God, Government, and "Gay Marriage": A thimbleful of thoughts

This morning, there was a man on the radio speaking about so-called "gay marriage." One of his remarks caught my attention.

He claimed that, by lobbying to be legally "married," he and the rest of the gay community wanted only to be true members of society.

Of course, he isn't the first to say that, and certainly won't be the last. But it occurred to me that his statement implies a great number of things.

Underlying this man's claim is the notion that gays are outcasts because their marriages aren't recognized by most states. By making the issue one of marriage, marriage becomes the door into social acceptance. This ridiculously implies that only married people belong. But nobody is excluding singles from being accepted members of society.

Of course, I doubt this fellow believes unmarried men and women are societal rejects by being single. Yet, it is this kind of language that makes me wonder whether there is a self-ostracizing attitude in gay activism, despite the victim-talk. There may not be, but I still wonder. (Perhaps you can answer that for me?)

More likely, the man on the radio was trying to say the ability to get married is the door to acceptance. If this is what he meant, he avoids the ridiculous implications I listed above, but runs into new difficulties.

First, it is not merely the ability to get married that gay activists are after. They want the ability to marry whomever they please, regardless of sex. Because only those who can marry whomever they please are true members of society, according to the reasoning. But nobody can marry whomever they please. You can only marry whomever you please if whomever-you-please is the right sort of person. For instance, there are laws against incestuous marriage, as well as age restrictions, and rightly so. But there aren't too many folks lobbying to legalize incestuous marriage. So it seems a bit silly to complain about not being able to marry whomever they please unless they can provide a rationale stronger than one based on emotion––even if that emotion is love.

Second, by framing the issue in terms of membership into society, the fellow on the radio revealed the simultaneous desire of gay activism to be bound by old institutions and to be freed from them. I hear ad nauseam claims that gay couples make families which are as legitimate and healthy as those of heterosexual couples. What's so strange is that gay activism rallies against the "traditional family" as a narrow and constricting institution, and then does its best to reproduce it in every respect except the sexes of the couple. I would have expected that they would reject the whole institution of family life and promote a new social unit based on "free love." But instead, it seems that gay activism is incapable of producing its own structures or its own air of legitimacy. Instead, it must borrow from an institution it fears: the traditional family.

At any rate, the debate on so-called "gay marriage" raises an interesting question about the role of government in marriage and family affairs. I'm not entirely sure what the government's role in marriage ought to be, but I'm inclined to believe it shouldn't have a role at all. Homosexuals can already find compliant religious organizations that will marry them, as can heterosexuals. What does the government add?

If I were to get married tomorrow, it wouldn't make a whit of difference to the legitimacy of my marriage whether the government approved or recognized it, because my vows would be performed before an omnipresent God. But if I had no such reverence for God, I would feel a need to have my vows recognized by someone––someone with the power to declare a marriage into being. And the only being beside God whose will is law is the government: god on earth. Thus, the real question seems to be one of legitimacy, which government sanction promises to provide.