Contra Matrimonium

The BBQ Pit
1

Marriage is an act of conformance, submission, chicanery and cowardice.

Marriage is not “between a man and a woman”. It’s between all the relatives thereof: stupid parents, venomous aunts, doddering uncles, senile grannies, incontinent grams and long dead ancestors both on the side of the bride and the groom; so that the whole lot of them become back-biting in-laws, able to point fingers and take some sort of perverse “pride” at the married couple. “Our daughter/son/niece/nephew etc. is properly married and here are the wedding pictures, replete with gowns, flowers, balloons (and the rest of insanity)!”

Whatever happened to Free Love?

This is not to advocate promiscuity. Personally, I’d be still living with the same woman, marriage or not. So what so great about the marriage? To compound the perversity, now homosexuals are craving to get married!

It is understandable for young men and women, who don’t know any better, to submit to the ancient tradition. Why would homosexuals try to assume the yoke? So they can inherit each other property? Nice!

Of course, gays are not seeking to conform to society, because everybody knows they can’t. If you gay, how would your marriage satisfy your red-neck thrice removed uncle, who’d rather bite off his tongue then admit to having a gay relative? Who’d dynamite his own house before he’d display same sex wedding picture inside it?

So, having nothing to conform to, homosexuals are trying to force the society to conform to them. They are using marriage as a weapon and means of access. Well, perhaps they should do just that. My advice: be careful, don’t shout, go slowly and employ temporary compromises; don’t expect society to change overnight.

For the rest of us, with all these heated debates raging around, let’s not forget one very old but still important thing: marriage is Superstition.

2

Bad breakup, huh?

3

Sleeping on the couch this week, are you? :smiley:

4

I’m guessing in-law trouble (either his own or his wife’s). Happy Thanksgiving, New Iskander!

5

And I apologize for quoting the whole OP to add one line. I hate it when that happens! :smack:

6

Marriage is an act of trust, commitment and bravery.

Marriage is two people standing up in front of their loving relatives and pledging their commitment to each other and to the principle of fidelity. It is two people standing before the law and saying “We commit ourselves to being one person in the eyes of the law”, and the law saying in return “we recognize your commitment and its value to society as a whole, and thus we support your pledge to one another.”

And now some homosexuals wish to submit to the ancient tradition. They wish to pledge their love and fidelity to one another and stand shoulder to shoulder with the rest of society. And in return for supporting the ancient tradition in this manner, they ask only to receive the benefits of other married couples: things like hospital visitation, the right not to testify against their spouse in court, the tax breaks that heterosexual married couples receive, and yes, the right to inherit each other’s property without having their wills endlessly contested.

Gays are seeking not to conform to society, but to join it. They know that nothing will satisfy some people. But still they wish to support the institution of marriage, already badly weakened by celebrity weekend marriages and quicky divorces. It is unfortunate, then, that so large a portion of society is trying to use marriage as a weapon against them.

Someday I fervently hope that this will cease. But in the meantime if gay and lesbian couples will accept temporary compromises I will not gainsay them. But at the same time I will not presume to tell gay and lesbian couples how meekly they should ask for their own equality.

For the rest of us, let us not forget one very important thing: marriage is a cornerstone of society, and a symbol not just of commitment within couples but of commitment to society as a whole. Do deny others the chance to join in this commitment because we feel we can somehow judge their love: that is superstition.

7

In some cases, this would be a desired result. I know people who gay all over the place just to piss off their nasty old Uncle Pete. Gaying is just what comes naturally, watching Uncle Pete’s forehead veins explode when they gay in front of other people is icing on the cake. Blow up his own house rather than display a picture of people in the process of gaying? Let him! If he did, they’d probably gay around the ashes and toast marshmallows, and Pete’d be out one house. Who would the idiot be?

I know who one idiot is, anyway.

8

Like most other things, including this board, it went subscription.

9

What if the tradition will not survive same sex inclusion?

Look, when people marry it is not as much because they want to, but much more because they have to. Marriage is one of those grotesque archaic things that cavemen invented when they decided to be respectable but didn’t know how to do it. Marriage may be the pillar of society, but it is wrought with coercion and deceit. There is huge difference between marriage and True Love.

Also, there is tremendous societal pressure for couples of opposite gender to get married, but there is even greater societal pressure for same gender couples not to get married. From society standpoint, traditional marriage and gay marriage are not akin, but exact opposites. That’s just the way society sees it. You want to change that? More power to you, but you gotta be clear what you are dealing with and what you are up against.

Sorry, but I’m really perplexed by this new delusion, presenting marriage as some kind of fruit from Paradise.

10

I believe marriage by coercion is invalid. IANAL, but entering into a contract where one partner is incapacitated (ie, drunk in Vegas) or forced (angry father holding shotgun to the back of nervous groom, standing beside heavily pregnant bride) is not enforceable.

If that’s how your marriage is, I feel sorry for you. I happen to be in love with my husband.

11

Keep your eye on Canada. Same-sex marriage is now legal in several provinces, and same-sex couples have been getting married in Ontario for months. Yet Canada has not yet collapsed into anarchy. Opposite sex couples can still get married, churches aren’t being forced to marry same-sex couples at gun-point…in short, the tradition is surviving just fine. With every day that passes in Canada, the idea that same-sex marriage is somehow a “threat” to traditional marriage holds less and less water.

Damn, you’re a cynical bastard.

I think it goes without saying at this point that I disagree totally. My wife and I have been married for five years; before that we lived together for two years. We chose to get married. No-one “coerced” or “deceived” us into it: we chose it willingly and with full knowledge of what we were getting into, and we haven’t regretted it since. Marriage is not the same thing as love, but there is not a “huge difference” between the two either: instead, they are complementary. They go together like a horse and carriage, like a man once said.

Depends on the society. Canada, for example, seems to be doing just fine treating both the same.

Oh, I’m quite aware that not everyone thinks as I do, just as not everyone shares your bizarrely cynical and bleak view of marriage.

“New delusion”? I think you’re the one who needs to open your eyes a bit. Not every wedding is a shotgun wedding, you know.

12

Since you questioned, I’m enjoying uninterrapted connubial bliss, thank you very much. But it has nothing to do with an act of marriage, we simply love each other. And if you think my denigration of marriage is an exception, just check the divorce statistics.

13

Still don’t get it, do you? What you talking about is not a true marriage. True marriage is when Aunt Betsy would say, “I met nephew Jim downtown today, and he had such a sweet young man with him. I wonder if they gonna get married soon?” Or Uncle Paul would say to his drinking buddies, “Here’s my niece Lizzie wedding pictures. Yes, that’s Josephine, the groom. All nice and proper.” What do you think is a chance of that in a next thousand years?

14

Try as he might, Jenaroph’s attempts to turn “gay” into a verb came to naught.

15

One.

And not only were scott’s family there to wish them joy… his mom tried to run everything. Yes, a traditional wedding :wink:

16

Perhaps it shouldn’t.

If it fails to survive, a new one will pop up to take it’s place. Maybe a better one. Who knows?

17

I don’t know why you started this thread, New Iskander. But it’s quite heartening to see your bleak cynicism and claims to know the mind of “society” so thoroughly repudiated by the facts and by the experiences of our fellow Dopers.

BTW, according to my dictionary “connubial” means “of or pertaining to the married state”. Perhaps not quite the word you meant to use to describe your own living conditions.

18

I agree with the sentiments in the OP about marriage, but I don’t see why deluded gay folks shouldn’t have the right to be as miserable as deluded straight folks, or any defense for making such a discrimination.

19

Who knows, perhaps we are living at the beginning of glacial change in human morals. I’m still sceptical, though. Forget about Canada, Europe or US. 90% of people in the world still practice arranged marriages, honor killings and stoning of deviants.

Anyway, the trick for gays who want to share the “blessings” of marriage in developed countries, is not to make people agree to their marriages, but to make people want the gays to get married. Otherwise, what spooje said might happen. Straights will make up some other even more exclusive custom, just leave that to extreme Right.

20

What can I say, the ‘marriage conspiracy’ is so deep, it even corrupted the language. Besides, we are legally married. We did it to please the stupid relatives.