Bill's Big Stuff

I have posted on this topic before, but think it is time to revisit it with a different emphasis. In some ways the topic of homosexual marriage is a perfect storm. There is the constant pressure to not only tolerate homosexuality but also to accept it and consider it equivalent in every way to a heterosexual relationship. There are the biblical literalists who state that homosexuality is a sin, and that there is only one definition of marriage, a man and a woman joining together, and finally there is the problem of the interaction of religion and government.

Before we get started let’s make things clear for the ad hominum crowd: I am heterosexual. I have and have had in the past homosexual friends. I have had homosexual strangers try to flirt or hit on me and didn’t freak out over it. Actually I found it funny for me, sad for them. I am married and I attend an Evangelical Lutheran Church. However, I have unorthodox religious views, and you have to see my religious archives to know them. I think homosexuality is both innate in some cases and acquired in others. I do not see homosexuals as victims. Honi soi qui mal y pense.

Note that my comments are moderated. If you post a comment that is an attempt to make a point however clumsily, and it is obviously your own thought, not something parroted, I will let it be posted regardless if it agrees or disagrees with me. I may or may not post my own rebuttal or extension. You must deal with my arguments and observations, not attack me. ANY name-calling or denigration of me or another commentor in response to this post will go into the bit bucket. I will also reject any comment, regardless of value, that has R-rated language. I encourage discussion and expansion of knowledge, not emotional bashing—that is reserved for theatres of war.

Cultural Aspects of the Issue

One of the most powerful forces in this whole issue is the combined cultural attitudes towards homosexuality. Let’s start with a simple fact, homosexuals are a minority. This alone creates a set of attitudes; those who are out to protect the underdog immediately want to find some way to protect them or become their champions. Those who hate difference, abhor them simply for their being different. This leads to calling them deviant or perverted. And in the middle are the great mass of people that are anywhere from uncomfortable to fearful with known homosexuals and the idea of homosexuality.

Simply being different is not sufficient explanation for attitudes, however. The attitudes towards homosexuals are every bit or more vicious than those towards different races or religions. Inter-racial and inter-religious relationships have always existed though often hidden and are now quite common. But one rarely, if at all finds relationships between homo- and heterosexual people. This is because we are dealing with THE fundamental drive in all humanity – the drive to reproduce. If there is any purpose to life outside the meanings that God or our own egos give it, it is to “be fruitful and multiply.” It is arguably the fundamental life force. Animals including humans are known to endanger their lives in order to attempt to reproduce.

Given that sex and reproduction are so fundamental to life, it is little wonder that homosexuality, which is sterile biologically, can evoke such strong emotional responses and antipathy. Before I am accused of justifying “homophobia”, let me state that reasons and explanations are not excuses for behavior. Because as humans we have the power to observe and judge ourselves, we can control our behavior and in some cases re-educate our emotional responses. Let me also state that outside of questions of sex and reproduction, whether a person is or is not homosexual should be meaningless.

Where problems arise culturally, it is due to the fear and ignorance of homosexuality, because it is different and unknown to heterosexuals. That fear often leads to the idea that homosexuals are constantly looking to prey upon heterosexuals or children to bring them into their way of life. With extremely rare exceptions, nothing could be more wrong. In cases where this occurs, it is probably more due to the same kinds of forces that lead to heterosexual molestation rather than something specific to homosexuality. It has more impact on perception due to the emotional attitude around homosexuality in the first place.

There needs to be a side note on homosexuals in the military. The military is a sub-culture that has its own mores and perceptions. It also has to have much more stringent behavioral requirements due to the life and death nature of its work. There can be no emotional impediments to its functioning. Further contributing to this particular question is the fact that military duty in its primary function is the ultimate in male behavior – the destruction of threats. Coincident with that is the very strong categorization of what is acceptable and not acceptable, with no questioning. These things are essential to the military as no time can be spent on reasoning when instant reaction is necessary to protect life. To the military mind, the risk that a homosexual will not respond in the accepted way in a combat situation is too great to be risked. The survival of a unit depends on every one of its members.

To a civilian, this way of thinking is not comprehensible, and leads to the constant criticism of military policy on homosexuals. To a civilian, it doesn’t make any difference in most cases what a person’s sexual orientation is. To the military, it does. Just as the military does not allow heterosexual couples to belong to the same unit, so they cannot allow two homosexuals to belong to the same unit. The primary loyalty is to the partner, not the unit. There is a further difficulty in that the hyper-heterosexuality of the other members of the unit will exclude any known homosexuals. This is where the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy fails. A covert homosexual member of a group cannot be protected from reprisal until it is too late. As long a homosexual member of a unit is unknown and can act completely as a member of a unit, he/she can survive. Once they are found out, it will completely disrupt a unit. The military takes the stance that such disruption cannot be tolerated, especially if it occurs during hostilities, and would prefer to prevent homosexuals from being part of the military. This is a utilitarian issue. Regardless of what would feel good to civilians or seem right, the military is a separate culture with a far different function from the rest of society. This is not an issue subject to reason. It operates at a more primitive level. That is hard for non-military people to understand, especially intellectuals, who think reason can control everything.

Another side note: the most asinine use of the English language I can think of is to call a male homosexual gay. It is demeaning because it emphasizes the stereotypical feminine behavior that many heterosexuals ascribe to homosexual males. (It also is meaningless in the normal sense of the word, gay.) For that matter it is equally wrong to refer to heterosexuals as straight. This carries an implied value judgment of heterosexual right, homosexual wrong (bent).

All asides aside, let’s get back to the original discussion. (OK, I simply couldn’t resist that bit.) One of the unfortunate consequences of our federal system, that was built mainly by Protestant Christians, is an outlawing of any sexual behavior in many states not considered oriented towards having children. This has nothing to do with homosexuality, it just gets swept up with the rest. States have outlawed oral and anal sex, and, consistent with this, have also outlawed homosexuality. I think it is important to realize that the outlawing of homosexuality is part of a general attitude and NOT just specifically for homosexuals. That this has led to a persecution of homosexuals is a very unfortunate consequence.

Since we are at the persecution of homosexuals, lets visit the persecution of Senator Craig. This is almost a mini-perfect storm in itself. We have the press howling about a Republican who has been accused of homosexual behavior. There is no examination of the issue as to how the accusation occurred, nor is there any attempt to have sympathy if he is a homosexual. This is in direct opposition to the general stated view of most media that homosexuality is to not only be tolerated but to be all but extolled, being considered the equivalent of heterosexual behavior in any normative judgments. The law in Minnesota outlaws homosexual behavior, and so we have cops that patrol for it. There is something very sickening about a cop that spends his time trolling for homosexuals in the public restrooms. First of all, the behavior he is looking for is so arcane that only another homosexual or he would recognize it. In such a circumstance, where is the crime, other than on the law books? If another homosexual is the only person to read and respond to such signals, then it is definitely a case of mutual consent. So where is the defense of personal and private behavior? It disappeared in the name of politics. A man who may, or may not, have been an excellent Senator has been destroyed over something that has nothing to do with his political accomplishments or lack thereof.

As a result of this persecution of homosexuals and others who are on the margins of sexual behavior, we see the rise of the RESCUER. This is a person or group of people who for various reasons make loud and public displays of defending homosexual behavior, even to the point of demanding special privilege for it, similar to affirmative action. I think the rescuers fall into two major groups, those who are using the homosexuals as a way to advance their own search for power and those who buy into the drama triangle, the most compelling psychological trap I know of, and a minor group, the constant sympathizer who oozes feel-sorry emotion over everything, rather impotently. The first group is the most easily discussed, they are the ones that always are wanting to pass a law. Notice that the law always takes away freedom somewhere by either restricting behavior or by restricting the expression of thought. The most notable example is hate crimes. These are simply various crimes that have been singled out for extra punishment if one can project onto them a state of mind of hatred for an oppressed group and a desire to hurt members of the group just because they belong to the group. The behavior is already illegal as behavior. The imposition of additional punishment is brought about by what amounts to mind-reading in some cases. Of course there are obvious cases where slogans are sprayed onto walls, stones, etc., but there are also other cases where the argument is made that the crime occurred simply because the victim was a member of a protected class. This becomes a perverted form of entitlement—victims are avenged more forcefully if they belong to a particular group, not because of the heinousness of the crime. The net result is a restriction in both behavior and thought, as evidenced in Canada where biblical verse has been deemed hate speech when it is the biblical condemnation of homosexuality. The net result of the imposition of hate crime is a loss of freedom of both speech and behavior, because the intent is what is perceived in the mind of the enforcer not the mind of the actor, and intent is the means to establish hate crime. This is the most dangerous of the three groups because they can easily co-opt the other two to accomplish their ends.

To discuss the second group, we must first briefly describe a drama triangle. The drama triangle consists of a victim, a persecutor, and a rescuer. From the names the roles and their overall behavior are obvious. What is not so obvious is that the roles are fluid and a rescuer can become a persecutor, persecutors become victims, and victims become rescuers or persecutors. Those are the most common switches, but any role can become one of the other two—not always in the same triangle. A rescuer needs a victim, and if there is one ready-made will fasten on it, and if there is not one at hand, create one. I think homosexuals fall into a mixture of the two, in earlier times they were actually victims, but now are really placed in the victim role by those wanting to be rescuers. The problem with rescuers is they don’t want to right wrong, they want to avenge it, self-righteously of course. They make demands in the name of the victims that more than correct the persecution. In effect they want to set the victim higher than the persecutor. Often the victim joins in the retribution, and the persecutor becomes a victim of the combined persecution of the victim and rescuer. The deadliness of the triangle is that every one gets a clandestine emotional payoff. The victim wears the victimhood and milks it until such time as he/she can become vengeful. Then there is the payoff of having made the persecutor PAY. The rescuer has the heady satisfaction of RIGHTING A WRONG, and the illicit pleasure of justifiably (in their own mind) really taking it out on the persecutor. The persecutor has of course the feeling of power from being the persecutor, but when he/she becomes a victim can save up the resentment of being persecuted for when she/he is once again a rescued victim and persecutor.

In the context of this discussion, the rescuers want to create homosexual marriage. It serves a dual purpose, it slaps the face of the perceived heterosexual “persecutors” who don’t want the idea of marriage to change, and it elevates homosexual partnerships to legal parity with a heterosexual family. The rescuers also readily go along with the idea of so-called hate speech being punished. In effect we are left with a double standard in which heterosexuals can be criticized about their sexual and cultural practices, but homosexuals cannot. The problem is that in their zeal to tear down what to them is a symbol of oppression, they are ignoring the internal conflicts in the symbol and the unintended consequences that will ensue.

The third group of people are best exemplified by the quote from the Mayor of San Diego, Jerry Sanders, that was posted by one of my good blogging friends:

“As I reflected on the choices that I had before me last night, I just could not bring myself to tell an entire group of people in our community that they were less important, less worthy and less deserving of the rights and responsibilities of marriage”…” In the end, I could not look any of them in the face and tell them that their relationships -- their very lives -- were any less meaningful than the marriage that I share with my wife Rana.” [emphasis in source of quote, bk]

To some degree we see a bit of the rescuer in perceiving homosexuals as victims—less important, less worthy, less deserving—but the emphasis is more on the feel-good, the empathy. There is also the muzzy-headed thinking that somehow relationships get their meaning from what they are called—form is more important than substance. I think what is more important to understand, is that he is totally unaware of the conflicted nature of the word marriage as it is used in our society.

One other cultural issue occurs. Until recent times it was acceptable for 14-years old men and women to marry. When life was simpler and the knowledge needed to survive was learned by age 14, this was a reasonable situation, especially if two 14-years olds were involved. But it also led to situations not tolerated today. Older men would out-live several wives and continually remarry young women, often encouraged and accepted because of the burden of raising children beyond 14 years. In cases where a bride-price or dowry was involved, a young girl could represent a major economic asset to a father, if she were essentially sold to an older successful man, who could pay well to have a young wife. This has definitely changed with modern society, due to the desire to keep children out of the labor force, the longer education requirements, and in the last century birth control. States will now allow marriage before 18, age 16, with parental consent, but in some cases a court approval is still required. Only two states allow marriage before the age of 16, both with court approval.

The Nature of Marriage

In thinking about the nature of marriage, it is useful to consider some of the things it is not. It is not simply living together. Many couples live together, but they do not qualify as married. It is not having children. Unmarried parents have children. Especially in this day of easy and effective contraception, marriage is not a necessity for sex. Yet all of these things are part of marriage. Biblical approaches to marriage will be discussed below, so for now we will confine the discussion to the human and secular aspects of it.

First of all, at its ideal, marriage is a lifetime union. Even in societies with multiple wives, the unions are for life. To my knowledge, separation and divorce are not part of primitive societies. It seems to be something that comes with civilization. One of the primary benefits of this union is survival. It allows the division and specialization of labor so that less energy is expended for two together than for two individuals. Or alternatively, it allows for a better life for two when they expend the same energy as they would singly.

A benefit to the male is the saving of the energy that goes into courtship. In almost all mammals and birds, there are courtship rituals. These can require the expenditure of considerable energy, and in fact become a survival selection factor—those with the most energy win the mates and pass on their genes. It also provides security for the passing on of genes—life unions mean that offspring are given the chance to grow to maturity. In contrast, look at lions. When a new male takes over a pride, the first thing he does is kill all offspring that are not his. Besides humans, there are other species that mate for life. I have heard geese and wolves, and there are others. Interestingly, not primates; they seem to form extended clans ruled by a few males.

For females there are the advantages of protection and no longer the need to select a new mate every season. In humans it also allows for being able to work at home and still have the nutrition that hunting brings in. It also assures assistance or at least protection and food while children are young and unable to assist with the tasks of survival. [Modern society has changed much of this, and we will discuss that a bit later.]

So, one of the attributes of marriage is commitment to the union. The motivations for that commitment were simple at one time but become more complex with civilization. Reproduction is the primary purpose of species (Regardless of our wonderful intellectual powers as humans, we have to reproduce.), and a permanent union is the way to maximize that in humans. Part of this is the length of time it takes to raise a human to independence, about 12-14 years. If the average lifespan before civilization was about 50-55, then a menopause at 40 or so made sense. The last baby would have parenting to independence.

In addition to commitment then, we can add reproduction. In fact in the days of high infant and childhood mortality, women had to basically be baby factories in order for families to flourish. The changes that civilization has made on this grim scenario are far-reaching in their consequences.

As a first approach then, marriage is a formalizing of this committed union. Because marriage evolved in the days when survival of families via their offspring was paramount, the formalization created security for the children. First through religion then through law, marriage became a binding commitment of the two adults to each other and a commitment to the offspring of the union. Rules and laws were generated that said the property was owned in common, or not, who acquired what property in the event of death of a partner, and what children inherited what property (e.g. primogeniture in Great Britain).

This is a good place at which to bring up the romantic side of marriage. First and foremost is sexual attraction. It is the driver in male-female attractions that do not develop from long-standing friendships. It can be an overwhelming lust, an overwhelming non-specific attraction, a mild attraction that grows with interaction, a sudden idea that another person may be “fun” to know. How the attraction is expressed is a function of the person expressing it and the receiver. The variations are as great as there are couples. At some point the attraction becomes strong enough that the couple wants to have sex together. There are several ways this occurs [socially, OK?]. They may simply find a secluded location and mate. This is common in teenagers. They may go to one or another apartment or a hotel room. This is more common in the employed twenties. They may decide to live together, unmarried. Also common among the twenty-years olds, and older couples. They may decide to wait until they are married, which is less common now than earlier. At this point, with the sexual pressure off, they may become closer, stuck in a rut, or break up.

Of these options, all may lead to marriage. However, the success of the marriage may depend on the nature of the interactions before the marriage. Avoiding the inclusion of the casual, one-night stand or casual once-in-a-while relations, the longer the couple is together with or without having sexual relations, the more likely they are to become married, unless they break up in the meantime. At some point they decide to become married and the relationship should change. They need to become serious about how they will solve problems together, how they approach money, kids, etc. This is in addition to maintaining the “fun” of courtship. Regardless of the form it takes this is a courtship phase. Because the commitment is lifelong, the courtship is longer and more grueling on both participants. However, they do eventually get married.

Marriage generally invokes a ceremony. It may be simple or it may be elaborate. Generally it is designed to announce to the world the commitment of the couple to each other and to advertise their social standing. As a side note, from my experience, the size of the ceremony bears no relation to the durability of the marriage. The ceremony is a social event designed to show off and to celebrate. If the commitment and the adjustments during the engagement are good, the marriage will survive regardless of the ceremony or lack thereof. But it is important to note that despite the implied cynicism about the purpose of the ceremony, there really is an element of the bride being her most beautiful, the groom his handsomest, and the wedding the high point in their lives. As much or more as any ceremony marking the change from childhood to adulthood, the marriage is a life-event. It is supposed to happen only once in one’s life, and it is to be as wonderful as possible.


Legal Aspects of the Issue

Marriage law was applied to both the formal religious ceremony, and also in many states of the US to couples that had been together for long periods of time—common-law marriage. I would suspect that common-law marriage grew out of a desire to protect the wife in the event of the death or disappearance of her spouse. By having shared their lives together, she was considered to have earned a part of the assets. Marriage law has many aspects of contract law in spelling out the rules of ownership of property and custody of children. Because marriage became a legal entity, when it fell apart then there had to be laws to deal with that as well so came about divorce law, describing when and on what grounds divorces could occur and how the material goods of the marriage were to be divided.

So another attribute of marriage is a sanction, in this case from the governmental side of the society, and, as we all know and will discuss below, from the religious side as well. These sanctions and rules run counter to the loud politically correct statements of militant feminism, and it is useful to look at them a bit. One of the things that seems to occur in the process of civilizing humans is that at some point males become overly-dominant. A modern extreme is Islam in the Middle East, where the woman is no better than a slave. I think this occurs because as survival becomes less difficult, the role of the woman in the partnership becomes less critical. The man still goes out from the home, but the woman becomes more and more dependent on him for sustenance as her role in providing shrinks from agricultural husbandry, cooking, food preservation, and manufacture of clothing, to simply caring for children and housekeeping. She no longer has a bargaining chip of survival skills. The male can purchase everything he needs.

Conversely, in our modern society, a women is no longer dependent on a man to raise her children, in the survival sense. She can earn an adequate living while hiring others to watch over her child(ren). She can hire housekeepers to maintain her home environment. What is lost is the emotional support of a male which is actually needed for the proper upbringing of a child.

But society has not caught up with feminism, if, indeed, it has too. Let us look at current marriage and divorce law, from a very high level. The approach is one that the male is the earner of the money, and the woman the home-based care-giver, and that marriages should be discouraged from breaking up. From this comes the concepts that the mother is the better custodian for the child, that the father should pay child support and/or alimony, and the concept of fault or reason for a divorce, establishing blame. Though it may have meant that in many cases the husband could buy his way out of a marriage and the wife might have to find a cause to divorce her husband and obtain support, the general intent was to support marriage, even when unpleasant (yes, more so for the woman than the man), and prevent the total loss of home for the woman and the children if the marriage broke up.

But note that most of the function of marriage law is analogous to, and can be provided by, contract law. This is something I want to return to later.

In regard to protecting those unable to protect themselves, the law also forbid unions between humans and animals, and adults and children. In both cases it can be seen as not between two entities capable of informed or knowledgeable consent. But the problem is that these laws come from a generally common concept of what is and is not a marriage and not from an express desire to protect the defenseless. As a consequence unions between persons of the same sex are forbidden.

The Religious Approach to Marriage

Most of what we think about when we consider marriage comes from religion. The ceremonies, the statement of sanction, the formalizing of the union with admonishments to be faithful all come from religion. Missing from the religious approach is any explicit statements concerning property or children. This is because religious marriages are assumed to be lifelong, and such issues should not arise.

Religion wants to secure its believers to itself and binds them with rules and regulations on how to conduct their lives. Hopefully these rules and regulations are actually good guides to living, though sometimes their interpretation in years after they are made can make them detrimental. The members of a religion come to believe they have the only right answer, and often wish to enforce their rules, not just on themselves, but also on the rest of their society. Sometimes the motivation is not one of self-righteousness but one of defensiveness—remove temptation by outlawing it civilly. One is less tempted when no one can do something and is more motivated to abstain if it is also illegal.

Religious rules are designed to promote the stability of the family. They are also designed to maximize the creation of more children—“be fruitful and multiply” as a divine command. To this end, any form of sex other than that which can create children is considered sinful. This includes masturbation, oral sex, anal sex, and homosexual sex. It also encourages or demands virginity at the time of marriage. After all, if the first time one has sex is in a marriage, then it will be a powerful force for validating the marriage, because it then is through marriage that one of the most powerful sensations humans have is experienced. In addition, divorce is forbidden or at the least discouraged for obvious reasons. There is also a public health factor in marital virginity, virgins will not have contracted an STD. Other issue arises around virginity. When daughters were considered property, and a man seduced a virgin daughter, the economic value of the daughter was greatly diminished. The father was then entitled to money equal to the economic loss.

It is from religion that the whole concept of marriage derives. From religion we get the sanctioning of the union and the public proclamation that puts the weight of the mosque, church, synagogue or temple behind it. Like everything else in religion, laws and rituals developed to solemnize the promises made, and the promises were worded to be as binding as possible.

One can argue with the apparent unreality of religious proscriptions on marriage. However, as long as we had a predominantly agrarian society, they generally worked. First of all, survival was sufficiently challenging, that there was little energy for other than the basics. Husbands and wives were grateful to survive another day and if one had annoying manners, strange behaviors, a bad temper, or any other bad trait, it was small compared to the survival of the family unit.

In many cases, love never entered into it after the courtship. I am always reminded at this point of the song from “Fiddler on the Roof”, “Do You Love Me?”. The dialogue in the song is done humorously, but there is a definite underlying reality—“Do you love me?” “Do I WHAT?” “Do you love me?” Do I love him? For 25 years I cooked for him, …..for 25 years I milked the cow, after 25 years, why talk about love now?” etc. They never met each other until their wedding day, and then were joined for life. The marriage was arranged by a match-maker. “Fiddler” has a lot of poignancy simply because it was culturally true, and there are close parallels in all early cultures, not just Russian Judaism.

Religious marriage became the model for secular marriage, and as long as we were predominantly a Judeo-Christian society there was little conflict. The forms of Protestant Christian marriage became the forms of secular marriage. The pastor, priest, or rabbi was replaced with a judge or magistrate.

Conflicts and Possible Resolution

The current conflict lies in the overlap of the religious and legal aspects of marriage. The legal portion is the registration of the marriage to validate the rights of the participants and their offspring. After all, in a dispute it is important to show that there are grounds for the dispute – namely a valid marriage, whether ceremonial or common-law. In the case there is not a valid marriage, e.g. palimony suits, then different law must be applied. The law that is applied has as its purpose the best outcome for all parties, though often this is not achieved, simply due to the inability or refusal of lawmakers to craft good law.

From a legal perspective marriage is actually a contract. The problem stems from the fact that the conditions of the contract are being created piecemeal as necessity appears to dictate. With the original model for marriage being religious, with its attendant lack of legal detail, it left to lawmakers to spell out such detail. Generally such efforts, rather than starting from scratch, simply apply more law to existing law, and leave it to the courts to sort it out.

The religious aspects are the ceremony and the sanctions. There is also the specific requirement that a marriage be between a man and a woman. It is not contractual, it is the fulfillment of a divine command, and the command is very specific in its requirements. As noted above, the purpose is less to provide a wonderful life for the bride and groom as to provide a stable environment for the offspring. Superimposed on this was also the early cultural requirement for many offspring. AS mentioned abov this created specific rules as to what was a suitable partner and what was acceptable sexual behavior.

[I just realized there is a whole class of marriages I have not touched – political marriage, e.g. Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. These fall under the legal contract rubric, and the sanctioning of the church to these unions was not one of its finest hours. ]

What has occurred as a result is that priests, pastors, and rabbis have become ex-officio officers of the state, filling out and validating the legal documents of marriage. Conversely, the state enforces law that mostly stems from religious doctrine. What must occur is the separation of the legal and religious aspects. The state must get out of the marriage business, and the church must quit legally validating unions.

The emotional impact of the word, marriage, carries all the religious sanctions and constraints in the mids of most people. As witness to this, is the number of state constitutional amendments that specifically state marriage is to be between a man and a woman. That is not a problem – the problem is when civil unions are forbidden. Then we have a case of religious doctrine dictating to the state – something I discussed at length before. If the state did not recognize marriage as a legal term, the problem would be moot.

The state laws need to have a definition of civil union that applies to ALL couples, male-female, male-male, female-female. It is important that it disallow child-adult, animal-adult, or any oter contracdt that involves on party not being legally competent. I also think that states should dis-allow both polygamy and polyandry, simply because the enforcement of such contracts would be a nightmare. [Note: business should be free to recognize such unions as the owners or stockholders see fit. Business is private property and not subject to the same restrictions as government. For those who think EEO is good, remember that forcing employment will lead to resentment from the employees and inefficiency. Those companies that are able to see past the stereotypes will harvest a wealth of talent. My own impression is that some very creative people can belong to single-sex unions, and the companies that also see it will compete by offering partner benefits vs. married couple benefits. ]

Churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques would then perform a ceremony called marriage, or in the case of atheists, they would create their own ceremonies as they see fit. If a church chose to solemnize a homosexual union, it is their choice and not a legal requirement, keeping church and state separate. If it chooses not to, the couple is still a legal couple.

Given the emotion surrounding the concept and term “marriage”, I don’t have much hope of an easy resolution. However, I think two things would help considerably. First, keep the legal issues at the state level; do not amend the US Constitution with a definition. Second, and this has been recommended before, create an exception for the legal definitions of marriage and civil union to the full faith and credit clause of the US Constitution, allowing each state, in the best tradition of Federalism, to determine their solution to this issue. One solution will never fit all in the foreseeable future, but with fifty possible solutions, some good solutions may evolve.

Homosexual relationships can be as fully committed as heterosexual ones. They should be allowed their chance to flourish. At the same time, trying to expand the term marriage beyond its common meaning is the wrong approach. Make it an issue of equal rights and privilege under a common term of civil union, and there will be a greater chance for equality.