Here's where I grumble about a well-intentioned meme

[redbird]

My friends list is full of entries consisting of a rainbow-colored bar and the text "marriage is love". It's a link, and if you click on it, it's to someone's journal where we're urged to add it to our own journals to indicate our "support for gay marriage" (by which I assume zie means same-sex marriage).

I strongly believe that people should be allowed to marry whom they want, assuming the other person or people also want to marry them. (The entry linked to specifically says "two people who love each other".)

But marriage isn't love. Marriage is, depending on your viewpoint, one or more of the following: a legal contract; a legal status recognized by the government, which affects taxation and inheritance; an arrangement between the people who choose to marry; or a sacrament between people and their gods.

It's not love. It's not even romantic and/or sexual love. [I'll assume that the slogan is intended to mean "eros", and we'll skip the bits about parental love, love of friends, and love of music, chocolate, and sushi.] If marriage were love, there'd be no need to be agitating for the right to have same-sex marriages recognized, because either they'd be automatic—you love each other and "poof!" you're married, no need for license, clergy, or ceremony—or they wouldn't be needed, because people wouldn't love until they married, and nobody would feel deprived because they couldn't marry someone of the same gender.

It doesn't work that way. Not everyone marries for love, of course, even in the modern West. But those who do, fall in love before they stand up and say "I do." Some, but not all, of the people who marry for reasons other than love come to love the people they're married to.

Marriage is not a condition for love, nor is it a guarantee that love will last.

I do appreciate the support and the good wishes, especially from my heterosexual friends. But there are better slogans out there. I've tossed one into the box below, if you want to see what's behind the link.

Marriage is a human right.

Comments

[catamorphism.livejournal.com]

Thank you... this was exactly my reaction, but I didn't quite have the words.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

I see your point, and I thought about writing a little entry about why I was posting it and why I was modifying it, and stuff.

Then I got a bouquet f flowers and totally forgot. :)

[replyhazy.livejournal.com]

Very well put indeed.

[dda.livejournal.com]

I mostly agree but I don't think marriage is a human right. I think equality is a human right and if that means marrying someone of the same gender, so be it. But the ability to officially register your relationship with the state doesn't seem to me to be a right, in and of itself.

Re:

[tykers.livejournal.com]

Marriage has been defined as a human right, read article sixteen of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/eng.htm).

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

I love you; marry me!

Seriously, though, you have phrased your objections -- which are mine -- eloquently and beautifully. Thank you.

[phoebek.livejournal.com]

Hi there--your sister pointed this out to me... I had posted something really similar! Though yours is more eloquent--mine is literally just a grumble : ) I'll put something I believe into the text box and post the rainbow too, good idea.

[rmjwell.livejournal.com]

We seem to be in violent agreement. :-)

Re:

[redbird]

This surprises me not at all.

Re:

[rmjwell.livejournal.com]

I didn't think you would be. :-)

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

I've been having these nagging thoughts about the meme, and you went and very eloquently expressed them. Would you mind if I linked to it?

Re: linking

[redbird]

Help yourself.

Anyone else who wants to link to this is also welcome, but please let me know (egoboo is always appreciated).

Re: linking

[crazysoph.livejournal.com]

Officially letting you know, *grin* here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/crazysoph/126339.html)...

Crazy(from catching up)Soph

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

Very nice and succinct analysis of this whole issue. Yeah! Thanks.

[androkles.livejournal.com]

At last, some sense. Thank you very much.

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

This is wonderful, V. I just now saw it, and I think you're brilliant.

-J

*bowing*

[redbird]

Thank you, J.