September 29, 2007 was the happiest day of my life.
But now my happiness is being undermined. Not by my lovely wife, but by all of these Californians who, starting today, are getting legally gay-married. How can we maintain our marital bliss when all around us other people are feeling blissful with partners of the same gender? It’s degrading, the Pope says, and who can argue?
Okay, it’s hard to be snarky about this issue, I’m too sentimental. Discrimination against gays, lesbians, bisexuals and other sexual identities is one of the last remaining officially-sanctioned forms of inequity in our culture, and it’s incredibly moving to see the joy on the faces of so many newly-married couples as the barriers come (belatedly, tentatively) tumbling down.
Today is a big day. If anyone is in need of some good last-minute wedding vows, you are welcome to borrow ours. The algorithm was simple: take the Form of the Solemnization of Matrimony from the Book of Common Prayer, remove all the references to God (there are a lot of them), and sprinkle with some quotes that express your own feelings. Also, substitute appropriate names for the numbers.
OFFICIANT: Dearly Beloved — We are gathered together here today to witness the joining of [1] and [2] in Matrimony.
Marriage is an honorable estate: and therefore is not by any to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly; but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, and soberly.
Upon completion of the ceremony, we understand that one is not obliged to remain utterly sober, nor for that matter perfectly discreet.
The estate of matrimony attempts the impossible: to formalize the love between two people. In the words of W.H. Auden:
Rejoice, dear love, in Love’s peremptory word;
All chance, all love, all logic, you and I,
Exist by grace of the Absurd,
And without conscious artifice we die:So, lest we manufacture in our flesh
The lie of our divinity afresh,
Describe round our chaotic malice now,
The arbitrary circle of a vow.By our presence here tonight, we elevate conscious artifice to a heartfelt celebration of the uniting of two lives.
Then shall the Minster say unto [1],
O: 1, will you have 2 to be your partner in life? Will you love her, comfort her, honor, and keep her in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, keeping only to her, so long as you both shall live?
1: I will.
Then shall the Minster say unto [2],
O: 2, will you have 1 to be your partner in life? Will you love him, comfort him, honor, and keep him in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, keeping only to him, so long as you both shall live?
2: I will.
O, to 1: 1, will you take 2’s hand and repeat after me.
I, 1, take you, 2, to be my partner in life,
to have and to hold from this day forward,
for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health,
to love and to cherish, till death us do part;
and thereto I plight my troth.O, to 2: 2, will you take 1 hand and repeat after me.
I, 2, take you, 1, to be my partner in life,
to have and to hold from this day forward,
for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health,
to love and to cherish, till death us do part;
and thereto I plight my troth.Then shall they again loose their hands; and 1 shall give unto 2 a Ring in this wise: the Officiant taking the ring shall deliver it unto 1, speaking their name out loud, to put it upon the fourth finger of 2’s left hand. And 1 holding the Ring there, and taught by the Officiant, shall say,
1: I give you this ring as a symbol of my enduring love.
Then 2 shall give unto 1 a Ring in this wise: the Officiant taking the ring shall deliver it unto 2, speaking their name out loud, to put it upon the fourth finger of 1’s left hand. And 2 holding the Ring there, shall say,
2: I give you this ring as a symbol of my enduring love.
O: Together we have gathered to share our blessings with 2 and 1 as they begin their lives together. As Rainier Maria Rilke once advised a young poet:
“We must trust in what is difficult. It is good to be solitary,
for solitude is difficult. It is also good to love, because love is difficult.
For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps
the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task,
the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is mere preparation….
Love consists in this: that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.”Then shall the Officiant speak unto the company.
O: Inasmuch as 1 and 2 have pledged their troth, I now pronounce them together for life. You may celebrate as you wish.
Congratulations to everyone getting married today! Go plight those troths!
but the institution of marriage – or why there is any reason for the state to take an interest in it, take notice of it in the tax code, etc – is tied to the fact that, statistically speaking, lots of marriages, the considerable majority, do end up with children and families. That is, the particular nature of the institution which distinguishes it from the many other kinds of human relationship is that it tends to lead to children.
The fact that not every marriage involves children does not mean that children are accidental to the concept of marriage: there are fancier ways to put it, but the institution of marriage stems from the equation man + woman + sex = babies.
True Mark, but the manufacturing of future taxable citizens at minimum cost and inconvenience to the state is one of the big, logical reasons for government support for marriage (tax breaks etc. Over here, there’s even a children’s allowance the government pays to the mother for each child).
These are all true, but I don’t think relevant. I don’t think society is going to ban two heterosexuals from marrying if they aren’t going to procreate. And given that, we already allow marriage between individuals when it has nothing to do with kids. Therefore, fairness would seem to dictate we should allow this for everyone, not only for those who prefer the opposite sex.
Allowing gay marriage hurts absolutely nobody, and allows many new people to be happy in ways that have always been allowed for heterosexuals. It should be a complete no-brainer.
Of course the slippery slope is already getting grease: The president of the American Civil Liberties Union says polygamy is among the “fundamental rights” that her organization will continue to defend:http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=44977
I’m shocked. She wants to defend polygamy — and not a word about polyandry. Equal rights please, ACLU!
How dare Sean–or any of the rest of you nay-sayers–presume to judge gay marriage? Yeah, I’m straight–I’m female, hubby’s male. So what? Marriage isn’t about gender, it is about LOVE. You can’t tell me that God doesn’t smile upon any couple who want to celebrate their love with a lifelong commitment in His name. As for those who cite Biblical “examples” of God’s alleged caveats against gay marriage, you would do well to remember that God didn’t write the Bible. It was written by human individuals who believed they were recording God’s word. Sure, some of the prophets were genuinely channeling God’s will. But others were merely recording their own prejudices and those of the eras in which they lived in an attempt to rationalize hatred as “doing God’s will.” Appalling.
Sean:
Indeed, and that’s what the lawmakers are paid to do. Why do we accept that lawmakers who earn big salaries will not even attempt to solve the problem but will simply argue that it requires them to do some non-trivial work?
🙁
Liz, Sean supports gay marriage.
Liz. I mostly agree with your sentiments entirely (although, I don’t need any reference to an idea like God). I do think you’ve missed something in Sean’s post – the post is actually in favor of gay marriage, not against it.
Judith,
According to Wikipedia (which is infallible) polygamy includes both polyandry (one wife, many husbands) and polygyny (one husband many wives).
You should stick to your posts on physics, Sean.
Mark Hudson, I don’t know what the differences are between the civil unions in states that allow them. Google must be your guide if you want to know more.
Brathmore, the world would be a better place if more physicists became involved in politics.
Mark,
>Allowing gay marriage hurts absolutely nobody, and allows many new people to be >happy in ways that have always been allowed for heterosexuals. It should be a >complete no-brainer.
I don’t think this is correct. Marriage is often recognised in tax codes, usually favourably. Tax breaks for married couples in some way hurt those who are not married, even if the effect is small. (Likewise complete tax exemption for myself would hurt other people, even if not noticeably). This is justifiable because good marriages benefit society: the government incentivises parents to stay married and provides a sound framework to bring up children in.
Providing the same benefits to civil unions/gay marriage does have a financial effect: the state provides a tax break to a relationship that was not previously recognised. This may be justifiable, or it may not. One reason that does not justify it is that it extends to homosexuals something that has always been allowed to heterosexuals. This reason doesn’t work because it isn’t true: marriage laws have never cared one dime about sexuality, they always cared about sex – what mattered was that it was a man and a woman, not what their sexual desires were. There is no legal requirement to fancy someone in order to marry them.
To me, it seems a no-brainer that same-sex relationships are for basic reasons of birds, bees and babies qualitatively different from heterosexual relationships, and so should be treated differently. In this respect gay marriage seems to me almost an oxymoron: marriage as an institution exists because the sex involved is procreative. Peter and John may love each other and have a deeply committed relationship, but it’s not marriage because their plumbing doesn’t work that way.
That Peter and John cannot get married the way Peter and Jane can doesn’t mean that Peter and John should not have rights in hospital visiting, inheritance, etc, but that is a different situation. I also see no reason why Peter and John should receive benefits that are not accessible to (for example) two brothers living together, who will be hit by inheritance tax in a way Peter and John will not.
And to return to my original question: if everything is about consenting adults, which argument for gay marriage is not also an argument for me to marry my identical twin? (if i had one)
piscator
Our opinions are not too far apart, but if we are to be fair, we either allow gay marriage or forbid heterosexuals who won’t procreate from marrying. right now I have rights (including tax breaks etc.) that are forbidden to other people with precisely the same procreative intentions.
I should add though, that I don’t see any reason for married people to get tax breaks that single people don’t.
Forget traditions about marriage. Today’s question is, are you aware of all internet traditions?
There have been excellent books penned in the past few years on the cultural and historical contexts of marriage. When we’re talking about the permutation of an institution, isn’t it more interesting to cite historical documents than hypothetical evolutionary bio?
I recommend EJ Graff’s What is Marriage For?: The Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution. It’s a reasonably well-researched Western history, perhaps shorter than it could be, but quite solid.
No doubt the definition is changing, but I think that we can safely say that it’s doing so within a context that’s familiar to all of us. No one that I know is romancing his brother. I do know a few who had commitment ceremonies with their bicycles, but I suspect that on investigation, the content of those human/machine relationships has more to do with “sense of humor” than “unleashed waves of wantonness.”
British government study: Robots could demand legal rights
So, while the US is debating “gay rights”, Europe is debating “robot rights”. We are two centuries ahead of the US! 🙂
“I should add though, that I don’t see any reason for married people to get tax breaks that single people don’t.”
Thats essentially the entire scope of the argument. The only reason homosexuals even care about this being called marriage, rather than a civil union, is precisely for those benefits. Their argument is one of fairness.
However, if its about fairness, why can’t I marry my sister, or my pet doll, or have many wives?
The slippery slope (fallacy) ends up with just about everyone married to something, and then the entire point of having the tax break to begin with is pointless, b/c it stands to reason you would automatically marry something. It costs nothing, and you get free money.
So the entire problem has never been about gay marriage perse, and rather about the arbitrary line thats drawn. At least when it was the will of the majority it had some measure of logic behind it. But now, it strikes me as just an extra bureacratic and pointless rule that should be erased from the lawbooks forever.
The little message below where I’m writing this still says “Comments for this post will be closed on 17 July 2008”, and so I thought when I posted my second post on this thread at 11:58 p.m. California time, I’d have the last word — so who let all you guys post after me? Isn’t this a violation of “all internet traditions”? (Well, I suppose it’s in line with the internet tradition that threads will go on and on and on until the horse is well and truly beaten to death).
Anyway, as Martin kindly pointed out, we apparently have Christianity to thank for the STRONG preference for monogamy in Europe and the Euro-settled parts of the world. So it DOES all really come down to religion, doesn’t it?
As for me, I’m not religious, but I think gay marriage really sucks . . . but if a majority of people wanted the government to recognize it (and remember, we’re talking OFFICIAL government sanction here, as opposed to any particular religious sect(s) recognizing gay marriage, which in the U.S. they are absolutely free to do), I’d find it easier to swallow.
What galls me is that 4 members of the Cal. Supreme Court overrode a pretty hefty vote of the electorate just a few years ago in California, which defined legally-recognized marriage as being only between opposite genders. Of course, elitists like those 4 Supreme Court justices, Barack Obama, college professors, and most of the posters on this thread, feel they know what’s best for society, so they wonder why we’re going to all the trouble and expense of having elections in the first place — it just lets a bunch of unwashed peasants, who are bitter about their economic circumstances and thus cling to guns, religion, and suspicion of the unfamiliar, have a say in important things that they don’t know much about. Right?
Anyway, for those of you not up to speed on political activities in the Golden State (California), please be advised that a state constitutional amendment will be on the November ’08 ballot (along with the U.S. Presidential race) defining legally-recognized marriage as being only between a man and a woman. Given that the similar measure passed only a few years ago by a substantial majority, my guess is that this constitutional amendment will also pass. Then, of course, the legal challenges will start again (on the grounds that, e.g., the amendment was vaguely worded, not enough ballots were distributed in foreign languages like Serbo-Croatian and Tagalog, etc., etc., whatever opponents can dream up) — not to mention the legal limbo that gays who got married in the interim will be in. By the way, I have no idea why the first marriage proposition that passed a few years ago WASN’T in the form of a state constitutional amendment, which would have precluded the Sup. Court majority from declaring that it was contrary to the state constitution. Also by the way, I think that the man most responsible for getting that first proposition passed was former X-15 astronaut Pete Knight, who then was in the California legislature (he’s now deceased).
As regards the suggestion from someone that physicists should make public policy — sure, and members of Congress should be allowed to publish papers on their favorite theories in the physics journals . . .
Would it be too elitist of me, with all my fancy degrees and my powdered wig, to point out that this is June?
In the UK, civil partnerships provide the same legal rights/responsibilities and tax rights as civil marriage. The problem with calling it “marriage” must be because because some religious authorities forbid gay marriage, and probably they make a prior claim on the word “marriage”. But if it quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck…
I have a great deal of sympathy for not providing married people with no children any tax breaks that single people don’t get. There are a lot of other rights and responsibilities that go with marriage, and I can’t see why any consenting adults that want to enter into such a contract shouldn’t be allowed to do so. But tax breaks should only be given to people with children, biological or adopted, whether they are married or not.
Haelfix. There are other things that the marriage contract provides beyond tax breaks. I agree with some of what you say though. My view most closely coincides with what seleya had to say.
What? How is gays getting married being degrading to the act of marriage? Can they not feel the same kind of love and dedication as a pair of heterosexuals? Who cares who they like in bed, who they like to have sex with. Marriage is about loving a partner, and gays of course are no worse at doing that than others. The only mistake here was to have it only encompass heterosexuals to begin with. Now that’s finally starting to be fixed around the world, it’s about damn time. I almost wish this article was written in jest, but I suppose not. *sigh* But then again, we’re only humans after all, we argue irrationally at times. Regardless of sexual preference.
Ah, I see I misread the article, it wasn’t as bad as I first imagined. My comment above still applies to those against gay marriages though. 😉