsibly.
In fact, isn't that what occurs in the majority of lives now? There seem to be a lot more children and a lot fewer marriages proportionally.
Then government got involved. Relationships got tangled with employee benefits and HIPPA confidentiality and inheritance and parental rights. We got licenses and blood-tests and tax benefits. Was any of that related to the core definition or rationale for marriage? And don't forget divorce, child custody and community property.
Then we throw in homosexuality. Now the brew gets really toxic. We get confused regarding nature and nurture as causative. We stir in fundamentalist religious beliefs and societal aversions. We add some stereotypical behavior patterns and top it all off with a high mortality disease tightly linked to certain practices.
Are there homosexuals in our society? Absolutely. Do they have a choice in their behavior? Of course, everyone has a choice but celibacy isn't very easy even for heterosexual religious folks. Is there genetic predisposition? Are homosexuals, by definition, promiscuous? Can committed partners establish long term relationships and avoid the pitfalls of government's overlay on "marriage"? Should two adults be able to share property in the same manner as married couples? Can two men or two women meet the needs of raising well-adjusted children. The questions get very tough very quickly.
So we see the Bamster facing a true conundrum. What is he to do? Is the constituency large enough to balance the other side when he makes a decision? Will position A do more or less election damage than position B? How can he nuance the statements to make everyone believe he agrees with them?
Biden Leads Bamster to Evolutionary Decision--Sort Of
Well, what really is his position? Will it be a policy decision or simply his own slowly determined conviction which he will do nothing about therefore "no harm, no foul"?
Read this quote:
“I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I talked to friends and family and neighbors, when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together; when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that ‘don't ask, don't tell’ is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I've just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.”Memo to Messiah: Those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors are not out there fighting on your behalf. Get over it. They fight for their nation. They fight to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic (you may squirm while pondering that word). They fight for each other and for their own personal pride. They fight for their families. And inability to commit themselves in a marriage is seldom a leading issue on their minds during the battle.
At least now we know that his position is not derived from reason or law, but from talking to friends. At some point he concludes and his position is for him personally which is apparently not for the nation totally. And it is important for him to go ahead and affirm that he thinks something.
Of course 41 states are currently on record as thinking something entirely different.
4 comments:
Personally I think Marriage should be taken out of the Public Sector and returned to the private sector. Decouple Marriage from all Government forms, functions and benefits/taxes. Then lets see how many people are in gay marriages. This is about Government rules, regulations and giveaways...Take Government out of it and the whole issue evaporates.
Ed and Readers,
I see what you mean from your comments about this guy.
Its all about what 'I' think.
Why is it that the champions of individual freedom (R.Reagan!), can speak so well in the collective sense (us,we, our country..) yet those with collective beliefs speak of 'I'?.
I liked that post re "what fighter pilots don't say" placed here recently. Questions like 'how's your wife?' don't go down well with anyone.
So why get rid of 'don't ask/don't tell'?. It was a sensible and sensitive law and that almost everyone observes in their daily lives.
I agree with most of this post but I am not sure about this comment.
"Realistically marriage is not necessary."
It depends upon what you mean is necessary. Marriage has existed for thousands of years, probably for far longer than governments. Ceremony is very important to us humans. I don’t think we can do without it.
Gay marriage is an experiment, nothing more, nothing less. No historical society of which I am aware has yet performed this experiment. Even cultures, like ancient Greece which celebrated homosexuality didn’t have gay marriage. (Actually in fact were bisexual; they were expected to have sexual relationships with men but marry women)
But the entire last forty years has been an enormous cultural experiment, where our society has changed massively in many fundamental ways, than in the previous four thousand years. And when I say fundamental, I mean our basic human relationships; man to woman, parents to children, teachers to students etc. My relationship to my father was probably much like the relationship Caesar had to his father, but far different from my son’s relationship to me. The results of this modern experiment are far from clear, and may not be clear for many years to come.
One other tiny comment:
‘A nurturer and a hunter/gatherer mate’ should probably read ‘a hunter and a gatherer mate’ to more properly reflect the roles of paleolithic men and woman.
The Mexicans don't have this conundrum. They solved it with a clear-cut break from the Church, and an undermining of the Church's power within the State. As it should be. Civil unions are the only thing the Mexican State cares about. What people do in churches is their own business, too. The gov't lays no claim to regulate a religious sacrament and vice versa.
The gay agenda (not any particular person who happens to be homosexual) will not tolerate a solution so sensible, as it does not give them the political power they enjoy as a victim class. That's the real issue here. There's a solution, but it doesn't bring power to those few elites for whom it is big business.
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