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By Tara Overzat
Why are politicians involved in gay marriage? Why is government involved in marriage at all?
“For the kids.”
Some people say being raised by both a mother and a father in the same household is best for children. If government wants to incentivize one woman and one man only creating a family together, what is keeping government from disincentivizing and penalizing any other arrangement where a child is raised? Children are raised by: grandparents, aunts/uncles, godparents, divorced single parents, widows/widowers, etc. If the reason for government to be involved in marriage is the welfare of children, then what about the welfare of all the children in non-traditional homes?
“Visits in ICU, life decisions to be made by spouses.”
Remember Terry Schiavo? There are just some cases where the legal spouse should not have a say in what happens to the sick party. Instead of blindly having your spouse have the right to see you in the ICU or pull the plug, why not have a living will or some other legal document, regularly updated, describing whom you would like to make life decisions for you in case of an emergency? That person can be your sister, your mom, your gay lover, whomever…. Marriage should play no role in this either.
In 1997, Slate magazine ran an article by David Boaz called “Privatize Marriage” which described the pracitcality of removing government from the arrangement:
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“So why not privatize marriage? Make it a private contract between two individuals. If they wanted to contract for a traditional breadwinner/homemaker setup, with specified rules for property and alimony in the event of divorce, they could do so. Less traditional couples could keep their assets separate and agree to share specified expenses. Those with assets to protect could sign prenuptial agreements that courts would respect. Marriage contracts could be as individually tailored as other contracts are in our diverse capitalist world. For those who wanted a standard one-size-fits-all contract, that would still be easy to obtain. Wal-Mart could sell books of marriage forms next to the standard rental forms. Couples would then be spared the surprise discovery that outsiders had changed their contract without warning. Individual churches, synagogues, and temples could make their own rules about which marriages they would bless.”
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As usual, the media has defined politics for us and politicians have used this to their advantage. If you are for “gay marriage” you vote Democrat; if you are for “traditional marriage” you vote Republican. This completely obliterates all the differences between liberal and conservative politics. In truth, marriage is a private and perhaps religious matter between citizens. But take away this issue, and how will people remember who is on the “left” and who is on the “right?”
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