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!
Incredible isn’t it? I can hardly bring myself to celebrate our 12th anniversary tomorrow because it all just seems to mean so little these days.
On the other hand, these modern rules give me a whole new batch of couples who may wish to avail themselves of my ministerial ways.
Take a step back (or maybe two) if you want to dodge Sean’s knee-jerk position on gay marriage. None of that distasteful “thinking outside the box” here! So, I wonder what Sean thinks about polygamous marriages? If the California Supreme Court majority thinks that laws against gay marriage are unconstitutional, how can they say that laws against polygamous marriages are NOT unconstitutional? I’m talking about polygamous marriages among consenting adults, of course, not the marrying of kids that’s allegedly been going on at that ranch in Texas.
I have no problem with polygamous marriages among consenting adults.
I’m a sentimental sap, but every time I read an article about so many couples who finally get to celebrate their love for each other by becoming legally married, I get teary-eyed. I didn’t even cry at my own wedding! I suppose that’s because I didn’t have any opposition to overcome. I just walked in and did it.
I have to say, that I am finally beginning to feel hope for our country, that one day each and every person can truly be equal before the law.
Although Dave doesn’t come out and say it explicitly, he’s invoking the usual “slippery slope” argument. I very much doubt there’s much risk of that happening. Compare with the number of gay people in the US, there just aren’t that many agitating for polygamous marriage — even among the Mormon church. Yeah, they were pretty much forced to outlaw polygamy when they were seeing statehood, but times have changed and now that marriage is see much more as a partnership of equals, they would have a very hard time reversing that decision.
No doubt there are some polygamous marriages that work for all parties, but from what we’ve seen over and over again, polygamous communities both here and abroad tend to be intensely patriarchal and there is much more scope for inequality and abuse. Add to that, many of those more liberal people who crave “open” relationships with more than one partner are not terribly likely to be want to be bound by the traditional concept of marriage anyway.
So claims that the rest of the dominoes will fall — polygamy, bestiality, incest, pedophilia — are just nonsense. There is no evidence that even the first of those (polygamy) will fall any time soon, if ever. But, as always, it’s useful for scaring up votes for the Republicans (which is all they ever seem to do these days).
Actually, I agree that gays getting married harms traditional marriage.
After all, if gays weren’t getting married, I wouldn’t be checking out my (female) yoga teachers butt during class. 🙂
Seriously, the traditional wedding vows to mention: “in sickness and in health, for richer and poorer” which tells me that health and economics ARE factors that affect marriage; I wonder why the “family values” crowd doesn’t focus on those issues.
Very much worth a watch on this day:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rixkck8QnjY
(catchy tune too!)
It’s funny: Dave’s comment was the exact rationale used in those who wanted to prevent interracial marriage.
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I am happy to provide references for Mark’s most excellent ministerial services, in exchange for a little bit of kickback from any fees he happens to wrangle… (And BTW, happy early anniversary to you and Sarah!)
As for Mormons and polygamy, most mainstream Mormons are monogamous; infidelity is actually grounds not just for divorce, but excommunication from LDS. The whole child-bride polygamy nonsense is limited to small extremist factions that are not recognized by the official LDS church. Just sayin’…
Sean,
It is easy to say that one supports polygamous marriages, but what that means in policy is quite complicated. Marriage is has very little to do with consenting adults choosing to be in a relationship—as this can occur outside marriage as well. (I am making a general statement, and not a response to your comment). Even those against gay marriage understand that adults can *choose* to do whatever they want. Rather, the issue is about policy and one might argue, a mistake of government getting involved with marriage in the first place. How should tax breaks be handled? How are benefits allocated? Who does insurance cover? How has visitation and say over medical decisions. Each of these questions can be handled easily enough with marriages involving two people, but they jump to another level of complexity when dealing with group marriage. Personally, I’d say that those should never have been tied to marriage at all. It is a difficult task….yes, it is simple to give a one-liner….
And to others making an argument against polygamy due to insignificant numbers…please.
And to tacitus, a “slippery slope” injection is not reason enough to discount what Dave had to say. I can point you to many times in history where those making the slippery slope were proven correct in the long run. I challenge you to find a sound argument why polygamy should be disallowed while gay marriage is allowed.
Joe, I gave a one-liner response to a one-liner question. Sure, it would be complicated to enact a policy formalizing legal rights for polygamous relationships. So what? Lots of things are complicated, and yet we manage to come up with laws to cover them.
All of which is a red herring, of course, as the original argument (made implicitly, to the extent it was made) was simply along the lines of “gay marriage is icky, and to prove it I bet you wouldn’t want to go along with this even ickier thing.” There aren’t any problems of “complication” at all which attach to same-sex marriages but not to straight marriages. And I don’t think that feelings of ickiness should be made the basis for public policy. If consenting adults want to get married, let them, and if the laws haven’t caught up, fix them. Red herrings aside, it really is just that simple.
Joe, you have a point, and maybe I read into Dave’s comment something that wasn’t there (though it’s so hard to tell sometimes!).
I guess I really have no axe to grind over polygamy except that I think history tells us that polygamy is a more likely vehicle for oppression and abuse than either traditional marriage or gay marriage. I am sure it’s possible to have a perfectly healthy polygamous marriage, but where it is practiced it seems to me that many of the women have an unhealthily subservient role in the relationship. Combine this with the obvious grooming of young girls and young boys that goes on in at least some of those societies preparing them to accept polygamous marriage, I just don’t think that on balance widespread polygamous marriage would be a healthy step in our society. (Yes, I do understand that people said this about interracial marriage and gay marriage, but I believe they said this while contradicting all available evidence. I don’t think the societal case for polygamy is anywhere near as clear cut.)
The type of people I would trust not to fall into this gender-role imbalance trap with polygamy would probably be the type of people who reject marriage anyway and prefer some form of open relationship.
Now, as to the legal precedent gay marriage sets in CA regarding the legal status of polygamy, IANAL so I really couldn’t say. I’m sure it has strengthen the polygamist’s case to some degrees, but I would be astounded if there was a rapid rush toward its legalization. It seems to me that when a large majority of society doesn’t want something, they always find a way to make a legal case against it. That went for interracial marriages until public perception began to change, and the same is happening with gay marriage too. The legalization of gay marriage, even by the Californian courts would have been unthinkable a just decade or more ago — they would have found a way to rule against it just as they found a way to allow it this year.
So however strong the legal argument for polygamy is (and I have no idea myself) I just don’t see a path to legalization within a short period of time because society doesn’t want it, and quite likely never will.
Sean, my intention wasn’t to suggest that you *should* have made a more elaborate comment, though on rereading my post, I can see how it came off that way. As to your comments, never did I suggest that same-sex marriage had more complications than straight marriages. In fact, I said quite the opposite. No matter.
However, I do believe that ‘ickiness’, as you put it, should be considered when making public policy. Certainly, it should not be the sole basis, and probably not even a majority basis. However, a ‘modify and fix it later approach’ is a recipe for disaster. Surely, we can think of examples (past and hypothetical) in which policies made without consideration of the effects have-caused/would-cause far greater harm than the spirit of the policy. Now, I am not at all arguing that gay marriage is such a situation, and I suspect that you also weren’t arguing that ‘effects’ have *no* place in policy. Both are important and both must be considered, the degree of which we might disagree.
My personal feeling is that this issues are *icky*, cannot be solved in a consistent manner, and they really have no place in the government at all. Perhaps I am thinking ‘in-the-box’ too much, but I really cannot see how some of these issues can be resolved when considering group marriage. I agree with tacitus that there will not be a sudden rush to polygamy, but perhaps in 10,15,20 years. In the coming decades, modern societies will also face issues of online marriages (think Second Life on steroids) and also with people wanting to marry constructed-artificial personalities. These notions may seem far-fetched but give it time. Afterall, 10+ years ago a.e. person would have thought the present-day situation to be an impossibility. 🙂
The cleanest and proper, IMO, solution is that social contracts should not be involved with the government at all. Let people make their relationship and titles on their own, outside of the government. The reasons why have all these constitutional issues is precisely b/c government is involved and giving preference to certain groups. Rather than give the preference to all groups, perhaps we should not give preference to any group. It is simpler, cleaner, and more in line with the proper role of government.
…not claiming to know all the answers or even a good sense of what a good answer is…
The government should never have gotten into the realm of marriage in the first place. Its somewhat ludicrous that a couple that has been together for 30 years is not subject to the same benefits/drawbacks/priveledges that a married couple of 1 year has.
The debate should never have been about gay marriage, or polygamy or incest or whatever, but rather why its so completely arbitrary how various societal systems work.
For instance, one of the classic absurdities is medical care. If some person is in a bed dying, for whatever reason, only the spouse is allowed in. A civil union partner by contrast is not (depending on the state). Why? Wouldn’t it have been 100 fold easier for the person to simply have some form somewhere where he/she states who is or is not allowed into his death bed?
Then theres tax issues (eg I want more benefits) and inheritance exemptions and a whole host of stupid legal issues that probably never should have existed in the first place.
The whole gay marriage controversy is just a symptom of a bigger problem.
Actually, I wasn’t trying to make a “slippery slope” argument, rather I was just pointing out the potential inconsistencies and, indeed, hypocrisy of the Cal. Supreme Court’s gay marriage decision. But I don’t expect that such logic will result in the legalization of polygamy in California or anywhere else in the U.S., as the urge to be politically correct nearly always overcomes logic and common sense.
Regarding polygamy, the funny thing is that in biblical times and for long after, it was widely accepted as the norm, not just in the Middle East and in cultures in what’s now India and China, but also, apparently, in parts of Europe. In fact, it’s my understanding that polygamy is still generally accepted as the norm among Muslims. I’m not sure how monogamy came to be the norm among Europeans and their descendants, but I suspect it relates to the Protestant Revolution.
Finally, it’s absurd to say that perceived “ickiness” shouldn’t influence laws. What do you think laws are based on in the first place? Or do you believe that basic laws were, indeed, handed down to Moses on an engraved tablet . . . ?
Dave: the fact that ‘ickiness’ has influenced laws from the earliest times shouldn’t be confused with the question of whether it *should* do so.
Also, the answer to your question about how monogamy came to be the norm is ‘Christianity, as influenced by the traditions of the Roman society that brought it to prominence’, not ‘the Protestant Revolution’, whatever that is.
My experience is that calling something ‘politically correct’ is the right’s equivalent of what the left used to mean by ‘fascist’: it means ‘I don’t like this but I don’t have a good way of explaining my dislike’. Accordingly, I can’t extract any meaning from your claim about the California decision.
Living in the UK, I don’t have much knowledge of the US other than from television crime dramas, so please forgive an ignorant question. Are these legally permitted marriages between people of the same sex actually being called “marriages”? Over here in the UK we graciously allow people to enter into “civil partnerships”, and I think that they don’t have all of the same legal attributes as a usual marriage. Personally, I cannot see what the fuss is – we should just have simply said, “Yes, you can enter into a legal union that is indistinguishable from marriage, and so we shall call it marriage.”
I suppose what I am really asking is: Why do some people object to the use of the word, seemingly over and above the legal position itself?
Well, men are promiscuous by nature (evolution is to blame for that) so polygamy could be a codification of what, er, comes naturally to men. But you also have to consider that having many wives has long been a status symbol (and still is today) in societies where women were/are seen more as property than equal partners.
That’s why I think polygamy will have a hard go of it in America. Polygamy is rarely an equal partnership and usually involves the profound submission of wives to their husbands. Imagine how you would feel if your wife or husband was off having sex with someone you know almost as intimately as your spouse. I would think there are very few people who could do it without feeling torn up inside. I suspect that’s why years of religious conditioning is usually required to overcome those natural feelings of neglect and jealousy.
So it’s not ickiness that’s the problem here, i.e. not like for gay marriage. (I am quite happy for gays to marry, but gay sex will always seem icky to me, that’s just the way I’m wired). Now the thought of having sex with multiple wives is far from icky 🙂 and even the thought of sharing my wife (if I had one) with another man in a polyandrous relationship isn’t icky in that way, but it’s still not pleasant for many other obvious reasons.
Mark, it’s full marriage in California and Massachusetts, and civil unions in a few other states like New Hampshire, Oregon, Washington, Vermont, Maine, etc.
Here’s a map from Wikipedia:
(look up Wikipedia — Gay Marriage for a very useful map)
More information that you probably wanted, but it shows what a hodgepodge it is in this country.
As for the term, well, using “civil unions” instead of “marriage” is simply because fewer people object to it. Civil unions is a modern invention that doesn’t have the same historical, religious, and emotional power as “marriage”. That’s basically all there is to it.
Thanks, tacitus. Although the name is different in different states, do the legal benefits differ too, or are they, for all practical purposes, getting married in the same way that I would?
I admit that I cannot fathom the arguments against allowing adults to marry whom they please (okay, so we might still need those laws against marrying one’s sister et al). I try to think myself into the mindset of the “marriage is a union only between a man and a woman” brigade and I find that I cannot do it.
Mark:
Because Jeeezus invented marriage it sez so in the bye-bull!
I have to say, I’m always surprised that this is even a debate amongst intelligent people. If I lived in a culture where my heterosexual marriage were against the religious norms, I would damn well demand and need the government to protect me from the religious norms of that society. Do unto others and what not. End of debate.
>I admit that I cannot fathom the arguments against allowing adults to marry whom >they please (okay, so we might still need those laws against marrying one’s sister >et al).
But why? What *possible objection* can you have if I as a man want to marry my father or my identical twin brother, and he wants to marry me? If two people love each other and want to spend the rest of their lives together, is that not something to be celebrated and applauded? How *dare* you try and deny this right to consenting adults?
Seriously: if marriage as an institution is tied to the begetting of children and raising a family (obviously a crazy idea, not sure where it came from, clearly not supported by the history of the institution), then laws against incestuous marriage make sense. But if it’s about two people being together, then any argument for gay marriage is also an argument for incestuous marriage.
Do you support my right to `marry’ my father or identical twin brother as much as you do my right to `marry’ my boyfriend? If not, what’s the difference?
Many heterosexual marriages (mine is one of them) are not tied to the idea of begetting children and raising a family, but there isn’t any serious movement to claim that my marriage threatens other people’s and shouldn’t be allowed.