Trading Words for Rights
President George Bush has now officially stated that he supports a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. I think this is completely misdirected energy on the part of the president. I don’t think pushing a constitutional amendment defining a word over what I presume to be religious reasons is a proper use of the time that your creator gave you. As this has developed over the last few weeks, I wonder if this country has ever gotten into such a big argument over semantics before.
The President said,
- “The amendment should fully protect marriage while leaving state legislatures free to make their own choices in defining legal arrangements other than marriage.”
Ok, so the Christian in him wants to make sure that his Church-sanctioned union is the only thing defined as “marriage.” He wants marriage to be defined as the union of a man and a woman, but he doesn’t want to rule over the “arrangements other than marriage?” Interesting.
I have a plan that I would like to propose other than a constitutional amendment. I am not saying it is the only plan, but I think it will work. I just think that it is better than wasting everyone’s time on this issue with ratification of the most storied legal document in the history of Gahd’s Green Earth.
- 1. Schedule a nice long pow-wow with the folks at Franklin, Oxford, and Merriam-Webster’s. You know; The dictionary people? We will simply have them define marriage more specifically and give it usage preference in the religious context so that every hetero couple on earth who was married in a church can have the “sanctity” of their statistically-doomed union. Ok?
- 2. Then we tell the same dictionary folks that we need a new word that will describe all the two-person, state-sponsored, rights-having unions that will be recognized in this country for any two adults who decide they want to make their relationship official, while retaining rights to a standard set of rules governing important things like taxes, inheritance and hospital visitation. There are already words available, but I think an all-new word will be a better option so there is no usage history for anyone to recall at a later date.
- 3. That’s right. This new word will describe the relationship between any two consenting adults. This is not going to open any doorways to multiple wives or any of that old-school Utah stuff. It also won’t open it up to other “religious groups” who think women should be organized into a harem for some cat that thinks he is the reincarnated jebus, or the second ray of the sun in charge of spiritual guidance while awaiting the arrival of the mother ship who will take you and all your castrated, Nike-wearing selves off to the promised land. Nobody is talking about allowing this kind of thing. So don’t bring it up.
You see the problem is that we have let the word “marriage” become far too important in the real world. I say, let it be a religious term. You can have it. As a straight, unmarried, non-religious person, I am going to grant you the right to take that stupid word. BUT, when you are outside of the church and you decide to choose someone as your partner, you will be referred to as a couple that is (fill in the blank with the conjugated form of the word that we had the dictionary folks come up with to mark any two adults as rights-having couples.)
I realize this might still be offensive to the gay community to not be able to use the word marriage. For that I am sorry. The only thing that I can say to that is, you already knew you were up against it with the Bible folk from many different churches. (Mind you, I didn’t say all the churches.) But really, you knew most of the churches were never going to accept you anyway as a gay couple. So let those folks have their own word. You don’t really want a word that people have historically used to exclude you anyway.
Give them words all day, as long as they are willing to give you rights.
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Trading Words for Rights
President George Bush has now officially stated that he supports a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. I think this…
Are you getting Amazon.com commission???? or are these some of your used books?
If you click through and buy something I get a small little chunk of change.
In that case mark me down for 10 copies of The Essential Guide to Lesbian and Gay weddings!
Oooohhh ga!
Licensed Domestic Partnership - LDP. You could add it to the end of your names like an LLC, or LLP.
My SW and I would now be known to the Gov’t as Johnson/Tankersley LDP, Taxpayer ID# 04-123445678.
Johnson/Tankersley L.D.P. (Licensed Domestic Partners)
My plan is to create an official designation that represents two consenting adults in a monogamus domestic relationship. This designation would be called a “Licensed Domestic Partnership.”
wonderful point of view. i especially like the ’statistically doomed union’ part. what is an SW mark? straight wife?
Mojo Mark has a longer post over on his site about this too. It is really interesting. Check it out.
Hey Mike. Thanks for taking time away from playing with your ballcock to come and visit my site.
(If you can’t figure out what I just said, go to leaphartdotcom.com linked on the left)
You’re getting at the key question regarding Mr. Bush’s announcement yesterday. Is this about words or about rights? If we could get to a place where straight couples and gay couples had the same rights and responsibilities under the law, I don’t care a bit about the nomenclature. I’m guessing that most of the country, straight and gay, could find a way to support that. The problem that looms is that the Musgrave Amendment, which is the version of the FMA that Mr. Bush has said he generally favors, isn’t just about semantics. It very clearly restricts both the applicability of the word “marriage” and the enjoyment of the “legal incidents thereof.” Meaning not only that gays can’t marry, but they can’t receive the governmental benefits of marriage by other means. It will be interesting to see if W offers any clarifications along these lines in coming days.
heh. Mike, SW is Sainted Wife. She’s a stay-at-home mom with two toddlers. I’ve got the easy job, I just go to work every day.
hey craig, the url changed. its http://www.baldrhetoric.com
i’m cancelling the other domain soon.
Got it… thanks.
Separate but equal. Hmmm, now where have I heard that concept before?
I don’t feel heterosexuals own exclusive rights to the word “marriage,” nor should the Constitution be written in such a way that it gives heterosexuals exclusive rights to such a word. This isn’t about semantics and the religious Right knows damn well it’s not. This is about their own prejudices against homosexuals. For the politicians, this is about maintaining a certain amount of tax revenue for the states; the more homosexuals you can keep legally single, the more people the states can tax at a higher tax rate.
All the anti-gay marriage folks need to stop talking out the side of their mouth and get real about the issue.