Some things should not wed

I wrote most of this a while ago, but never posted it. The idea has been percolating for some time, mostly in the form of conversations with gay friends. It also went through the Dad filter. I find some comfort in the fact that people who listen to me on the subject don't beat me up, even if they raise an eyebrow. To commemorate the beginning of civil unions in New Jersey, and because I needed to take a break from whining, I'm finally going to throw it out there:

I am (at this time) against legislation allowing gay marriage.

But perhaps not for the reasons you think. My problem with gay marriage is not with homosexuals. Or heterosexuals. It's with "marriage". I think a lot of people, even in the allegedly "red" states, would agreee. We need to define marriage, and it's a BIG problem. "How big?", you ask. Start with this.

Does it make any f---in sense that someone in a collar can pronounce you "man and wife" based on the "powers vested in [him/her] by the State of _____"? Freedom of religion is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution, and the separation of Church and State has been interpreted for some time. Yet 200+ years later it took unions that some people didn't want to bring a seemingly obvious problem to the forefront. Yes, we've mixed Church and State. (This is, BTW, the couple to which my titles refers.)

What else can you say about ministers being "vested" with the power to perform a union with implications on taxation, next of kin, and inheritance? It should never have happened; but with 200+ years of "stare decisis", is it not easily reversed.

The first step would be to separate the civil legalities from the religious event. Sadly, perhaps, I think the simplest way to do this is to let go of the word "marriage". When people object to "gay marriage", most are (in my estimation) objecting to the vision of two men, one perhaps veiled, standing on the altar of their church. They care notably less about whether a man's partner is automatically made his proxy for health care decisions.

In reality, though, the rights to shared health benefits, adoption, and hospital visitation matter more that the word "marriage". As long as marriage is equated with a religious ceremony, we can't win the argument anyway. Truth be told, we shouldn't. One edge of the sword of religious freedom is that we can't make a church bless homosexual unions -- they will have to come to it themselves, as they lose members to better theologic arguments. So I suggest, for now, that we let the word marriage go, in favor of a more important conversation about civil rights. Call them civil unions, mawwaiges, or whatever -- they are a place to start. Once the government recognizes the rights, we can petition our individual churches to use whatever word we want. Giving up an 8-letter word for a few years isn't much of a sacrifice if it allows committed couples to realize the appropriate legal benefits sooner.

So, in the run-up to the 2008 elections, I'll be looking for people who grant legal equality to homosexual partners, and I won't ask them to sacrifice themselves on a pyre of "gay marriage". Think about it.

And my congratulations to the newly "unifed" in New Jersey.