Check Mate, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld

March 30, 2013 Martha Thomases 4 Comments

 

There’s other news.  We’r still at war.  Banks in Cyprus are funky.  Parts of the Seattle area are falling into the sea.

It doesn’t matter.  I’m obsessed with the Supreme Court.  As you may have noticed, the justices are hearing arguments for two cases that involve marriage equality:  one that challenges California’s Proposition 8, and one that challenges the federal government’s Defense of Marriage Act.

If you are a nerdy fan of the Supreme Court and the rule of law, the technical aspects of the arguments are fascinating.  The Court has to decide whether it is up to the states or the federal government to regulate marriage, and how each state’s decisions – for or against – affects other states.  There are also various arguments about whether or not the cases merit attention from the Court at all.

That’s not what has the news media mesmerized.  Let’s talk about sex.

 

Or rather, let’s talk about marriage.

In the arguments on Tuesday, the lawyer defending Proposition 8 (and, therefore, opposed to marriage equality) said that the purpose of marriage was the production of children, and that children are best raised in a home with a mother and father.  There was some discussion about older people getting married, and some childish snickering about Strom Thurmond fathering a child when he was 70, but no one challenged the central premise.

Let me.

It may be that children are best raised by a man and a woman.  That’s not what the American Academy of Pediactrics says, but what do they know?  They are only trained professionals, not the Catholic church.  If we believe this, and if we believe it is so important that the government must get involved in these relationships, why do we permit divorce?  That takes away an entire parent, at least on a daily basis.  Even worse, why do we permit remarriage?  If the ideal is one man and one woman as parents, won’t it damage children to have an additional man or woman involved in the dynamic?

What about children born to unmarried parents.  Does the state have an obligation to force them to get married for the good of the child?

Every heterosexual household is not headed by a perfect father and mother.  As humans, we are never perfect and all parents make mistakes.  However, some mistakes are worse than others. You have only to watch a smattering of day-time television talk shows to see that straight people have children they are emotionally incapable of raising.   Many gay couples are better suited to be parents than many straight couples.

In any case, children living with same-sex parents very often do not have the choice to live with opposite-gendered parents.  They are, perhaps, living with the two people who adopted them.  In many cases, there were no suitable opposite-gendered parents available.  Is it in the best interest of these children (or the state) for them to be orphaned, rather than in a household with two loving parents?  I don’t think so.

While I got married because I wanted to have children, and I didn’t want to be a single parent, I don’t think children are the only important reason for marriage, nor the only reason that society has an interest in marriage.  Our society depends on its citizens having rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  We need to be able to live our lives in the ways that best accommodate these goals.  This includes consensual relationships among adults.

“But if that is the case, what’s next?  Man and dog?

No, because we are limiting ourselves to consenting adults.

“What about polygamy?”

What about it?  We allow Muslims with multiple wives to visit from other countries.  We allow serial monogamy.  We no longer prosecute adultery.  It’s not the way I want to live, but if you do, and you involve only consenting adults, and you doing so doesn’t affect me, why should I care?

“But God said ….”

Shut up.  Shut up.  Shut up.  I don’t care what your God said.  You can define marriage within your religion any way you so desire (and our much-vaunted Judeo-Christian heritage has changed its mind about this dozens of times), but that has nothing to do with the state.  If you want a biblically inspired marriage, have at it.

Just leave me out of it.

Children are fun, but they aren’t all there is to marriage.  A marriage is a way to build a home, a partnership of companionship and support.  This is why people get married when they don’t want to have children, or when they are sterile.  We each of us enjoys coming home to a person we love.

In my experience, marriage had very little to do with gender, and everything to do with banality.  My marriage was made up of millions of moments, day in and day out.  Some of these moments, happily, were sexy, but a lot were just mundane – fixing meals, cleaning house, reading newspapers, changing diapers, changing the litter box, arguing, hugging, laughing and crying.

It was not the marriage everyone wants, but that’s just the point.  There is no one single marriage everyone wants.

As Americans – as humans – we are each entitled to the one that we want.

Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, really lucked out in the child-producing part of her marriage.