The last word on two stupid marriage freak-outs

I’d like to address two arguments I saw conservatives making yesterday in their sad funk over the Supreme Court making the entire United States more family-friendly.

The first is this: “I don’t support gay marriage, but I want government out of all marriage!”

On its face, this seems fair. Without government sanctioned/endorsed/licensed marriage, gays and straights would be on equal footing. Instant equality. Of course, the problems with this approach are obvious. The government currently provides approximately one-thousand benefits to married couples, ranging from joint tax filing, social security benefits, inheritance laws, to medical decision-making, insurance coverage, ease of immigration, etc. The reason for these benefits is to encourage stable families, an important goal in creating a stable society. If we got rid of those benefits, real families would suffer, with many suffering catastrophically. Then there’s the other problem with this approach. If not marriage, then what?

I think the crux of this argument is the unspoken next sentence: I want government out of all marriage. Marriage is a religious institution.

Defined like that, government benefits can still be provided to encourage stable families, but they’re limited to those couples that receive religious sanction. Atheists, agnostics or anyone who doesn’t want to get married in a church or doesn’t belong to a sanctioned church (sorry Hindus!), you just can’t be married. They don’t say it, but it’s what they’re really proposing. They want to use marriage as a tool for proselytizing and punishing those who aren’t religious. Basically, the argument amounts to the religious trying to take their ball and go home and I’m sorry, but the rest of America gets to play as well. You may think he did, but Jesus didn’t invent marriage.

The second argument I heard is that opening up society to same-sex marriage also opens it up to adults marrying children and animals. Sen. Rand Paul actually said on Glenn Beck’s show yesterday, “[I]f we have no laws on this people take it to one extension further. Does it have to be humans?” My father, an otherwise intelligent fellow, said the same thing to me once. Rational people should respond to this argument with a swift, “You’re a dipshit,” and let it go at that. But I’m not particularly rational, so I’ll take a crack at getting through to them.

Marriage (at least in most of the world) is at its heart a consensual arrangement between two people. Consent is built right into the ceremony. Whether a civil or religious ceremony, at some point the minister, civil servant or Joey will say, “Do you take this person to be your lawfully wedded spouse?” They will then repeat the same question to the other person. See, this is where they are determining that the two parties consent to being married. If someone says, “No”, then they aren’t married (shotgun weddings excepted, of course). So how does this relate to adults marrying children or animals?

Children and animals CANNOT GIVE CONSENT.

Children can’t give consent because of their age. We, as a society, recognize that they aren’t mature enough to give consent in a wide variety of situations, including marriage. And no one, save perhaps some NAMBLA folk, is arguing for lowering the age of consent.

Animals can’t give consent because they (1) can’t understand what marriage or consent is, and (2) couldn’t express that consent even if they could understand. Because animals can’t talk.

So stop with the slippery slope involving children and animals. It’s moronic and makes you look even more stupid than being bigoted does.

That is all.