The M Word (Again!)

Some day, the long fistfight over whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry will be over. Both sides will have punched themselves out.

If I could write the law, it would come out something like this. For the purpose of rights and responsibilities, there would be no such thing as “marriage” in our legal codes. All willing couples, regardless of gender, would get some kind of certificate of union, with all the rights and privileges –- and I mean all -- currently afforded couples whom we now call married. But issuing that certificate would be all that government could do, and the spiritual and emotional components would be the province of some other entity.

This way, the county clerks wouldn’t be in the position of having to perform any ceremonies, and their sensibilities, or their biases, if you prefer, would not be part of the equation. If a couple wanted to find a church or some other party to perform a ceremony so they could call themselves “married,” that, in effect, would be none of government’s business. The person administering the ceremony would not be able to say, “By the power vested in me…”, because no power (at least no LEGAL power) would be vested in that individual.

We could avoid the insoluble arguments over the definition of marriage, which kinds of couples are more capable of raising children, or whether a same-sex union lasting 20 years is more valid or justified than a heterosexual union lasting only three years. Clearly, if two people of any sex want to make a long-standing or even a till-death-do-us-part commitment to each other, that’s something that society should encourage. And it appears that a certain percentage of human beings, indeed, mammals in general, are gay. They can’t “fight” it; why should others waste time trying?

I know this horse left the barn a few thousand years ago; I’ll leave it to the interpreters of the Bible or other books to tell me how many thousand. But I’m hoping that evolution (whoops, I mean SOCIAL evolution) takes us past this discussion eventually and that we can focus on other issues. How about curing cancer or ending war? Well, those are horses that may never leave the barn, but we can hope, can’t we?