My thoughts on Same-Sex Marriages

I thought I would post this on my blog, instead of try­ing to cram it all into one lit­tle com­ment post on Facebook.

This is gonna be one LONG blog post. I also apol­o­gize if I jump around, I have many thoughts going through my head and I am try­ing to orga­nize them in rel­e­vant order. I also apol­o­gize if I am not as elo­quent in my writing.

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I saw an inter­est­ing Poll on Face­book which asked:

SHOULD SAME SEX MARRIAGE BE LEGALIZED?

And I vot­ed yes.

I have got­ten some com­ments on it (noth­ing neg­a­tive) and I haven’t been able to stop think­ing about this top­ic, so I fig­ured I should get my thoughts down on the blog.

First of all, every­one has a right to his or her own opin­ions; it is a part of what makes this coun­try free. Peo­ple can com­ment on what­ev­er they want, I don’t have to agree with them if I choose not to, but its great to hear the oth­er side of things, it helps us broad­en our minds and intel­li­gence. And we can’t truth­ful­ly argue about some­thing, if we don’t know both sides.

Grow­ing up, I went to church for many years and I believe in God. My faith may not be as strong as it once was, but I do believe in Him and what the Bible says.

But, I do under­stand that the Bible was writ­ten in a very dif­fer­ent time than ours, and that some­thing just don’t fit in with today’s soci­ety (like the one about being able to stone your dis­obe­di­ent child…) So I take what the Bible says with a grain of salt.

In any case, I do believe that we are not to judge. That only God can judge.

There­fore, what right do I have to judge what some­one else does? As long as they are not hurt­ing me, my fam­i­ly, or soci­ety at large, what right do I have to tell them they are wrong? And quite frankly, can I do any­thing to change what they are going to do, prob­a­bly not.

In the case of gay indi­vid­u­als, I don’t care what they do. Real­ly. If I jump around and pitch a fit at them and say what they are doing is wrong, are they going to stop? Most like­ly not. If it is tru­ly wrong then that is for God to decide on Judge­ment Day, not my place now. It is not my place to condemn.

This is espe­cial­ly true when that per­son is fam­i­ly. All you’ll end up doing is alien­at­ing some­one who at some point meant some­thing to you. Just because of some­thing their doing that you don’t agree with, your going to throw away years of friend­ship? I couldn’t do that. Fam­i­ly is fam­i­ly, no mat­ter what they do.

I would rather enjoy the com­pa­ny and friend­ship of peo­ple, than deny myself their friend­ship, because of the choic­es they make. (Many of my clos­est friends are Gay and I have had Gay rel­a­tives in my life.)

It’s not for me to judge, it’s not for me to con­demn. The only thing that God asks me to do is to love them. That is all. That is all any of us can do.

Now, regard­ing the top­ic of Same Sex Marriages.

Yes, the Bible talks about mar­riage as a covenant between a man and a woman. I get that. But the Bible doesn’t talk about a signed lit­tle doc­u­ment (that quite frankly doesn’t mean much—I haven’t had to show mine as proof for any­thing) as that covenant. That is just a gov­ern­ment doc­u­ment to sig­ni­fy that the per­son I declared as my spouse, is enti­tled to ben­e­fits, my prop­er­ty, and so forth. That is all. It is rec­og­niz­ing a partnership.

UPDATE:
My friend Katie made an inter­est­ing point (see the com­ments). And what I meant by a use­less piece of paper, did­n’t come out the way I real­ly meant (I was writ­ing this at like 2 in the morn­ing)

What I meant was that the mar­riage License/certificate is only used for the gov­ern­ment when chang­ing cer­tain doc­u­ments. After that, it real­ly isn’t used. That being said, going back to the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state, the Gov­ern­ment should not be decid­ing to issue a mar­riage license/certificate based on moral­i­ty or reli­gious rea­sons.

They should only be decid­ing to issue the cer­tifi­cate on this basis alone: It is a doc­u­ment that allows you to declare that this per­son is a part­ner and is enti­tled to your shares of prop­er­ty, ben­e­fits and the rights that go with that. That is it. Issues of moral­i­ty, reli­gion or any­thing else should­n’t real­ly be tak­en into con­sid­er­a­tion of that.

Because at its most basic form, a mar­riage is sim­ply a part­ner­ship, and the Gov­ern­ment should not be decid­ing what I choose that part­ner­ship should be. Love sure does­n’t. That is for me to decide, not the Gov­ern­ment. If I want to share my prop­er­ty and ben­e­fits with some­one, I should be allowed to do so.

Gov­ern­ment also has this whole sep­a­ra­tion of church and state. So why should they even care? They are tak­ing a reli­gious stance on this issue by mak­ing same sex mar­riages ille­gal and unrecognizable.

For many years mar­riage wasn’t quite rec­og­nized by the church (actu­al­ly there were many dif­fer­ent types of “mar­riage”. Some were for mon­ey and some were for com­pan­ion­ship. In medieval times (depend­ing on the coun­try), mar­riage was sim­ply a con­tract to com­bine prop­er­ty and for improv­ing sta­tus. Mat­ter of fact, for the most part, most mar­riages weren’t even allowed to be held inside the church, but sim­ply have a priest as a witness.

If it is so wrong, again, God will decide and judge. All we are doing is deny­ing these cou­ples the rec­og­niz­able ben­e­fits that we receive from the Gov­ern­ment and cor­po­ra­tions as mar­ried cou­ples. That is infring­ing on human rights.

The rea­son I sup­port same sex mar­riages is this: If you have a part­ner that you have lived with for many years, and you love this per­son, they should be enti­tled to any ben­e­fits, prop­er­ty, and so forth as you deem fit or to inher­it the prop­er­ty and pen­sions that you both shared.

I know that some of this is chang­ing in regards to “civ­il unions” or “Domes­tic Part­ner­ships” but those are not rec­og­nized in all states.

I recall an instance that I read about in a paper a few years ago on this issue that real­ly was the turn­ing point in my stance on this:

There was a Gay cou­ple and when one part­ner was in the hos­pi­tal on his death bed uncon­scious, his part­ner of over 30 years was not allowed in to see him, with­out the express per­mis­sion of the remain­ing fam­i­ly (who didn’t care for his part­ner) so he couldn’t even be in the room or say good­bye and hold the hand of his part­ner. Not only that, but he then was denied any of the prop­er­ty or major­i­ty of pos­ses­sions they shared, receive any of the finan­cial assets they shared (I think the fam­i­ly was able to over­turn the will some­how). He got bare­ly anything.

Now, you tell me is that fair? You devote your life to some­one and when that per­son dies, you are not allowed to say good­bye, to hold their hand, to keep the pos­ses­sions and sen­ti­men­tal items that you col­lect­ed over 30 years? I don’t believe that is right. Regard­less what the church says, you are enti­tled to those basic rights.

Now, I know that civ­il unions or domes­tic part­ner­ships try and fix this (and many cor­po­ra­tions are allow­ing their ben­e­fits to extend to domes­tic part­ners), accord­ing to wikipedia:

“Civ­il unions or domes­tic part­ner­ships are avail­able to cou­ples of the same sex, often car­ry­ing the same entail­ments as mar­riage, under a dif­fer­ent name. How­ev­er, these apply only to ben­e­fits under state law, and are not rec­og­nized by oth­er states (with a few excep­tions) or the U.S. fed­er­al government.”

It says right there “often car­ry­ing the same entail­ments as mar­riage”. So why can’t we call it a mar­riage? Does the church own a trade­mark on that name? And why don’t all states rec­og­nize a civ­il union? And why only under state law? Why not under Fed­er­al. These are things I can­not understand.

That is why I feel that same sex mar­riages should be allowed, only so that they can be guar­an­teed the rights that we all have accord­ing to the gov­ern­ment and cor­po­rate policies.

I can’t speak on the reli­gious aspect of it, which is for God alone to decide, but as a Gov­ern­ment, we shouldn’t dis­al­low cer­tain indi­vid­u­als cer­tain basic rights. It’s demor­al­iz­ing, and inhu­man. And it is not in align­ment with what our Coun­try stands for, a chance for free­dom, Lib­er­ty and Jus­tice and the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness.

I’m run­ning out of steam here, and I am sure there are oth­er peo­ple out there that say much bet­ter what I am try­ing to say.

I just ask that you go out, research, gath­er all the infor­ma­tion you can, and make an informed deci­sion on where you stand on issues. Not just this issue, but all issues. It’s our civic duty to make informed deci­sions and help our Gov­ern­ment, well, gov­ern us.

Thank you for tak­ing time to read this.