Civil marriage is an organizational tool with which the state keeps track of its citizens and dispenses benefits. At the time marriage was adopted as a legal institution, many Americans of European descent accepted it to be a natural part of the human experience. Male birds-of-paradise do elaborate dances to establish worthiness. Bighorn rams clash horns to establish dominance. One human male wishfully proposes to enter an eternal bond with one human female, often preceded by its own flair and competitive one-upmanship of some sort. After which, the man inherits all the woman’s possessions and the right to boss her around. You know, marriage. How did they explain away the various marriage customs of other peoples like the Native Americans? Well, it was just more proof that they were savages, less than human.
I would like to think that we have become worldly enough to look at civil marriage purely as the organizational tool it is as opposed to erroneously assuming it is a rite of passage for all civilized peoples. As a tool for dispensing benefits, it discriminates not based on necessity, which is understandable in a caring society, but based on sexual orientation and lifestyle preferences. It can be remedied though. First of all, it ought to be called by a different name to disassociate it from the religious institution and avoid semantic arguments. I’ll call them “non-familial benefits arrangements” for the time being, or NONFABAs as a cool, military-style acronym. Looking at this organizational tool more closely, NONFABAs as a traditional declaration of union between a vainglorious pair is not necessary at the state level. The state should look at these people as individuals unless they produce or adopt a child together. It is that burden of responsibility for a life that needs to be accounted for. After all, these kids have poor resumes and we need to help them along. We also have to educate and condition them for our own safety. Otherwise they may grow up lacking the proper respect for property, laws, and several other preexisting or imposed conditions.
Now, I suspect that many people are opposed to changing the definition of legal marriage to mean knocking someone up or adopting a child as part of a couple. One of the main concerns with this transformation would be retaining the ability to confer the rights and benefits afforded to spouses under marital laws. Pensions, tax benefits, visa and green card arrangements, health insurance coverage, and a myriad of other privileges can be addressed in NONFABAs by imposing limits on the number of non-family beneficiaries. With this arrangement, people can choose the loved ones they want to share their privileges with, whether they are extended family, close friends, or romantic partners. If a couple has or adopts a child, then the pair automatically qualifies to receive family benefits. In the case of visitation rights, people who live in the same residence can be as entitled to them as family members. These suggestions are not very well thought out, and there are many benefits which have been neglected. The point is that we can do away with the traditional institution of legal marriage, which is a continuation of a slowly decaying religious custom, and still address the desired benefits of our polytheistic, multicultural society.
However, we tend to treat self-imposed parameters as if they were immutable laws of physics. For that reason it is not likely that large civil marriage reform will happen any time soon. In that case, gay marriage ought to be allowed. The main opposition to gay marriage constantly professes to be protecting the sanctity of marriage. This stems from a passage in Leviticus where it is written that for a man to lie with another man is detestable. Of course, this is referring directly to sex. State sodomy laws have been repealed throughout the US, and I imagine most people who practice a religion opposed to sodomy have accepted that they should not or cannot force others to abide by the tenets of their chosen faith. Therefore, their adamant insistence on imposing their beliefs with respect to legal marriage on the populace as a whole most likely is the result of a perceived incursion on their religious institute of marriage. Once again, to draw a clear distinction between civil and religious marriage would alleviate a great deal of the feelings of affrontedness. Besides, if passages from the Old Testament are going to dictate civil marriage, then there ought to be laws against a great many things. For one, we must do away with divorces. We must also roll back some of the gains made by the suffrage movement. After all, the Bible states that women are to be obedient to their husbands and must make good housekeepers. As for husbands, they must always work to provide for their family. So, all you households where the woman is the main bread winner and the man is a stay-at-home dad are also violating the sanctity of marriage. The Bible also says that both husbands and wives must succumb to the sexual desires of the other; no more faking headaches or waiting for mood shifts for either side. I am obviously no expert on the Bible, so I have left out a great deal. What is plain is that if we are to use the Bible as a guide to preserving the sanctity of marriages, there are a whole lot of restrictive laws which need to be passed. Not only those laws which try to assure marriages are arranged as dictated in the Bible, but also laws which restrict who gets married. Presently, I, as a righteous hetero, can go out and marry anyone I want. It doesn’t matter whether I just met this person drunk at a bar, this person was mail-ordered, or whether we have a business-like agreement for mutual benefit. Yet, a homosexual couple who have been in a mature, committed, and long-term relationship cannot have a civil marriage in most states. If you can deny couples the right to marry because of their sexual orientation, then you should be able to deny couples the right to marry because of their irresponsibility and immaturity. After all, the Bible stipulates that a marriage should be an eternal bond, not just a short fling between a man and a woman.
Yes, I find myself in agreement again.