Militant Religous Right: Make like the pilgrims and sail away

The Supreme Court in Washington State is dealing with the whole gay marriage thing right now. Two lower court judges found the state “Defense of Marriage Act” unconstituitional and both sides have been making empassioned speeches on the court steps to bolster their cause. If asked for an opinion I guess I am for gay marriage, but I don’t really believe in the current institution of marriage so I am not that great a supporter.

I don’t think the state ought to be in the marriage business at all. I think that the state ought to be in the legal partnership business and all of the “rights associated with marriage” would be employed under the legal partnership. Divorce would be the legal dissolution of this partnership, and things would be run under an institution modeled under contract law. I think these contracts should be more difficult to form than marriages currently are, and they would require legal language at the outset to guide proceedings should a divorce later occur. The state has no business enforcing cultural and religious values upon the citizens and it is time the state abandoned the marriage business all together.

People have been on the news claiming that if you let gays marry then people will be marrying animals next (no I am not kidding, I wish I had tape of it).If somebody were stupid enough to want to form a legal union with a donkey or other animal, that the donkey would be given a competency test. Anybody (or thing) not competent to legally execute a contract couldn’t form a legal union. It would be just that simple. There are other laws to prevent sex with animals and incest, and we don’t need the “Defense of Marriage Act” to protect this institution because it would be legally robust unlike the current state of marriage.

Beyond the state’s legal unions I think “marriage” should become a religious institution only. There would be no state garnered benefit to these religous marriages. Then if people wanted to protect the institution of marriage they could work within their own churches to reform the institution. The problem is that these people assume that all citizens believe in the same god, the same religion, hold the same religious moral values and believe that everybody agrees on what a marriage ought to be.



Four out of 5 Elvis impersonating wedding oficials agree that the institution of marriage is rotting from the inside not from outside challenges like gay marriage.