All Worked Up About Redefining Marriage
by J.T. Benjamin

As has been well-documented by my own humble self, the Holy Terrors are engaged in a War On Whoopie, an all-out campaign to banish all things not related to marital intercourse for the specific purpose of procreation. That is, everything fun about sex. These include pornography, sex education, sex toys, birth control, obscenity, homosexuality in general, and specifically gay marriage. To name a few.

However, in documenting the Holy Terrors’ war, I realize I have not spent much time exploring their motives. WHY do the Holy Terrors feel the need to remove the “FUCKIN-AY! THAT WAS GREAT!” out of sex?

I could simply presume that the War on Whoopie is being waged because the Holy Terrors are just a collection of self-righteous homophobic bigoted assholes who have nothing better to do than to stick their holier-than-thou noses into other peoples business because God Forbid people should be out there having more fun than they, that is, any fun at all.

But I won’t do that. I’ll instead take it for granted that the Holy Terrors have only the most noble motives in mind, and I’ll take them at their own words to discern their motives. Why, for example, do they so vehemently oppose gay marriage?

Taking the Holy Terrors at their word, they oppose gay marriage because it threatens the very institution of marriage itself.

Don’t believe me? Pay heed to the words of Fearless Leader. “(S)ome activist judges and local officials have made an aggressive attempt to redefine marriage [by legalizing homosexual unions] ….If we are to prevent the meaning of marriage from being changed forever, our nation must enact a constitutional amendment to protect marriage in America. …Today I call upon the Congress to promptly pass, and to send to the states for ratification, an amendment to our Constitution defining and protecting marriage as a union of man and woman as husband and wife.” (George W. Bush, Feb. 14, 2004).

I’m sure it was an oversight, but Fearless Leader’s call to arms was devoid of specifics. I still have a few questions. How does legalizing gay unions redefine marriage? What is the meaning of marriage such that it’s at risk of change, and what is so special about “man and woman as husband and wife” that therefore needs the protection of a Constitutional amendment?

In other words, why do people get married?

Because they love each other, of course. Why else?

Okay. But in all the media coverage of gay people wanting to marry, they say they want to do so because they love their partners and want to be with each other until death do they part. So why not let them marry? How does letting more people do it for love redefine it? Are there other possible reasons for people to marry?

As a matter of fact, over the course of history, people have gotten married for an enormous diversity of reasons: to seal political alliances, for business and property ownership purposes, to produce children, (heirs and laborers, mostly), and generally to maintain an orderly society. And what about love and sexual gratification? Well, that’s what mistresses, concubines, prostitutes, and fuckbuddies were for. According to Stephanie Coontz, author of Marriage: A History, (The Penguin Group, 2005), “(f)or thousands of years, marriage served so many economic, political, and social functions that the individual needs and wishes of its members (especially women and children) took second place. Marriage was not about bringing two individuals together for love and intimacy, although that was sometimes a welcome side effect. Rather, the aim of marriage was to acquire useful in-laws and gain political or economic advantage.

Only in the last two hundred years, as other economic and political institutions began to take over many of the roles once played by marriage, did Europeans and Americans begin to see marriage as a personal and private relationship that should fulfill their emotional and sexual desires. Once that happened, free choice became the societal norm for mate selection, love became the main reason for marriage, and a successful marriage came to be defined as one that met the needs of its members.” (pp. 306-307, Coontz).

With hindsight, the marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana is a perfect example of Ms. Coontz theory. The pairing was a mis-match made someplace other than heaven. Once the couple had produced Princes William and Harry, (“an heir and a spare”) ensuring the royal line would continue for another generation, Charles and Diana each found someone more well-suited to their wants and needs. The marriage ended, like so many others, in divorce.

In fact, you might say that the true fairy-tale wedding with the “happily-ever-after” ending is that of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles. Marry for love? To hell with the political consequences? Oh, you crazy kids!

Wait a minute, you might say. We’re living in the twenty-first century. Don’t tell me the Holy Terrors are still saying people should marry for reasons other than for love!

Okay, I won’t tell you that. I’ll let them tell you that.

Quoting the Catechism for the Catholic Church, Article 7, Section 1601: “The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring,” (emphasis added).

Until 1965, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965), states could legally prohibit the sale of contraceptives to married couples or to individuals. Why? Because birth control was anti-family. In upholding a similar law in 1917, the Supreme Court of Massachusetts held the law’s purpose was to “protect purity, to preserve chastity, to encourage continence and self-restraint, to defend the sanctity of the home, and thus to engender in the State and nation a virile and virtuous race of men and women.”

The Family Research Council website offers a lengthy article by Dr. Allan C. Carlson, PhD, entitled, Marriage And Procreation: On Children As The First Purpose Of Marriage.” Dr. Carlson himself acknowledges, “When Massachusetts officials facing the court case Goodridge v. Department of Public Health set out to defend that state's marriage law from a challenge by seven homosexual couples, their major line of defense was procreation. Making babies, the state argued, was the first purpose of marriage.” 

Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, the third-ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate, is a special piece of work. He’s got his eye on the Presidency and in his recent book, It Takes A Family, he complains among other things that too many women are working outside the home, (p. 94), public schools are weird, (p. 386), and “The notion that college education is a cost-effective way to help poor, low-skill, unmarried mothers with high school diplomas or GEDs move up the economic ladder is just wrong.” (Pg. 138) However, the junior Senator from PA saved a special message for the “Brian Lehrer” radio show on August 4, 2005. There, the Senator said, “(T)he point of marriage from a societal point of view is not to affirm the love of two people, and to make people feel good about who they are in their relationship, but in fact the point of marriage is for having children …If we change that, we devalue the institution and we change it, and re-orient it more toward parents, and away from children.”

Being the father of four myself, I can get behind the idea that we need to raise our children in the best home environment possible. However, I’ve known of too many negative “one man-one woman” family arrangements and too many positive “single parent” or “one parent-one significant other” or “two moms” or “two dads” or “one or more of the above” arrangements to trust the Catholic Church, a monolithic governmental bureaucracy, or a crackpot Pennsylvania politician to know what’s best for everyone.

So, I hate to admit it, but the President is right. We liberals are out to re-define marriage. I say a marriage ought to be about unconditional love and affection between consenting adults. Call me nut, call me crazy dreamer.

No, it’s okay. Go ahead. All together now. “J.T, you nut! You crazy dreamer!”

J.T. Benjamin
April 2006
jtbenjamin.blogspot

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"All Worked Up" © 2006 J.T. Benjamin. All rights reserved.

About the Author:  J.T.Benjamin says, "I'm a generalist. I write about what interests me, which is just about everything." His resume reflects the diversity of his interests. He's been a disk jockey, insurance salesman, private investigator, journalist, college professor, child advocate, political activist, truckdriver, thief,...doctor, lawyer, Indian Chief. He's currently trying to start a hippie commune in the Denver/Boulder area.
Email:  J.T. Benjamin

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