It is ironic that the current hot topic, gay marriage, takes place against a background of growing indifference to marriage itself. At present there are more than 5.6 million unmarried couples living together in the United States. Perhaps it has become the norm for young couples to cohabit before marriage. Long before marriage, in many cases.
I am personally a fan of marriage. Mickey and I enjoyed our marriage all 59 years. The legal bond made life simpler for us and for our four children. U.S. estate law favors the legally married. Other statutes, governing such things as who may visit the dying or critically ill, make life more difficult for lovers who aren’t sanctioned by wedding vows officially documented.
We could never understand why heterosexual couples would deny homosexual couples the same rights and privileges we had, as long as they were willing to commit themselves to the same obligations. Obligations which, we also observed, were easily shed by couples of whatever sexual persuasion, as our society’s divorce rates clearly showed.
WE QUICKLY DISMISSED the argument that gay marriage somehow diminished heterosexual marriage. The value of a marriage, we told ourselves, was determined by each married couple by the way they treated each other. The notion the value of our marriage was somehow determined by the marriages of others was simply incomprehensible to us.
Our acceptance of gay marriage was based on our own values. We posited: (a) human beings have the right to marry; (b) homosexuals are human beings; (c) homosexuals should therefore have the right to marry. Having satisfied ourselves with that syllogism, we moved on to continue enjoying each other’s company.
Having made this personal statement, let me also say that I am also mystified by the statistically demonstrated fact that attitudes toward gay marriage have become a feature of today’s partisan divide. Republicans, polls show, are far more opposed to gay marriage than are Democrats or independents.
Why? Ah, the pollsters don’t know. One could guess that Republicans are more likely to look backward for their values. Since it is also true that the young are more tolerant of gay marriage than their seniors, that guess may be on track. Still, it is strange that the right of a couple — any couple — to formally agree to the confines and privileges of the marriage contract is a partisan matter rather than a straight forward legal right.
One is left with the conclusion that political opposition to gay marriage is based primarily on the need to have a devil to attack and vanquish. If gay marriage is evil, then those who favor it are also evil and must, by definition, be opposed and defeated.
How much easier this approach makes the political campaign. No need to deal with complicated matters such as immigration, farm policy, unemployment, the United Nations, the European debt crisis, Social Security and complicated matters such as Medicaid and Medicare and the medically uninsured. There are too many pros and cons in such stuff; too much study and thought required.
Why take the trouble to understand what only nerds worry about when it is more virtuous (and ever so much easier) to vote against sin?
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
