Wedding Bell Blues by Martha Thomases: Brilliant Disguise

However, there are many heterosexual couples who, for a variety of reasons, cannot reproduce.   For example, I’m too old to have another baby, and our son is grown up and on his own.  And yet, my marriage is legal.  Even though my husband could still father another child (and he’s very, very good at it), no one is suggesting that we divorce.

Of course, we are already married, so maybe our marriage has been (you should pardon the expression) grandfathered in.  What about new marriages?

After my mother died, my father married a woman who had also been recently widowed.  She was too old to have more children. Yet, because the state did not involve itself in such issues, they created a family that included her three daughters, my sister and myself.  Time passed, and there are now a gaggle of nieces and nephews.  The love between my father and my stepmother is what created this family, not blood ties.

The concept of marriage has changed over and over again since Biblical times.  Marriage has been a way to transfer property, to conquer enemy territory, to assure peace.  Women entered into marriage and surrendered their rights to keep a bank account, to decide when they wanted to have sex, even to self-defense.  Young girls could be married off to older men, with no right to refuse.  It’s because marriage changes with society that these things are no longer true.

However, none of these changes came about because people could vote.  They happened because we believe in the rule of law, and that the law protects the rights of everyone equally.  In this country, we do not vote on the civil rights of others.  If we did, it’s unlikely that slavery would have ended, or that African Americans and women could vote.  The measure of a democracy is not that people get to vote (although that’s important) but that the rights of the minority are protected.

Those who supported Proposition 8 argued that their right to observe their religions was threatened by gay marriage.  I don’t know what religion they’re talking about.  No church, synagogue, mosque or temple would be forced to perform religious rituals for people acting counter to the teachings of those institutions.  However, they could not prevent others from doing something with which they disagree.  For example, when I married my husband, who is not Jewish, we were married in my parents’ synagogue, because that congregation had no problem with mixed marriages.  However, there are other, more orthodox synagogues that would not have approved of us.  No state agency forces them to change their policies.  Similarly, no spiritual agency should force the state to change the law.

Not if you want to eat bacon.

Others say that allowing gay people to marry is a threat to their own marriages.  I don’t know why this is.  No one checks up on me to see what sex acts are going on in my bedroom (and please don’t – I’m self-conscious enough).  No one oversees my marital spats, or the way we divide up the chores.  Why should it make any difference how other couples do these things?

If anything cheapens marriage, it’s the assumption that it’s all about sex. Forcing teenagers to marry because their parents believe in abstinence only education is a bigger insult.

Don’t get me wrong – sex is important, but it’s not everything. Marriage is also the love, the patience, the petty, private jokes, sharing the remote control.  It’s tolerating foibles, laughing at the gray hairs, and joint junk mail.  It’s being in it for the long haul, and being a stabilizing element in the larger community.  These traits are neither gay nor straight, but they’re valuable, and we need more of them.

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Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, is fortunate enough to be married to someone who appreciates the value of flattery.