Monday, February 23, 2004
A "most enduring human institution."
WASHINGTON (AP) - Jumping into a volatile election-year debate on same-sex weddings, President Bush on Tuesday backed a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage - a move he said was needed to stop judges from changing the definition of the "most enduring human institution."
Even the Republicans are doubtful about this. Seems an act of desperation on part of Dubya. The last Amendment to curtail a freedom was the one that prevented Americans from owning slaves. Unless we include the one that will prevent Bush from being President for Life.
Anyway, this "most enduring human institution" has & still does in many parts of world enable polygamy, child brides, & the oppression of women. Mr. Bush truly is an intellectual dummy. Throughout the world, throughout history, marriage has taken innumerable forms, including ones that were very informal with bonds easily dissolved; forms in which marriage could hardly be considered institutional at all. Marriage during Roman Empire was entirely contractual. In other places one could marry one's brother or sister. What we think of as "love" in marriage is a relatively recent, European concept. Marriage is for begetting children & establishing rights of property & heir; love is for one's lover, in one's spare time. Marriage isn't even an option for many child-bearing women in America, including one bitterly conservative woman I know who opposes gay marriages yet who never seriously considered marrying the father of her two children, resulting in severe economic hardships. So who is more "moral?" The heterosexual who rigidly defines marriage one way & deliberately chooses to live in quite another? (Perhaps she reasons that if she had gotten married it certainly would have been to man) Or the gay couple who assert a right to a middle class existence dignified by a legal & frequently a spiritual blessing, too?
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Even the Republicans are doubtful about this. Seems an act of desperation on part of Dubya. The last Amendment to curtail a freedom was the one that prevented Americans from owning slaves. Unless we include the one that will prevent Bush from being President for Life.
Anyway, this "most enduring human institution" has & still does in many parts of world enable polygamy, child brides, & the oppression of women. Mr. Bush truly is an intellectual dummy. Throughout the world, throughout history, marriage has taken innumerable forms, including ones that were very informal with bonds easily dissolved; forms in which marriage could hardly be considered institutional at all. Marriage during Roman Empire was entirely contractual. In other places one could marry one's brother or sister. What we think of as "love" in marriage is a relatively recent, European concept. Marriage is for begetting children & establishing rights of property & heir; love is for one's lover, in one's spare time. Marriage isn't even an option for many child-bearing women in America, including one bitterly conservative woman I know who opposes gay marriages yet who never seriously considered marrying the father of her two children, resulting in severe economic hardships. So who is more "moral?" The heterosexual who rigidly defines marriage one way & deliberately chooses to live in quite another? (Perhaps she reasons that if she had gotten married it certainly would have been to man) Or the gay couple who assert a right to a middle class existence dignified by a legal & frequently a spiritual blessing, too?
