What is it about gay marriage?

The United States Supreme Court heard arguments concerning the gay marriage law known as Proposition 8 from the state of California. As I understand it, voters approved a state law banning marriage except by members of opposite sexes. That is to say, the voters of California believe marriage is a legal contract between one male and one female. As far as I know that has been the accepted definition of marriage for several hundred years. Marriage was formalized as an institution essentially to protect the property rights of males, notably males of means. Humans have been forming bonds between males and females for thousands of years, how long ago these bonds were accorded official status in a society is unknown. Males generally bond with females who are agreeable to having sexual relations on a regular basis for pleasure as well as for the creation of children to assist in the daily struggle to obtain food.

 

Marriage in the western world, where the predominant religion is Christianity, tends to be tied up in terms of a union between a man and a woman blessed by God as presented in the Bible.

 

What I find interesting is the propensity of Christians to take the King James Version Bible as the absolute word of God. The Bible is a record of human events, observations and rules for living that for centuries were passed from generation to generation by word of mouth. The earliest practitioners of a monotheistic religion that ultimately became Christianity were nomadic shepherds living in what we now call the Middle East. Earliest written records of what is believed to be the Bible were discovered in caves near the Dead Sea shortly after World War II. The documents have been dated to a period of about 400 years before the current era to 300 years into the current era. Those writings are between 1800 and 2500 years old. They are in several languages all of which have been translated several times into various other languages including Greek, Latin and English. The King James Version was created between 1604 and 1611. One of the reasons for its creation was King James’ desire to force the Scots to speak English. As with all translations, translators applied their own preferences to the choice of words when there was a range of possible meanings for a given word. My searches for the story of creation in the Dead Sea Scrolls do not find any mention of Creation as recounted twice in Genesis in the King James Version. It has been my experience over the past seventy years that one can find a Bible passage to justify pretty much anything you wish to justify. None of this is to denigrate religious teaching, I honestly believe that every person can benefit from a certain amount of religious instruction. Things like honesty, faithfulness, and charity are well worth knowing about and practicing. Church and home are the best places to get that training.

 

I find the argument about the sanctity of marriage a bit disingenuous, between one quarter and one half of all traditional marriages end in divorce and many heterosexuals marry numerous times. It is painfully obvious that not everyone mates for life and lives happily ever after.

 

I have known a number of homosexuals during my life, some were in long term relationships, and some flitted from partner to partner. Well known homosexual celebrities have formed long term relationships and then terminated them to form new relationships. The demand for legalizing homosexual marriage cannot be because legally defined marriage is forever.

 

Homosexual marriage cannot be about bringing children into the world. At this time it is biologically impossible for two men or two women to produce a baby without at least one additional person, a member of the opposite sex contributing the appropriate sperm, egg or womb. The phenomenon of two mommy or two daddy families is too new to accurately predict the psychological consequences to the child raised in such a home. Likely the outcome will be better than being raised in a single parent home simply because there are two care givers present. There is way too much evidence of the adverse consequences of single parent families to ignore. That however, is for another discussion.

 

Where does this leave us? If marriage does not guarantee happiness and lifelong commitment to one partner, and if producing a child is biologically impossible for partners who are of the same sex, what is the reason for demanding homosexual marriage be legalized? Unfortunately, I think the reason is money! Marriage confers certain monetary benefits to the married. Spouses can be insured by the employer of the other, spouses have defined rights to property accrued during the marriage, spouses have a claim on the future earnings of an ex-spouse if the marriage is dissolved by divorce. Spouses are generally perceived to have superior standing in the eyes of the government.

 

Arguments before the Supreme Court on the subject of “Gay Marriage” took two days, the first day devoted to Proposition 8, and the second day to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). DOMA is very specifically about the economic aspect of marriage. It is all about the money!

 

It is often touted that it is about “equality”, OK, I suppose homosexuals are entitled to the same misery enjoyed by long suffering married heterosexuals.

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