Love & Marriage - The 'Same Sex'

Love & Marriage - The 'Same Sex' Legal Controversey
Guest Opinion
By Stewart Francke

The divisive public debate caused by the Vermont same sex marriage/equal
rights court decision will soon come to Michigan, as it will every other
state, because it has to.
In explaining to my children, Tess & Stewie why people of the same gender
get married, I said that love, any kind of love, is legit in God's eyes
and our eyes and as real and as beautiful as the brilliant crimson cardinal
that sits on the crabapple every morning this winter. (They love him and
wait for him and because of a great supply of mulberries he hasn't let them
down).
You all might not agree with this, but it's going to come up in front of
you sooner than later (it actually already has in Michigan with HB 937 and
SS Trooper, I mean Sen Van Regenmorter in 1995).

Love and Marriage

Marriage is a little like hang gliding or scuba diving or even a near-death
experience--only those that have been there can provide any lasting insight
as to what it's about, why it works or doesn't work, why it's the most
enlightened experiment in human connection or why it may be mankind's most
preposterous folly.
There's really no telling unmarried people about it. Like those other
activities I mentioned, you can only know by doing, and there's no going
back.
I can't speak for my wife, but I got married for many reasons--most were
emotional, some societal, others never to be understood. It was important
for me to be jumping into something--into the circle of acceptance, into a
practiced art, out of my own panicky rebellion.
I didn't settle, as all dunderheaded, beer swillin', football betting
single guys will say of those that marry; I armed myself. If you haven't
noticed lately, it's a sometimes brutal world, with loyalty and honesty
being rare. If life is a game played against chaos and death, against
entropy, then marriage means having more home games on your schedule than
away.
This wasn't to be a treatise on marriage. It actually began as an
instinctive reaction to the Vermont court decision and the public reaction
to it. All this ongoing and pending legislation started me thinking about
what it is to be married, and the fact that no one ever called into
question my desire to marry the person of my own choosing. Also, my
current physical condition, where I'm looked at with confusion or even
disgust, has helped me consider the position of the outsider in America.
What a fool I was to underestimate how harshly we judge each other on the
surface aspects of initial appearance or lifestyle.
This legislation is (correctly) perceived by the gay community as a
double-barreled attack (and subsequent temporary victory) on gay rights.
I'm sure that anti-gay rights people and politicians find the impetus for
their resolutions based in some public employment of what they consider to
be moral.
But it seems to me that arguing about preestablished or preferred sexuality
is akin to arguing the morality of a tree; that is, it's
something that simply is, and will be, static and obvious.
This legislation obviously affects the gay community in quite demonstrable
ways. Yet it seems to me that opposing these decisions is an attempt to
give all of us the parameters of what a marriage is or should be. If you
don't think that affects you, if you happen to be a heterosexual, you're
wrong.
This sophisticated, modern and free society tends to be embarrassed by the
entire idea of morality and its Puritanical-Platonic manifestations. Yet
the moral is inherently tied to the democratic: The widespread feeling of
sympathy for the physically and spiritually quirky (what's derisively
referred to as "political correctness" by the conservatives, in this
society marks a huge advance in civilized living.
One woman in Vermont said, "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,"
which is about the cleverest thing I've heard from the religious right in
years. But what's known as the other or otherness in this culture--anyone
outside the accepted notion of what or who an American is-should never be
automatically associated with what's unaccountable.
Accountability, in fact, may be the only measure of a man or woman that the
government need concern itself with. The irony is that nothing, and I mean
nothing, leads to more stringent accountability than the shared promise of
a marriage, if you're really trying to live up to the oath. So the
questions should be ours, and they should be directed at the religious
right. For starters--Why are you not in favor of intelligent people moving
freely toward a life of societal accountability?
They would probably counter with the belief that it's simply wrong,
immoral, and stated as such in The Bible to conduct one's self in this manner and thus illegal for the state to condone behavior so contrary to
God's wishes.
Yet so often the word morality is used as a means of oppression, a cover
for political tyranny and failed imagination. For the sake of argument
let's call morality any action that is unselfish, kind and noble. Add to
that the fact that it's any action done with some sort of Karmic concern
(or The Golden Rule, if we need to invoke The Bible); that in the long run
we won't be sorry for what we've done, whether it's in line with some petty
human law or not. Or better yet: moral action is simply action which is
life affirming. The political nature of modern life--granting unknown
politicians conditional control over our lives---should only go as far as
allowing them to create general rules that promote human happiness.
Politicians tell me that same sex marriages are an "onslaught on the
American family" or that they "destroy Judeo Christian values". Well I
HAVE a family and I'm not sure what family values are. Either there are
real and inherent values in this world, things prior to our individual
existence, or there are not. And although we are free to behave any way we
choose, I'm not sure if I believe in an existential outcome, like that of
Tim McVeigh, who reached, after very little or very much soul searching,
the decision that it's good to blow other people up.
If there are real values, and I believe there are, and those values
celebrate, affirm and explore human life, then they should be extolled.
Anyone wishing to marry another person they've deemed fit for them is
saying to me that they've made some peace with their own idea of freedom.
They know that with that freedom comes a responsibility to be quiet, to
look and listen, to feel in their hearts and bones what God or Time
requires of them.
And that no law should really touch.