An Okie looks at Gay Marriage

 

"To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical." –Thomas Jefferson

            The Supremes say that we can’t define marriage as one man and one woman.  What then is a marriage?  Can you marry a boat with a corporation?  Constitutionally they both have personhood.  Does the corporation consummate the marriage with a nice Mercury outboard? Does the boat keep coming back to the dock even though the corporation does a side deal with Johnson or Evinrude? 

If there is no defining factor of a man and a woman, how do you define a marriage?  For thousands of years us Okies thought we knew. It was one consenting man and one consenting woman.  Age of consent was defined as a socially agreed age corresponding to ability to make babies and procreate the human race. Procreation should come with a long-tem commitment to raise the young.  Simple.  And the prohibition against close relatives marrying was to avoid genetically transmitted conditions.  Only European royalty interbred until they got hemophilia.  Even hillbillies avoided hemophilia.  But if we now allow people of the same sex to marry, what’s the biological criteria for marriage? Love?  Then practically none of the European royalty were really married.  Chuck and Di weren’t the first who went on the rocks.  Age of consent makes no sense other than an arbitrary number when applied to gays. Age defined how? Some mindset of maturity? Did you really think Gomer Pyle or Liberace were mature enough?  But then who is to say a 15 yr old is more mature than a 12? Will we start giving mental tests over consensual relationships? Or do we just admit the N. American Man-Boy Love Ass. (Sorry. How do you abbreviate Association?)

            But even if society can agree upon an age of consent, can a brother marry a brother?  Dude, I really love my brother! A mother, a son?  How about those polygamists on the Discovery Channel?  Can you have the bonds of matrimony between two women and a dog?  There is no a priori biological fact that can prohibit why this should not take place--if the male/female procreation tradition is disallowed.  And then Hollywood stars often declare themselves as a corporation.  Can “Richard Burton, Inc.” then form bonds between itself and, say, a dozen women?  Well, I mean a dozen more than he already had.  There is after all, no bigamy when a corporation marries, is there?

            And then what happens when a religious faith, such as Judaism or Christianity, has Scripture (God’s Words) which are not favorable to gays?  Will there be a coming persecution of faiths because they are deemed bigoted? Will churches have their 501C3 status revoked if they don’t hire gays or if they perchance quote scripture?  Will Hobby Lobby have to stop selling fake decorative Bibles and rename the bunny the Spring Bunny?  But who would dream such a thing will ever take place?  It would take something weird.  A President that would say, “we ought to just disallow religious schools.” or an attorney general who would say, “a church does not have the sole right to determine its ministers.”  Oh, wait.  That has already happened, I guess.  But don’t worry.  There will be no persecution just as The Boy Scouts will not have to have gay scoutmasters.  Hey, no age of consent! That means no child molestation can be accused under that tent. I’m shopping for a Swiss Army knife with mace for my grandsons.   

            I’ll have to go check the mailbox.  I think America’s new address is One Heckuva-Mess St. Everyone thinks if they favor gay marriage they can’t call you a bigot and you won’t loose everything like Paula Dean.  No sir!  I never used the N-word!  I always called those nuts at Christmastime, Brazilian toes, even 40 years ago.

            My prediction is that a later day Gibbons, will someday write “The Rise and Fall of USA.”  And I believe he’d conclude that the demise of the family had a lot to do with a nation born out of wedlock and raised by women or just a nanny state, without a father’s affirmation, prone to emotional maladjustment, without goals and accomplishments, a nation that finally couldn’t even recognize marriage when marriage stared them in the face, lacked enough discipline to stop spending its finances into crisis, had no male leadership and was overcome by stronger nations.

            But you understand, I am just a dumb Okie.  None of this will probably happen.