It’s the one institution in which the Left is okay with excluding women.  Just try to form a legally sanctioned organization while openly barring women from joining.  Won’t be allowed.  Unless that organization is a marriage.

I’ve been trying to come up with decent analogies to help explain why I believe it is important to keep the legal definition of marriage in line with the traditional societal practice of marriage.  Marriage is a unique institution, though, so analogies tend to break down.

The issue is so polarizing now that it is difficult to convince the other side that I’m not a bigot and do not hate people who are gay or consider them less than worthy of having their rights protected.  But I like to try.

There are different people providing the momentum to change the legal definition of marriage.  There are the extreme Leftists who want to tear down just about any structure other than the state so that we’ll be dependent on the state, and they figure anything that devalues true marriage is a good thing.  If marriage means anything, it really means nothing.  There are the radical homosexuality advocates who believe that having the term “marriage” legally affixed to same-sex couplings will advance their promotion of homosexuality as equal or even superior to heterosexuality.  There are the ordinary gay people who think that they are somehow being slighted because they can’t marry the person they are “in love” with.  There are the friends and families of these people who want to see their loved ones happy, and their loved ones have told them that applying the term “marriage” legally to their relationships will do it.  And, finally, there are the profiteers who think they will make more money if more people can legally “marry” (like divorce lawyers).

Most of these people will not consider any defenses I’d have to offer for my position.  The people who might are the ordinary gay people and their friends and families.  They’ll likely still disagree with me, but perhaps some of them will see that my motive is not hate or bigotry.

One of the problems we have created as a society is that we have already devalued marriage through several channels.  Socially, too many of us have reduced it to some sort of “next level” for any romantic relationship, as if that relationship was somehow more successful because it was “taken to the next level”, even if it ends quickly in a divorce.  I link this phenomenon to fornication, shacking up, and having/raising children out of wedlock.  Some people think it is okay to fornicate and have kids out of wedlock if they plan to get married.  There are women shack up with men because they hope it will lead to marriage.  A man and a woman can be doing everything that traditionally only married couples did with social acceptance, and they – more often prompted by the woman – will decide they should take the relationship “to the next level” by getting married.  Since they are already shacking up and raising kids, the feeling is that marriage is merely symbolic, but they still want that symbol to “vindicate” their fornication and shacking up.

Therein comes an argument for the same-sex couple who wants that “symbolic” stamp of approval and recognition of their relationship.  Since the rest of society has separated childbearing, sex, and shacking up from marriage, then marriage is something unrelated to those things and it mostly about esteeming the romantic relationship, right?

But the thing is – a romantic relationship that doesn’t end in marriage is a not automatically a failure.  You can fail to keep your chastity, you can fail to keep your self-respect, you can fail to honor the other person and your future spouse – to be sure.  Those are failures.  But breaking up with someone who isn’t right a fit for you beyond that moment does not mean the relationship was a failure, especially if you enjoyed each other in a wholesome way and grew and learned important things about yourself and life.  My point is that not all relationships should involve marriage.

Conversely, marriage, from a legal perspective, is not about esteeming a romance.  It is about perpetuating a stable society.  The law really doesn’t care if there is no romance or passion.

My latest analogy, like most of them, involves getting the other side to see our point about marriage meaning something specific (something that involves both a man and a woman), and the law should only recognize that specific thing as marriage.  So here it is…

HIV is a certain kind of disease.  What if I were to form an organization with the purpose of fighting multiple sclerosis, and then demanded government funding and benefits assigned to HIV groups?  Isn’t fighting MS a valid cause?  Isn’t MS a disease?  Shouldn’t I get the same access to the same funding and the same benefits and the same social standing as anti-HIV organizations?  The answer to the first two questions is yes.  The answer to the last question is no, because MS is not HIV.  I am free to form an organization that fights HIV, no matter how much my heart is in fighting MS.  That I choose to form an MS-fighting organization does not mean that HIV organizations should be forced to welcome my organization as one of theirs.

Nonprofits get certain benefits and can call themselves nonprofits, while for-profits can’t use that designation.  Why?  Because they are different kinds of organizations.

I couldn’t get a fishing license and then go out and hunt a deer, no matter how much I prefer venison over fish.

It would be fraud for me to proclaim that I was organizing a Gay Pride parade and then only let anti-gay groups march.

I can’t sell meat and claim that the dish is vegetarian.  I can’t sell pork and claim that it is kosher.

Why?

Words mean things.

I could get a really good lobbying effort going that would change the laws so that I could legally sell meat dishes with a vegetarian label, but would that make the dishes vegetarian?  No.  It would devalue the legal term by watering down its meaning, and the general rule of law would be damaged because it would be in conflict with reality.

The legal definition of marriage, throughout every known society, has always been about joining the two sexes.  As the same-sex “marriage” activists point to previous acceptances of polygamy, or prohibitions against “interracial” marriage, they actually draw attention to the fact that while laws about marriage have changed in the past, throughout all of those changes it has never been in doubt that marriage requires a bride and a groom.

When I am asked why I “oppose ‘gay marriage’” I need to remember to explain that I’m in favor of keeping the law in line with reality, because marriage isn’t about validating a relationship.  It is about society and forming a microcosm of that society by including both of the sexes.  I believe that both women and men are essential to society, and neither one should be excluded when forming that societal unit.