The Erosion of Marriage

A couple of weeks ago, there was a hearing held at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford, Connecticut. Three bills were discussed at the time. One concerned allowing same-sex couples full marriage rights. This bill would actually call the union a "marriage" and would be recognized as such. The merits of this bill would (it was hoped), be transferable or enforceable in another state should the couple decide to move. If the couple was traveling in another state where one required hospitalization, it was hoped that this bill would be honored in that state as it was a full-fledged marriage in the state of Connecticut, and the partner would be allowed visitation rights as granted by marriage.

The other bill concerned not giving same sex couples a "marriage", but would allow what's called a "civil union". This would in effect give same-sex couples the rights of marriage at the state level without redefining "marriage", per se. This met with less opposition from religious leaders than the first bill that would grant marriage to same-sex couples. There were of course many religious organizations there that didn't want same-sex couples recognized in any way, shape, or form.

The third bill was DOMA, or the Defense of Marriage Act. It would define "marriage" as being only between one man and one woman in the state of Connecticut. It wouldn't specifically rule out in the future allowing "civil unions", but it would define marriage as the union of two individuals of the opposite sex.

The discussion that took place was an open discussion about all three bills. It allowed different speakers for the community to come before the Judiciary Committee. Many arguments were heard, and in all fairness, the committee did try to look at the argument from a civil and not religious angle, despite what many speakers said. At stake are 588 state benefits that are afforded the institution of marriage.

I was thinking this morning about many of the speakers (mostly religious in nature) saying how, if we as a society recognize same-sex unions as married, we are "eroding" the very thing that defines marriage - that we must keep it pure and protect it. Let's assume for the sake of argument that their concern has nothing to do with homophobia or gay issues. Let's also assume that their motives are pure and that all they want to do is to protect marriage. My issues are these:

Where were they when Tiny Tim married Miss Vicky on the Johnny Carson Show? The whole thing was obviously a publicity stunt.
What about all the shows on TV where a guy will date from a number of girls all at the same time, gradually weeding them out. When he is down to two left, he will pick the one he will marry. Don't you think that degrades marriage? I do, but no one seems to complain about that. These two people have known each other for what, two weeks? Then they get married and that's ok? Strange world.
The current survival rate for a marriage today is less than 50%. Why don't they spend their energies on trying to improve that figure? Isn't marriage worth it?
What about "Joe Millionaire"? It's somewhat like the other shows like Temptation Island.

I'm sure there are many more examples. It seems to me that all of these degrade marriage, all for the sake of entertainment. Maybe it's ok to degrade marriage for the sake of all the advertising dollars? Maybe our tactics are wrong. Maybe we gay people should just offer up money and see if we can get hitched. Hey, worth a try.

In some ways, it's like the issue of the "Gay Olympics". In the early 1980's, a group of gay athletes gathered and had the first Gay Olympics. The International Opympic Committee had a fit. They said they had special rights to the word "opympics" and that the gay athletes could not use it. They did anyway, and were taken to court. The gay athletes lost the case and The Gay Olympics had to be renamed to the Gay Games, which to this day is the name they still use. In the meantime, we have the Special Olympics, the Frog Olympics, the K-9 Olympics, Linguistic Olympics, among many others. In all of these cases, the use of the word olympics was never challenged, except for the Gay Olympics.