Marriage Right, explained

I just want to take a moment and discuss the Civil Rights of Marriage and Marriage Equality. This is something that needs some clear cut understanding from everyone who wishes to be involved in helping people get married.

The right to choose someone to live with, sharing mutual domestic responsibilities and reciprocal trust, is a freedom of association. There is a right to protect such associations, and we acknowledge that they are effective and beneficial to recognize as a society. Same Sex Marriage and Gay Marriage, even when you read the most poetic and flowing explanations of what they see their relationship as being, are perfectly described with nothing more, and nothing less, than what I just described. I've debated this subject for over a decade, and I've never heard anyone describe their same-sex marriage as anything more than this. You can prove me wrong, but after all this time I don't think it will be likely.


But they aren't the only ones who describe their relationships in that same way. I've known sisters, male friends, young single parent with elderly benefactors they live with, who could describe their relationships with the same dependence, trust, community, commitment and care. What they don't have is the romance, or sex.

And why should they? Romance, lets be honest, is just a reason to have commitment and mutual trust (and even then it happens relatively rarely). If you recognize the mutual trust and commitment, you recognize the romance that generates it. Yet with all the one night stands, infidelity, it is clear that romance is not a perfect indicator of mutual trust, but mutual trust and commitment is the reason we need to recognize a couple as a domestic partnership, or civil union, or reciprocal set of beneficiaries.

But that is different than the right to marry. Although there are many people who feel that is all marriage is, real marriage and the right associated with it is more than that.

Our rights are rooted in our human capacities, we have a right to be whatever it means to be human. We have a capacity to love and share mutual trust, so we recognize that as a right. We also have a capacity to create a human, who in turn has rights associated with their humanity. We also have a natural capacity to create children, who in turn have rights to be recognized.

If we aren't recognized for our capacity, responsibilities, and rights for how we are born and how we give birth to children, we aren't being recognized for what our relationship really means. Our rights are being taken away and no longer recognized if marriage is neutered to just mean the same thing as the freedom of adult association I mentioned above.

Again, in all the years I've debated this topic, I've only seen the loss of that right confirmed time after time by those advocating we neuter marriage of its reference to a man and a woman. Some go so far as to say marriage was never about procreation. Some say it simply isn't about procreation in our new enlightened age.  In their mind logically proving there must be no such right, but in reality just confirming that is the very recognition they wish to remove. And removing recognition of rights is not enlightened at all.

Then there are "conservative case" neutered marriage advocates who only wind up apologizing for the loss, and promise that even if government doesn't recognize it we can still live it personally in our own hearts. They openly acknowledge the need, for which I greatly appreciate, but are eventually on a fools errand to remove government recognition of it in any case.

But marriage is a right, it is a right to join with someone in a life long union to express our natural capacity to create children. Marriage is socially the best preparation and guardian of the expression of that right. It is something more than what we recognize as same-sex marriage. And it is something that we need to preserve for the sake of all of our rights.