How Gay Marriage Would “Destroy” Heterosexual Marriage
saafz:(via lgbtlaughs: marriageequality)
This is an excerpt from a satirical essay from felbers.net, aired on NPR’s This American Life in 2004. I suggest reading the full essay as it is absolutely hilarious.
This gay marriage thing is tearing my wife and me apart. Now, because of activist judges in Massachusetts and overzealous officials in San Francisco, our union is hanging on by the thinnest of threads.
Back in the simpler days of 2002, when we were planning our wedding, Jeanne and I used to coo fondly at each other about the joys that lay ahead. It wasn’t that we were unsupportive of our gay friends, no. We were just looking forward to the government’s validation of our relationship’s specialness - a license that affirmed that the two of us had made a unique and personal eternal vow to each other. Something uniquer and specialer than any of our homosexual acquaintances could ever even hope for.
We’re all for the separation of church and state, naturally, but if the government doesn’t define marriage as the sacred union between a man and a woman, who will? Are Jeanne and I expected to treasure our union solely on the basis of our deep love, personal beliefs, public vows, and the government’s blessing? Sorry, Judge Pinkypants, but that’s just not good enough. Not for us. We need to know that we’ve got something that’s only available to 90% of the population, the select and upstanding few.
Sure, some of us are criminals. Murderers, even. Some of us have committed rape, beaten children, tattooed swastikas on our bodies, abused animals, broken into houses, bilked the government out of millions of tax dollars, lied under oath, cheated on previous spouses, dishonored our fathers and mothers, failed to keep the Sabbath holy, mowed down pedestrians in our SUV’s while intoxicated, coveted our neighbors’ stuff, gotten ourselves put on death row, sold military secrets to the Chinese, urinated in public places, beaten up people who looked or sounded different than us, and sold drugs in schoolyards.
But we’re straight, and that means we can get married. And that’s special. Or, at least it was. Jeanne and I could look around at other married couples - at least the ones that aren’t currently dealing with serial infidelity, divorce, spousal abuse, or bigamy - and think to ourselves, “Yes, that’s what we’re striving for. That kind of sanctity.”
