"Now, I am not a huge believer in marriage, myself, because it just never seemed necessary to me to further my commitment to someone."
I just wanted to comment on this statement you made. First, a disclaimer: I am one hundred percent in favor of gay marriage, and although I am religious, my religion actually advocates for the legalization of gay marriage, so I (luckily) have no conflict there. My point being that I'm on your side, and this is not meant to be confrontational.
Anyway, I just wanted to say that the sentence I quoted above made me a little uncomfortable. As you rightly pointed out, your personal beliefs should not be forced on the legal system, but, in my opinion, this isn't a matter of belief. It's an issue of civil rights, and not just whether certain couples have the right to "further [their] commitment to someone else". That's not what LEGAL marriage is about. That may well be the purpose of religious marriage, but we have to separate these two ideas. Civil unions, or simply legal marriages (that is, a marriage legally sanctioned by the government) should be wholly separate from the extraneous wedding ceremonies performed by religious officials. Marriage, as a modern institution, is about certain legal rights and benefits, and it is fundamentally un-American to disenfranchise one segment of tax-paying citizens.
I'm just trying to say that I think it's important that we divorce (hee hee!) our idea of marriage from the religious trappings of the past, thereby avoiding lines like "I don't believe in marriage because I don't need to stand up in front of everyone I know just to tell my soon-to-be husband that I love him" (which I know you didn't say! Just giving an example of a statement that irks me). That's not what marriage is, not legally, and the sooner we separate these two conflicting notions, the sooner we can have a proper, secular institution of civil unions to go along with the optional religious marriage.
Whew! Again, I hope this didn't seem confrontational at all, as I am completely in agreement with everything else you said. And I, too, eagerly await a proper logical argument against gay marriage so that I can really sink my teeth into something :)
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Re: Sanctity of Marriage...as if...
Date: 2006-12-03 03:45 am (UTC)From:I just wanted to comment on this statement you made. First, a disclaimer: I am one hundred percent in favor of gay marriage, and although I am religious, my religion actually advocates for the legalization of gay marriage, so I (luckily) have no conflict there. My point being that I'm on your side, and this is not meant to be confrontational.
Anyway, I just wanted to say that the sentence I quoted above made me a little uncomfortable. As you rightly pointed out, your personal beliefs should not be forced on the legal system, but, in my opinion, this isn't a matter of belief. It's an issue of civil rights, and not just whether certain couples have the right to "further [their] commitment to someone else". That's not what LEGAL marriage is about. That may well be the purpose of religious marriage, but we have to separate these two ideas. Civil unions, or simply legal marriages (that is, a marriage legally sanctioned by the government) should be wholly separate from the extraneous wedding ceremonies performed by religious officials. Marriage, as a modern institution, is about certain legal rights and benefits, and it is fundamentally un-American to disenfranchise one segment of tax-paying citizens.
I'm just trying to say that I think it's important that we divorce (hee hee!) our idea of marriage from the religious trappings of the past, thereby avoiding lines like "I don't believe in marriage because I don't need to stand up in front of everyone I know just to tell my soon-to-be husband that I love him" (which I know you didn't say! Just giving an example of a statement that irks me). That's not what marriage is, not legally, and the sooner we separate these two conflicting notions, the sooner we can have a proper, secular institution of civil unions to go along with the optional religious marriage.
Whew! Again, I hope this didn't seem confrontational at all, as I am completely in agreement with everything else you said. And I, too, eagerly await a proper logical argument against gay marriage so that I can really sink my teeth into something :)