Why I don't support one-size-fits-all plans for adult relationships

 I'll be honest. I don't care what it's name is, or if it is a religious ceremony or not. Why should I? What does that do for me?

However, the government didn't create kids for me, my wife and I did that. We don't need the government to have kids, but we do need to govern our household as a part of raising our children. What I do need is for the government to recognize and support that.

Children are raised in all sorts of households. And you know who I admire for having a tough job? I admire foster parents. They get credentials every year and they get checked on even more regularly than that. If that isn't enough, they have to deal with the most jaded kids who have nothing to lose, and often know how to game the legal system better than you do. Foster parents are care-takers of the state's responsibility, and its not easy. There the state did give them the children, and takes direct responsibility for them. All because their real parents didn't take responsibility for them.

I'm not against civil unions or foster parents. Both are needed. But I tell you if everything is a civil union, just two adults who can take care of a child just as well as any other two adults, all parenting will be more like foster parenting. Its the subtle change from parenting to just fostering what the government has to take responsibility for. Not because the state is grabbing it from the parents, but because the parents are leaving that up to the state to take care of.

Do you know who's between those extremes? Divorced parents. They have to raise their children in a constant power struggle with the state and the ex-spouse. Ultimately when they fight, the state decides what will happen. I don't admire them as much as foster parents, at least the foster parents are trying to be part of the solution. I just see the divorced parents as part of the problem (though I do know many situations where it really is just one of those parents who is the real problem).

For all of our laughing at short celebrity marriages, lets be honest ... they might as well have been a civil union. If that is all people think their marriage is what happens between the adults, that's what people do. They simply look after themselves.

And that's simply where I'm coming from. Isn't it telling that the people who think marriage is a joke are the ones wanting to remove "man and woman" from its definition. That is the main thing tying marriage to its real responsibility, that a man and a woman create kids together, and that child and each spouse deserves love and tolerance from the others. They work to govern together. Their kids should know their parents, and they should learn responsibility, love, and tolerance from how their parents work to govern together.

A bit longer than I intended, but if there is a point to what I'm saying, that's it.