Sunday, August 26, 2007

The Marriage Protectors Strike Again!

I came out to my parents upon celebrating my twenty-first birthday. That was fifteen years ago, at a time when the idea of "equal marriage" was nowhere near the exaggerated firestorm of moral threat the religious right has so ignorantly labelled it. It was through my own mother that I chanced upon meeting my spouse, at an insurance firm that has long since relocated to New York City. Back then, certain individuals within my immediate circle were quick to write off my love for this man as a passing phase. "It won't last," some would warn, while others would toss around the false assumption that I would somehow contract the AIDS virus and die simply because I was gay. Funny thing, irony. All those who ever doomed my relationship to failure have all seen their own marriages succumb to the bitterness of divorce.

It is unfortunate people such as this who continue to thwart today's equal marriage movement. Going by their narrowed logic, marriage is now far less about love than it is about procreation. Wow! Somebody seriously needs to alert my brother to that statistic. He has been married to my sister-in-law for the last twenty-six years and they have never once had a single child between them. I suppose that means they, along with all the countless thousands of childless heterosexual couples living worldwide, ultimately have no business wearing wedding bands.

Am I the only one who finds this the least bit pathetic?

"Lock your doors! Bolt your windows! The gays are coming! Marriage is under attack!"

Uh, yeah, sure.

Friends, I can't help but laugh each and every time these armchair pundits ascend their soapboxes to preach this asinine propaganda. Paranoia seems to rule out common sense more often than not with these people. Infidelity, alcohol and spousal abuse all contribute to ninety percent of this country's current heterosexual divorce rate. But, once word spreads that somebody like me wants to legally marry the wonderful man he's built a fifteen year relationship with.....THAT, magically, is considered the sole legitimate threat to society's so-called "sanctity" of marriage. Pardon me while I double over in a puddle of my own tears and laugh. I, as a gay man, have absolutely no bearing on anybody else's life or how they decide to manage it. Nothing I or my spouse do as a couple should ever adversely affect the marriage of two total strangers. The success of any marriage is based upon what the two partners involved are willing to put into it. Those individuals who deliberately choose to disagree with that fact and base their strengths around my definition of happiness should more seriously pursue professional counseling.

Consider, if you will, the similarities between what's going on today as opposed to the battle that unfolded years ago in direct regard to interracial marriage. Fundamentalists back then were just as rabidly vocal about two people of different races marrying as many of them are currently with homosexuals. All manner of rhetoric, as many should remember, came down on those who favored these unions. False warnings of "social breakdown" and "holy retribution" rang out all over this nation at the mere mention of two races uniting in marriage. Well, I think we can all agree that humanity has not suffered as a result. We're still alive, fire and brimstone has not rained down from the heavens, and life still goes on pleasantly for everybody. Fear is the primary motivation people like this cling to in their ceaseless campaigns against equality. It is the same foolhardy attitude that will bring them insurmountable embarrassment and shame when they one day realize just how silly and pointless their current crusade really was.

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