Marriage Rant

This is the second of two politically charged rants that I have had fragments of floating around in my notes for quite a while.  It was originally going to be focused on gay marriage, but it has been getting broader in scope as I ponder it.

 

The main question is: "What is marriage?"  Spiritually, it is two separate beings becoming one.  Socially, it is the only way to bring someone else into your family, besides adoption.  Legally, it affords a pair or partners legal protections and incentives.  Practically, it provides companionship and support, especially when times get rough.

 

That spiritual bond is hard to quantify, but it in some way ties to sex.  It can't hinge on sex, both because there are those who are incapable of having sex for one reason or another, and because that factor fades with age.  But sex is an important factor in that process.  On the flip side, marriage doesn't last forever, which I still haven't fully come to terms with.  Biblically, it is a covenant that lasts until death.  But there is no marriage in heaven, so the two that became one, become two again.  This simplifies the issues of remarriage the fate of single people, but it still bothers me in some way.

 

There is a big difference between family and friends.  Friends, even very close ones, usually come and go over time.  Family is a more enduring connection.  It can recover from years of lapse, and last through generations.  People will occasionally host distant relatives who they have never met, if they are traveling in the area.  They are total strangers at one level, but that hereditary relationship never goes away.  You can un-friend someone, but you can't un-sibling them.  That is set at birth, and locked in the DNA of every one of our cells.  Outside of adoption, marriage is the only way to graft an outsider into that level.  Marriage takes one from friend to relative (in-law) like no other process.

 

Legally, marriage is a contract, recognized and sanctioned by the government.  It includes incentives to promote marriage, including tax breaks and other legal and financial rights.  The point of incentivizing marriage is to promote strong families and child-raising.  Having children is in the country’s best interest, as is having their citizens paired off, to assist each other in times of trial.  Otherwise it falls to the state by default, if someone can no longer care for themselves, or even just needs support through a rough period of time.

 

I am not an advocate of outlawing homosexual relationships, because I am aware that you can’t legislate morality.  It just doesn’t work.  But I am opposed to the government deliberately incentivizing immoral choices, which is the exact opposite of legislating morality.  That appears to be what is happening in the case of gay marriage.

 

People claim that they should have the right to marry whoever they want.  But it seems pretty clear that they don’t have that right.  The partners must be human, not related to you, and not already married to someone else.  People generally accept those requirements, as well as the implicit requirement that the party in question be willing to marry you.  So heaven forbid we add the requirement that they be the opposite gender.