What is marriage?

[China Cat Sunflower]

Originally Posted by lunamoth

Lol! Good answer. I agree. I think though that allowing gay marriage will change the social fabric...just as women's rights and getting rid of slavery did. I think there is a certain amount of fear because when you 'allow' changes like this there is the feeling of loss of control.

(Of course, we don't really have all that much control anyway. It's pretty much an illusion. I think that realizing that can be very liberating.)

Yeah, I agree. The sky isn't going to fall if we, as individuals, stop worrying about what's going to happen to the "social order" if an historical wrong is allowed to be righted. That's how people get wound up and turned into political robots. Think of the attitudes about interracial marriage that were prevalent as recently as when we were kids. All the well intentioned yet hollow hand wringing about the fate of the children who "wouldn't know what culture they belonged to."

Chris

[bgruagach]

Interesting topic and great discussion!

Just a few comments and tidbits that might interest people...

John Boswell's book "Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe" explores the history of what appear to be church-sanctioned same-sex relationships in medieval times. Perhaps the current move to legally accepting same-sex relationships is not as new a thing as we might assume.

I've also got a very personal connection to this topic because I'm gay and am in a long-term same-sex relationship with a wonderful man. We will be celebrating our 20th year together this autumn. We also had a (non-legal at that time) marriage ceremony in front of our families and friends, officiated by the chaplain from our university, back in 1990. We're Canadians, and in 2003 we had a civil ceremony at Toronto city hall since same-sex marriages had just become legally recognized in our country. In Canada we are legally married -- and according to Canadian law it is an actual marriage (our Supreme Court rejected the argument that same-sex marriages should be called something different.)

When we had what we consider to be our "real" marriage back in 1990, our minister included a part in the ceremony when he spoke about how a marriage ceremony was not just about recognizing the commitment between the two people who were being married, but was also a commitment on the part of the friends and family who were present to support the couple and help guide them to building a healthy relationship that would last. That part really stuck with me and in my opinion it's one of the key reasons to have a marriage ceremony in the first place -- to affirm the support of the community for the couple as well as for the couple to affirm their promises to each other and to the community that they are now a married couple. The obligations are not just on the part of the couple, but also on the part of the community.

Oh, and another little detail about my own marriage: my partner and I are also raising two wonderful sons who we adopted from the US foster care system. (Raising kids must run it the family for gay and straight: My partner has a lesbian aunt who met her partner back in the 1950s and together they raised the kids one of them brought with her from a previous relationship. They're happy grandmothers and even great-grandmothers now.)

Legal marriage is important to provide protections for our children and for our spouses especially in times of difficulty. Denying those protections to vulnerable children and spouses strikes me as much more harmful to society than any supposed damage (to selfish egos, from my point of view) that might be done by legal recognition of same-sex relationships.

[China Cat Sunflower]

I'm impressed by the longevity of people's marriages. It's one of the things I find admirable and worthy of emulation. I'm not down on people who've divorced because I know how tough it can be these days, but I am extra impressed by folks who've been married 20, 30 50 years. I've been married eleven, but I got a late start. I'd like to give my wife something special from the bottom of my heart. Something that will make us both happy in the years to come: A hysterectomy!

Chris

[lunamoth]

Yeah Ben, that's cool to know and congrats! This year my husband and I passed the mark where we've been married longer than we were not married (we got married at 23 and we're going on 24 years). We've officially spent the major portion of our lives together.

[greymare]

congrats lunamoth, thats fantastic. (jealous. am I). LOL.

[bgruagach]

Originally Posted by lunamoth

This year my husband and I passed the mark where we've been married longer than we were not married (we got married at 23 and we're going on 24 years). We've officially spent the major portion of our lives together.

That's a very cool anniversary -- my partner and I'll be reaching that point next year (I met my sweetie when I was 21 and next year will be our 21st year together.)

Is there a traditional way of celebrating this special anniversary? Maybe we should invent a new tradition for it here on the 'board and see if it spreads!