Guest Post: On the “Sanctity” of “Marriage”

I’m in the middle of moving to a new apartment and haven’t had the opportunity (or spare income) yet to set up an internet connection there.  To fill the void, here’s a guest post by @Argylestyle, cross-posted at his blog. – J Reed Braden

I am so sick of hearing that the argument against gay marriage is to protect the sanctity of marriage.  Seriously.  Apparently making sure marriage is only between a man and a woman is more important than focusing on any other aspects of the Prejean inspired “opposite marriage’s” problems…  Let me outline them for you:

1. DIVORCE.  I dare say divorce is the number one threat to the sanctity of marriage.  It’s described in the Bible as a sin.  Why aren’t they moving to outlaw it?

2. ADULTERY. OK. This is big. This is one of the commandments for fuck’s sake. Yet there aren’t any laws making it illegal or punishable.  I don’t understand.

3. ANNULMENTS.  You know the story.  A group of friends go to Vegas, drink a little too much, get married by Elvis, and wake up in the honeymoon suite on red satin sheets with a bad hangover and a new spouse!  Instead of taking those oh so precious vows to heart and trying to make it work, they take the easy way out and just pretend it never happened.  How is that protecting marriage?

4. REPUBLICAN MEN. Between the infidelities and the multiple marriages, they HAVE to be a bigger threat than gays.  Maybe in their misguided morality they think they are helping marriage by having more of them, but my understanding of marriage is that the less you have, the more successful you are…  Maybe if they outlawed republican men from marrying, they could protect the sanctity of marriage by reducing the number of extramarital affairs and subsequent messy ugly divorces.

5. CELEBRITIES. Not ALL celebrities, only the ones who seem to be trying to set a Guinness Book World Record for most marriages in one lifetime.  Last time I checked, this wasn’t a race or competition.  This isn’t a weird marriage version of speed dating.

6. NONRELIGIOUS CEREMONIES. If marriage is meant to be a contract between a man and a woman before God, then all of the people who are getting married outside of the church are insulting the sanctity of marriage, no?  Why has no law been passed that marriages are only allowed between people of religious (Christian) faith?

7. OLD PEOPLE.  Old people getting married are obviously not going to reproduce, so that threatens the intended purpose of marriage which is to propagate and have children.  I guess that would also include people who are not able to have children for whatever reason.  They can’t fulfil the requirement that marriage produces children, so they are obviously a threat to the institution of marriage and should not be allowed to marry.

What this says to me is that the RWNJ have more people to focus on besides the gays if they want to protect marriage.  When will they realize they need to pass laws outlawing divorce, infidelity & annulment?  When will they pass laws excluding republican men, celebrities, and old/infertile people from participating in marriage.  Hopefully they will realize that targeting these problems and groups will make much more headway towards protecting the sanctity of marriage that they are so worried about.

Of course, that probably means many of them will have to exclude themselves too.  But hey, I’m sure they won’t mind taking one for the team to further their extremely important moral fight for the preservation of the sanctity of marriage.

For more liberal rants, check out my blog: http://www.argylenerd.wordpress.com