It's Not the End of the World

Social conservatives all over the land are schvitzing over the fact that California's notoriously liberal Supreme Court has just ruled that gay marriage must be made in legal in one of the nation's largest state.

I suppose that as a social conservative, I should join in the renting of my clothes and the wailing and the gnashing of teeth.  But I can't.  Because while I despise the ruling, I do so for far different reasons.

And I will probably get in trouble with the old family here, but hey, they know what I think already. If they don't like it, too bad for them.

I don't think government should be involved in marriage at all. Period.  No "licenses".  No "divorces".  No "separations".  No "tax breaks". Nothing. Nada. Zip.  I think government involvement in marriage has been a fundamentally unmitigated disaster that has only served to create a permanent class of lawyers.  Government has essentially turned a cultural and religious committment into a contract relationship.  Nothing more.

Forget the vows you take.  They mean nothing.  Nada. Zip.  Forsake all others?  Who enforces that?  For better AND worse?  Yeah, right.  How about "as long as your boobs don't sag and your ass doesn't look like cottage cheese and your hair doesn't turn grey"?  Or "as long as we can live in a McMansion and drive really cool cars and our kids can play on ten sports teams and you give me the lifestyle I want"?

Those are today's vows.  Vows fed by a government licensing scheme that lets people get married (who probably shouldn't) then get divorced (when they deserve to get a serious bitch slapping).

I hate to say it, but if every gay man and woman on the planet married every other gay man and woman on the planet, they could not do nearly as much damage to marriage as has been wrought by crappy-ass laws, no-default divorce, and spineless judges.  Marriage as an institution is suffering today because no one takes it seriously.

I cannot tell you how many weddings I have attended in the last decade, where I sat in the pew or on the chair, and listened to the vows, and knew -- knew it like I know the back of my hand -- that neither one would EVER live up to the vows.  Or even try.  They were just reciting lines from the back of a dusty old hymnal or Book of Prayer. 

And as far a the government is concerned, if you have the dough, and you don't have any obnoxious social diseases, you are in like Flynn.

(I am thinking that from now on, if I am invited to the wedding, I might have a short interview session before I RSVP. Sort of like a king-maker meeting with candidates before he gives an endorsement.)

Quite frankly, I don't care what two people do together with their lives.  As long as I don't have to hear about it, watch it, or participate.  You know how many married friends I have that constantly bitch about their spouses?  Too many.  Here's a clue:  want your marriage to last?  Talk to your spouse about how much of a shithead they are.  Don't tell me.

I think that government should get out of the marriage business altogether.  Period.  No licensing, no imprimaturs, no defining what a marriage is.  (WIth the possible exception that you can only "marry" another member of the same species.)

Lately, I've been told that I can have no understanding of what goes on in a marriage unless I am in it.  Philosophically, I can destroy that argument easier than I can destroy atheism.  But, let's suppose its true.  If I cannot understand, government cannot.  So get government out of it.  Completely. Totally.  And quick.

Because a government that can't possibly balance its own checkbook has no business telling people who they can or cannot love and spend the rest of their lives with.