Abolish Marriage

Part the second on gay marriage

Before I get to gay marriage, I am going to go around the bend, so please bear with me for a little bit. He wasn’t an American because America hadn’t been created yet, but Roger Williams is my favorite American. He was a Puritan, because he thought the Church of England wasn’t pure enough, and with many other Puritans, he traveled from England to the New England colonies seeking freedom from religious persecution, but when the Puritans started telling Roger what he could say as a minister in his church, he said, If it walks like a religious persecutor, and it quacks like a religious persecutor, why I do believe it’s just like the Church of England persecutor ducks that I fled, so he refused to stop honking like an indignant goose. Consequently the Puritans were going to ship him back to England with a sign that said REJECT, but he skipped town to a bad neighborhood where the only people who lived there were Indians.

The Indians rather liked Roger because he took the trouble to learn to speak their language, and he told the Puritans that they should pay the Indians for the land they had helped themselves to. The Puritans would have said, Besides being a heretic, you’re also a Politically Correct nutcase, too, but that insult hadn’t been invented yet and we haven’t paid the Indians for their land yet, though some of them figured how to get some of it back by getting palefaces to buy cigarettes from them or put money into  their slot machines and on their roulette wheels. (Seems only fair, not to mention traditional, since the Indians gave us tobaccy and we gave them firewater so you can see we had a constructive relationship right from the getgo.)

So the Indians gave Roger some land, and Roger started a colony for all the other nutcases who wouldn’t worship the way the Puritans told them they should, and he called it Rhode Island, and he said that civil government should make sensible rules such as Don’t murder your neighbor even though he has loud parties and keep those rules separate from religious admonishments, such as which God to think of when you say God Damn You to Hell to your neighbor with the loud parties.

Nevertheless, Roger Williams remained a devout Christian to the end of his life, though he eventually refused to join any church because he never found a church that was pure enough for him. He was a difficult fellow.

I am not a Christian, but Roger Williams is my favorite Christian. I am a difficult fellow also. Not only that, I have a bad attitude.

However, if I have a bad attitude (and I do), it is not Roger’s fault, it’s my own fault.

For example, I don’t mind if you want to say under God when you salute the flag, but I don’t think it’s the state’s business to tell us to say that.

I think it’s reasonable of the state to say you shouldn’t form a sexual union with a 12-year-old child because the child isn’t a consenting adult human, and it’s reasonable of the state to say you shouldn’t form a sexual union with a Labrador retriever because isn’t a consenting adult human, though I’ve known some Labs that were more grownup than some—well, never mind. We won’t go there, and neither should your Lab.

Stay with me. I am going to propose to you.

For a while I was stuck on the term marriage. Because many Christians have told us that marriage is a union of a man and a woman. I’m not going to argue with them about how marriage should be defined. Finally, I solved my dilemma. I think we should abolish marriage as a function of government.

Here’s my proposal, dearly beloveds.

Consenting adults should be able to form sexual unions, though we’ll call it something more dignified because my three year old granddaughter probably shouldn’t learn to say My mom and her sexual partner before she’s four years old, at least. And people who form sexual unions, or civil commitments, or whatever we decide to call it, will have sensible rules about raising property and sensible rules for dividing children—oh, oh, I think I’ve got that backwards, anyway, something like that.

Marriage should be a purely a religious ceremony, and your church should be able to marry anybody they want to and refuse to marry anyone they don’t want to and those decisions should not be under government control, so marriage should be separate from legal arrangements.

Now some people say (I’ve read messages from them) that if we let gay people hook up, next we will let groups of people do you know what in entire groups. Actually, there are such people, and there’s a name for the naughty arrangements they form. Close your eyes if the word is too much to bear. It’s called polyamory.

I’ve actually known a few in people in polyamorous relationships. It’s too complicated for me, as I can barely deal with living with one spouse and with raising one daughter, and now spoiling one granddaughter, but I didn’t swoon when a friend of ours explained that she was in such a relationship, and I don’t faint at the idea of people forming such arrangements and setting up legal contracts to regulate those parts of their lives that would benefit from such contracts.

The last thing I will say is rather grim. I’m not particularly an optimist about the human race. Christians tell me about the horrors of Communism and they have a point about secular ideas about improving society. Secular people tell me about the horrors of the Inquisition and the religious wars between Catholics and Protestants and they have points about the dangers of religious people who want to govern society.

As much as I admire Roger Williams, who believed a civil society could be formed by reasonable people; even during his lifetime he saw the citizens of Rhode Island fall into plenty of turmoil and many unreasonable arguments. He thought the settlers and Indians could live in peace, but before he died there was a terrible war between the white and the Indians of the area, known as King Phillip’s War.

So I am skeptical about any group (secular and religious) that claims to know how to regulate society for the best results. My suggestion for abolishing “marriage” as part of our legal system is unlikely to be adopted soon. In the unlikely event that it was, the results might be dreadful. The only consolation I can offer is that you heard it here first, so you would know who to blame. That’s always comforting.

Start collecting the kindling.