Gay Marriage--Just Business

The other day I was sent an invitation to militate for the right of homosexuals and lesbians to marry. For an instant I was tempted to send a blistering reply—you know, all about marriage being for the procreation, nurture and protection of human young.
Then I got to thinking—is that still true? It has been historically true. Back in the days before welfare (only about my lifetime) a woman alone with children to raise could find herself in a pretty grim fix. It didn’t matter a lot if she were widowed or perpetually unwed.
In some cultures (India, for instance) women opted not to outlive their dead husbands. Throwing herself on his funeral pyre and burning with him seemed a better choice. Even in the Christian west her opportunities were often limited to prostitution or starvation wages in a sweat shop.
Only in marriage did a woman hope to find some sort of security and protection for herself and her young. A man was required to raise and protect only those children he conceived within the bounds of marriage. Illegitimate children, his or hers, were outside the pale. Thus marriage served a socially useful and necessary function—and it was strictly heterosexual because it very much built around conception.
Even in societies where homosexuality (or lesbianism) was accepted or practiced widely, the notion of marriage as an heterosexual function specifically aimed at producing offspring and heirs remained an historical constant. I cannot think of a society in which homosexual liaisons were accorded the legal status of a marriage contract.
But life has changed in the past fifty years. At least in the western, post-Christian, industrialized world, it has. The weapons of war no longer depend upon brute strength (not, certainly, since the M-16 replaced the M-1 rifle in the 1960s). Women can defend themselves with as much lethal effect as men can. They routinely serve in the military.
More women are getting higher educations than men. For all of the “gender gap”, more and more women are earning professional grade salaries—and are perfectly capable of providing for themselves and their offspring by themselves.
If a man leaves a dependent wife, the law will usually step in and force him to continue supporting his young. Or there is welfare. Women are no longer solely dependent on being in a marriage to feed themselves and their children. This rationale for keeping marriage solely on a heterosexual basis is slipping away.
So is the rationale for maintaining the legitimacy of an heir. There are fewer and fewer entitled estates that require a blood relative to inherit. But something even more drastic has happened during the last half century. The stigma of illegitimacy that was meant to keep child production largely within the confines of a traditional marriage has been largely lost.
“Shotgun marriages” were common when I was young. Today many women feel free and unembarrassed to carry the child without a designated father. So one can no longer say that homosexual marriage will destroy the institution of marriage—it is already essentially destroyed among heterosexuals.
All that seems to be left, in many cases, is a legal status—“married”, vs divorced, single, never married and so forth—that confers legal benefits (inheritance, privacy waivers, tax status and so forth) and has increasingly less relevance to the historic usages of marriage—rearing the child and establishing his legitimacy before the law.
Very true, marriage has been for thousands of years a contract between one man and one woman (in non-polygamous societies) for the purpose of begetting young. Even without homosexuality factored into the equation, what is it today?
If it is threatened with destruction, in a traditional, religious sense of the word, homosexuals honestly cannot be blamed. The “destruction” of traditional marriage began to occur back when being a homosexual wasn’t even legal. “They” aren’t doing it. Marriage has been becoming a less and less socially necessary institution for decades.
It is increasingly hard to find logic with which to deny “Gays” the right to the legal benefits of the “married” status—shared medical benefits, rights of inheritance, so forth.
Valid objections to homosexual marriage exist only in the realm of theology and religious practice—not in secular law or social norms. I have to face that. But I will not accept any invitations to work for the day when “Gay” marriage has the same status as my own.