I’m sick of hearing about how marriage is a religious institution. Historically – it’s not. People have arranged themselves in groups since there have been people. Those groups have arranged themselves into couples as time (and civilization) progressed for several reasons.
- Legal Reasons. How do you decide about property, children, benefits, heirs, insurance etc if people aren’t legally bound together somehow?
- Procreation and Childcare. We all know that our species would go kaput if people weren’t having babies. (It probably will, anyway, but that’s besides the point). It makes sense that once people have babies, people have to raise babies. Baby humans are pretty helpless. Arranging society by couples that can have babies and then take care of babies makes sense.
That’s it. Those are the basic reasons, and you don’t have to satisfy both to choose to get married. The nuclear family has come to take center stage in our society because we have urbanized – and for some reason that makes many people think marriage is only justified if the couple will be pumping out babies.
But having children is increasingly less common in this society. Kids are expensive, more and more people are having fertility issues and people are seeing marriage in a different light – one in which they are seeking self-enlightenment through marriage. Or happiness, anyway, if not enlightenment.
But that’s no reason for people to get married. I could be just as happy (and self-enlightenment seeking) with WoDM if we weren’t going to tie the knot. We’re tying the knot for entirely legal reasons.
So the next time any one brings up gay marriage and says anything about religion or civil unions or anything else – you tell them to stuff it. Marriage is just a word for the legal shit. If your religion puts something more into it, that’s between you and your god, it has not a damn thing to do with the concept of marriage legally.
The issue of gay marriage is so colossally simple that people asking questions and debating it in a political forum makes me so angry I could choke someone.
K.
The contents of this blog entry may not reflect the views of the Webmaster of Doom, Michael.
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