Marriage? An Institution?

This post has me riled up, so it'll take the place of your usual 10 Things to Think About on a Friday.

Lately the talk in the media and our society about gay marriage has been growing louder as more and more same-sex couples desire equal rights with straight humans, and more and more of these straight idiots are trying to stop them. While this post happens to come the same weekend as Gay Pride up in San Francisco, it was actually not prompted by that, but by an episode of 30 Days I watched last night.

For those that haven't seen it, 30 Days is the brainchild of Morgan Spurlock, who spent 30 days in Super Size Me eating nothing but McDonald's. Following the success of the movie, FX gave him a program where for 30 days, an individual with strong beliefs on a topic goes to live the life of someone completely opposed to that belief. This season has seen an ex-NFL player live for 30 days in a wheelchair, an avid hunter live with a PETA activist family, and in the most recent episode, sent a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to live with a gay couple who had adopted children.

One of the amazing portions of this show is watching someone come around to a new point of view through their experience with someone they wouldn't normally talk to. And in almost every episode I've seen, there is a change of heart and understanding from both parties. The hunter spent 14 of his 30 days rolling his eyes at the idea that animals should be cared for, and then spent the next 16 changing his mind upon seeing how the cows were treated at the slaughter house farm.

Well, last night, I saw for the first time a completely close-minded individual make both herself and her religion look idiotic. One thing I find it important to note here is that whatever religion someone believes in, regardless of how "true" they think it is, was not created by the "god" that they worship. The Muslim faith was not created by Allah, Catholicism was not created by God. No matter what the supreme being of a particular faith happens to be, the basic fact is that religions are man-made.

The Bible, the Qu'ran, the Torah, these books didn't just magically appear from the sky. A hand didn't reach down and give these to us. They were written. And as much as people believe in and pray to their version of "god" these days, I have yet to see any of those "gods" write a book in a physical format for mass distribution, or actually make themselves manifest in any physical or known form whatsoever. This means then that these holy books are written by man...yep, I hate to break it to you, but plain old infallible man wrote what hundreds of million of people worldwide subscribe to as the words of god.

A little strange to think that if someone came out with a book now and said, "God spoke to me, this book is his word and vision," that person would be committed to an asylum or laughed at incessently, but thousands of years ago, it sounded like a great idea and picked up steam. I find it highly amusing that we teach Greek and Roman mythology in schools as history, yet don't have the broader intelligence to realize that there's not much difference between God and Zeus or Poseidon or Allah. They're all man-made constructs to help shape understanding of the hard to understand world around us and create moral frameworks for large populations of society.

In the end, religion, from how it was created, to how it was spread, to the beliefs associated with it, is about large scale control over other people and the desire to convert a disparate segment of the world's population to an alternate, and in the mind of the converting party's perspective, better point of view. We see this in all religions in various forms throughout history...the Crusades, the conversion of Indigenous North and South Americans following the "discovery" of the "New World," Mormon missionaries today, and most recently, the attempt by the religious right wing to curtail, limit or ban gay marriage.

Back to 30 Days....last night, I watched as a staunch Mormon went to live with a gay couple who had adopted children. Unfortunately for her, she was the least open minded person I have ever seen on the show, and worse, she was one of those people who think that they are taking other perspectives into consideration, even as they make comments that make it incredibly and painfully obvious that they aren't willing to consider anything else at all. After some very nice words and friendly overtures at the beginning of her stay with this family, she immediately and without hesitation started attacking their way of life and their choices. Now, if someone wants to do this kind of attacking, that's fine. But the problem with this woman was that anytime anyone around her stood up for the opposite point of view, she felt that they were attacking her (nevermind the fact that she launched these attacks herself), and immediately got more enraged and accused those around her of not considering her point of view.

The gay couple was surprisingly calm about all this. In trying to explain to her that they didn't oppose her right to live how she wanted, they attempted to point out that she was entitled to her opinion about gay marriage, but to actively work against it was to step on their rights as human beings. What I've noticed in most very religious people I've come across is that it doesn't matter if other portions of society are content to let them live how they want to live. The religious perspective of the right wing is not "live and let live," it is a perspective that if anyone does something that disagrees with their values, their rights are being infringed on, and they are more than justified in infringing the rights of others in order to create a world and society that fits their personal view.

To simplify...the gay couple only felt this woman was infringing on their rights if she actively tried to stop them from marrying or adopting, whereas the woman felt that just by existing, the gay couple and their adopted children were infringing her rights to not have gay marriage, refusing to see that her right begins and ends with her personal belief and does not extend to other peoples' lives.

There is a huge difference in perception here, and it's an important argument to consider when you live in a society that touts "freedom." Obviously, some freedoms are going to step on other people, so you need to have boundaries....the "freedom" to murder infringes on someone's freedom to live for example. But the argument that a couple being allowed to marry and adopt children is infringing on your rights, when your objection is based in a religion (that, let's not forget, is supposed to be kept separate from the state), is a horribly flawed argument that fails to recognize its own illogical premise that an established moral value should be imposed even on those that do not subscribe to it. The gay couple isn't trying to make this woman a lesbian, nor are they trying to tell her not to raise her children Morman, but the woman is trying to tell the gay couple that their union is not valid and that because of her personal beliefs, they shouldn't be allowed to have kids.

Before I get involved with the main point of this post, an examination of the popular idea of the "Institution of Marriage," I want to take a step back here and look at discrimination and the role that it has played in our history and culture. Unfortunately, the role has been a large and ugly one. People have historically discriminated based on gender, religion, and race. While the awareness and attempt at changing gender and racial discrimination has taken large strides, it is still far from perfect, and the current clashes between various religious factions show that as a global population, the divide continues to grow and the discrimination continues to evolve as differences in people are derided rather than celebrated.

However, historically we have found that looking back on past discriminations, we realize how small-minded and incredibly wrong they were. Slavery, the subsequent civil rights movement and the lingering racism that exists today is a great example of a mindset that never needed to exist, drastically needed to be changed, yet even with positive motion, here we are 150 years later living with the after-effects. For thousands of years, the female gender has faced discrimination in various forms, only in the last century obtained the right to vote in our country, and while we're slowly moving away from that mindstate, in various forms humans continue to come up with new ways to discriminate against other people, failing to recognize that there are rights and desires outside of the mainstream that deserve equal rights. Currently, the largest portion of discrimination in our country is aimed at the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender community, and a large portion of this discrimination is attempted to be justified by its proponents by religion.

I've long said that there is absolutely no basis for discrimination against gays and lesbians. There are two trains of thought on homosexuality...one thought is that it is naturally occurring and can't be controlled by someone being born anymore than they can control their race or the color of their skin....it's just who you are and how you're born. If this is the case (which I believe it to be), then the demographic deserves to be free of discrimination just like those other birthrights of gender and ethnicity. Opponents argue that homosexuality is a choice. While I've not met any gay or lesbian people that felt they had any choice in the matter of their sexuality, any more than a straight person feels that they could choose to be gay, this argument also offers no basis for discrimination as it is a personal choice, much like religion, and if that is their choice, they deserve equal protection under the law. I strongly believe that this extends to marriage and all the rights associated with it.

And here's what got me writing about this topic to begin with...in her argument against gay marriage and adoption, she charged, as so many arguing against these topics today do, that the ability of gay and lesbian people to join hands in marriage would somehow "destroy the Institution of Marriage." I got to thinking about how often you hear that phrase, "Institution of Marriage" thrown around like this marriage establishment is in some way sacred and above evolution. People against gay marriage, and particularly the religious right, as well as our dear village idiot of a President consistently make comments that they are trying to protect the "Institution of Marriage" by opposing gay marriage, that somehow this sacred bond of "man and woman" need not be revamped. Well, let's take a look at this institution....

First off, originally, marriage was a basic form of ownership for a man over his wife. In most cultures, he was allowed to beat her if he wanted (with some societies curtailing the types of objects he could beat her with), and could in most ways treat her as personal property. Marriages in some cultures were often (and sometimes today still are) arranged without any consent by the parties being married, and then further progressed to a state of economic union with dowries and basic purchase contracts that transferred ownership of some property or valuable object in return for the bride or groom. At some points in history, notably in Ancient Rome, gay marriage was allowed before it was outlawed. In certain cultures, polygamy was acceptable, usually for procreation practices or simply the male gender's assertion that they deserved more pleasure than the female gender.

With the advance of the church came the stricter rules that adopted policies of officially recognizing the unions in both law and religion, and were at this point further whittled down to the commonly held "man and woman" view of marriage that proliferates today. Jumping forward a few centuries to our current American society, this definition has become problematic, but more so than just for the simple reason that men and women want to have same-sex marriages. The problem is that the government has instilled a set of rights that come with marriage in order to protect the happy couple. If marriage were just a thing, just a ring, then the practice of keeping it between a man and a woman would be foolish. But as marriage is more than just a ring, as it is spousal support, health benefits, tax benefits, custodial rights over kids and a whole host of other protections, including validation in the eyes of the wider population, the practice of keeping it between a man and a woman becomes criminal and discriminatory.

So when people start talking about the "Institution of Marriage" like it's some sacred, unalterable thing, I have to laugh. Marriage throughout history has undergone numerous transitions and transformations, religiously, as well as socially. What was once more about ownership, convenience and money slowly transformed into something based on love and mutual desire. What was at one point more of a socially recognized contract has become now a government recognized entity with protections. While the people fighting gay marriage in our country may feel that marriage is a holy and spiritual thing that has always been the man/woman union with protections that it is now, this fails to take into consideration that marriage throughout history has been whatever the culture, society and participants of the time needed, required and respected.

And now, our society, regardless of the close-minded discrimination that still exists in some people, needs to recognize that it is time for a change. It is time to put an end to discrimination in general, and especially the discrimination against the homo/bi sexual communities. We have an ever growing population that deserve equal rights and protections, and need to have their right to love, security and the partner of their choice recognized. Our country's puritan idea of what marriage should legally be takes us further and further from what marriage should represent.

Marriage should represent union, acceptance, love and the pursuit of a better life together, regardless of the gender of the participants. It should form the jumping off point for a better society where people work together and mutually respect differing points of view. But when an entire subsegment of the population is denied these rights, and done so out of hateful discrimination, it pushes us all back. It forms in the next generation the idea that somehow certain people CAN be worth less than others. It forms in the minds of current adults that discrimination, or the repression of a group of people is somehow ok. It creates a set of circumstances that perpetuates intolerance, which is in all its forms detrimental to the health of a nation.

Maybe marriage is an institution, in that it has been around and established for thousands of years. But it's not an institution in the way that gay marriage opponents represent...a narrowly defined box that has always been the same. Marriage has constantly changed over the centuries as populations, religions and cultures change. And now, it's time for that institution to take another leap.