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CallaFirestormBW -> RE: Gay marriage (4/14/2009 6:26:13 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: LaTigresse
Yanno, I read one of the most intelligent articles on gay marriage ever, last week in the local newspaper. The young man that wrote it is the son of two women that have been together for 30ish years.
His solution was to remove marriage from the legal system altogether. Make the legal aspects of ALL partnerships a civil union. NO ONE gets married except as a strictly religious ceremony, IF that is what they desire. That way, no legal claim that us perverts are sullying the sanctity of their holy matrimony.
You want to be a legal S.O., you gotta get a civil union. You want marriage........deal with it in the privacy of your faith and your church.
Made some sense. That silly boy.........the nerve!! Making sense.
I've been advocating this solution for over a decade.
The thing is, Term, those folks who decide to get married don't go into it thinking about how soon they're going to get divorced. In fact, I don't know -anyone-, gay or straight, in 30 years as a minister, who has come to me for pre-joining counseling, who has been considering the possibility that their relationship won't last.
I went into marriage thinking it would last, and have enjoyed several poly relationships with that expectation, before coming to recognize patterns in myself now that are likely to indicate about how long a relationship will last for me. Unfortunately, my alternate form of preferred lifestyle is nearly as poorly received in our culture as gay marriage... I've known for years that I can't handle not having several-year-long bouts of monastic living, which really puts a crimp in being married. Hence, now I know I won't re-marry (though I would hand-fast, as long as it was understood that just because we'd renewed our vows for 11 years doesn't mean we'll renew them for 12, depending on how my craving for monastic life ebbs and flows). The folks I've known who suspect that they won't have a lasting relationship aren't the ones who are asking to marry. We've already figured out that it isn't suitable for us--but that doesn't mean we don't support other people's choices to try to make their own happiness.
The ones who -do- want to marry have the same hopes that -any- couple do... that their communion will last forever. The threats of a "shit sandwich" of relationships doesn't compel them, because they are full of hope--and many of them have good reason to hope. After all, they've already managed to last for however many years -without- any kind of sanction or help from the rest of our society, so if they had some of the same rights so casually tossed to het couples, there is the sneaking suspicion that they will actually thrive long-term.
I don't particularly see the fact that about half of all marriages these days end in divorce as a good reason to -deny- marriage to a group of people who clearly want to enjoy the same rights as other adults in a democratic and socially aware culture. Hey, maybe giving homosexuals the right to marry will improve the numbers for successful marriage.
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