The Virginian-Pilot
©
Before there was an actual thing called "marriage," humans were making light of the variety of arrangements and dynamics, its permutations and analogues. Aristophanes wrote comedy about the power of sex to change minds hundreds of years before Christ was born. The phenomenon of office spouses is so modern that it gave rise to a movie more than 80 years ago. We kid that people are married to their work, to golf, to fishing, to the sea, to the mob.
We less frequently make jokes about men married to men, or women to women. Not because gay relationships are any less internally ridiculous than straight unions, but because as a society we're still fighting about whether homosexual marriages should be allowed at all.
This is an increasingly settled subject, at least in the secular world. Washington state's legislature approved gay marriage this month; a federal court decision a few weeks ago would restore that right after a California referendum tried to take it away. New Jersey is in the middle of a similar fight.
Same-sex marriage is legal in New York and Connecticut, D.C. and Iowa, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and in countries as varied as South Africa, Argentina, Belgium and Iceland.
Whatever you think about gay marriage, it's here. Lawmakers in Richmond can stand athwart history shouting "Stop!" as loudly as they like, but gay unions will come to Virginia, too. It's demographically inevitable. What isn't settled yet is what we'll call them.
Despite increasingly pointed attempts to pin it down, the word "marriage" has a variety of modern weights and meanings. For Catholics, it is a sacrament. In other religious traditions, it is a ceremony of varying importance. Marriages can be entirely civil, with no religious component. There are even common-law marriages, which arise from assertion, pretense or inertia. Virginia doesn't allow those, but it does recognize all varieties of heterosexual marriage - including the common-law version - from other states.
Under a 2006 constitutional amendment, "marriage" of any kind is unavailable to gay couples in Virginia: "Only a union between one man and one woman may be a marriage valid in or recognized by this Commonwealth and its political subdivisions."
The state doesn't even permit homosexuals to enter into contracts that approximate the privileges of marriage, a prohibition constitutionally laughable on its face.
Some churches may never perform or endorse gay marriage. That's their decision. What the state does in my name is another matter.
The justification for limiting the definition of marriage is that heterosexual unions must be protected, an effort that has entirely failed. Half of marriages end in divorce. Married couples will soon be a minority. In other words, "marriage" has already lost its meaning. The trouble started decades ago, so gay marriage is demonstrably not the culprit, though facts have never been a factor in this conversation.
As a guy who makes a living with words, I find the effort to strictly define "marriage" entirely baffling. Words don't get their denotations from legislatures or from finger-shaking moralists. Words get their meaning from how people use them.
Legislators kid themselves if they think they have any control over that.
They certainly can, sadly, decide whether to war about extending the same civil benefits that my wife and I enjoy. Needless to say, it's a moral outrage for the state to institutionally discriminate.
I take small comfort in the fact that the current crop of crusaders will eventually fade from authority. But I enjoy that comfort entirely because their petty bigotries don't affect my life. Thousands of gay couples in Virginia aren't so lucky.
I was married by a born-again preacher I'd never met before in the living room of my parents' house. It was a civil ceremony, but it used religious language. We were surrounded by friends and family of all faiths.
Thankfully, Maryland didn't try to tell me what to call it. I call it a "marriage," because that's the right word. But if that precise ceremony had occurred between two guys, or two women, I'd call it exactly the same thing without thinking twice.
Some Virginia legislators won't approve. I couldn't care less. Neither does the English language.
Any attempt to legislate the meaning of a word is absurd. But it's certainly not funny. In the end, "marriage" will mean precisely what each of us decides it means. And that, thankfully, will evolve over time, no matter how hard Richmond tries to stop it.
Donald Luzzatto is The Pilot's editorial page editor. Email: donald.luzzatto@pilotonline.com.
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There are many families being raised by same sex parents
This week an old friend came to visit me and her and her husband lived across the street from us in the 1990s. Time has not been kind to her, she divorced, and lives in a mobile home on her parents land . Her daughter has 3 kids and is going through a divorce and lives with her. Thus for the last couple years their household has consisted of a grandmother, mother and three kids all less than 5 years old. Why is this relationship anymore (or less) damaging to these children than if mom were living with her sister, mom's girlfriend, or lesbian lover? Today's relationships and families are in deed becoming more and more blurred as people enter into relationships that benefit them and their circumstance than conforming to what others want them to be. I would like to hear what the homophobes response is to family units like this.
There are many families being raised by same sex parents
This week an old friend came to visit me and her and her husband lived across the street from us in the 1990s. Time has not been kind to her, she divorced, and lives in a mobile home on her parents land with her own. Her daughter has 3 kids and is going through a divorce and lives with her. Thus for the last couple years their household has consisted of a grandmother, mother and three kids all less than 5 years old. Why is this relationship anymore (or less) damaging to these children than if mom were living with her sister, mom's girlfriend, or lesbian lover? Today's relationships and families are in deed becoming more and more blurred as people enter into relationships that benefit them and their circumstance than conforming to what others want them to be. I would like to hear what the homophobes response is to family units like this.
thelma drake once told me
During this 2006 time period, and George W. was on a crusade against gay's, Thelma Drake told me that maybe in 100 years gay's will be able to marry in Virginia. I politely told her that gay's would marry in Virginia in her life time, not 100 years later. I honestly could not believe she had made such a statement, but then again she was a puppet of George W.
I suggest the gay and lesbian community
I suggest the gay and lesbian community simply let this one go as long as they get the same rights and benefits as traditional 'marriages' allow.
Personally, I've been married forever and whether two women or two men want to call their union 'marriage' isn't going to make one fat farkle of difference to me or my 'marriage'.
I'd love to hear how those right wingers screaming about the sacredness of the word 'marriage' were feeling when they tossed aside 'wives', for new models. Newt's as perfect an example as I can think of considering that from all we've heard of him, he treated wife 1 and wife 2 like worn out shoes. But, I guess he's now with his real wife and involved in a real marriage. Give me a break.
Hypocrisy; plain and simple.
"marriage"
If homosexual couples want to share the misery of their heterosexual counterparts, have at it!
This would not be an issue if the government were not involved in the first place, but since it is, why not make this entire situation simple. Simply have the government issue "civil union" licenses to any pair of consenting adults who wish to be legally joined as a "unit." Then any of them, heterosexual or homosexual, can have whatever type ceremony they wish to solemnize the "union" and call it what they wish.
A Clintonian compromise.
Different word. Same rights and benefits.
Perhaps a Clintonian parsing might offer an acceptable compromise to both sides of this issue.
Clinton, of the "depends on what your definition of is, is" and his finesssed "don't ask, don't tell" policy might offer this solution.
Preserve the definition of the word marriage to mean "a union between one man and one woman." Concede that to the opponents of gay marriage.
However, come up with some other universally accepted term, for instance union, uniting, personal contract, joining, [I wish I could come up with some more applicable words here, but it's early Sunday morning].
But whatever the "word," it would mean the same thing in a same-gender sense AND SHOULD CARRY WITH IT ALL THE SAME RIGHTS, BENEFITS, AND LEGAL RECOGNITION as the word marriage does in a man-woman situation.
The word marriage and the heretofore traditional definition would be preserved.
Those same sex couples wishing to be equally recognized and afforded all the same rights, benefits, and protection under the laws would be so recognized under a different "word."
But if the word marriage is the hang-up and insistence on its particular applicability in same sex situations is where we are and will remain a primary issue, it may be a long tortuous time before resolution.
Sure....
Because seperate is always equal....right?
Not A Settled Concept: It's About Too Much Government
Had you done some research, Mr. Luzzatto, you would know that legal, regulatory concepts of "marriage" have been almost nonexistent throughout most of human history.
Regardless of culture or time, it has generally been the case that any two (or more) human beings who wished to be regarded as "married" by their society simply declared themselves to be so. Their private vow was the only necessary contract.
Government had no place in it.
This was true in America up until just after the Civil War. Then, some states created marriage license requirements. They hoped to use government's power to impose licensing as a way to prevent interracial marriages through intrusive oversight and regulation.
Not a pretty idea.
Today, most people believe that government has no right to approve or disapprove relationships between consenting adults.
Which makes for the profound irony in your hand ringing over the concept of gay marriage. You want government to use the same process of regulatory control that it created to prevent one type of marriage to now "legitimize" another.
All of us would be better off if government just got out of the way. For most of human experience on Earth, there has been no barrier to "gay marriage" per se. Only now -- when government attempts to regulate such things -- it becomes necessary to fight for rights that existed in the first place.
Marriage has be regulated for thousands of years
There are conditions for the numbers of wives, inheritance, divorce, payments, punishments for adultery, etc. that have roots going back long before Christianity or Islam.
Since often government and religious laws were intertwined, it may not seem obvious by today's standards.
But the modern marriage laws are meant to protect a spouse from abuse and abandonment. There are child support, inheritance, property, debt responsibility and medical care laws.
None of these could be enforced but through the power of law. And much of the marriage law is contract law. Church doctrine or just personal whim cannot address such problems with the power of enforcement. Particularly since we are a nation that constitutionally guarantees freedom of religion and enforces that by keeping the state and the church as separate as possible.
We keep the law and the sacred from overlapping as much as possible.
(Of course, that erupts into controversy fairly often, usually around election time.)
Times have changed
In the modern world, legal marriage is the necessary recognition of who people's legal and contractual connectedness. Denying that recognition based on race, gender or any other specification is wrong and creates nothing but legal confusion and personal heartache.