Friday, October 24, 2008

Straight VS Gay Marriages

How can my marriage which happened in our back yard and officiated by a Priest from the MCC Church affect someone else’s marriage? How can any marriage vow said by a Justice of the Peace, or Judicial Official, invalidate your marriage vows said before a member of the clergy? Maybe it’s time that we separated the marriage vows part from the marriage blessing part. How can someone deny a long term relationship built on faith, and trust and love and companionship; be it heterosexual or gay? How can we deny the rights of either kind of marriage if the federal government recognizes couples rights?
Even with our marriage certificate being issued with a male and a female name, we were married as Kay and Sarah. We walked together to down the isle as wife and wife, two spirits joined as one in front of our family and friends. It was only after I officially changed my name to Sarah that we had any trouble from our state government when we filled our tax returns. Oh we received our federal tax return within 2 weeks after filing electronically; the problem was with the State of Georgia Tax Office where we had problems. It seems that they couldn’t resolve the fact that our tax return was filed with our female names. Never mind that my name on drivers license was Sarah Jane and was issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles; never mind that my social security card was changed to reflect my new name; and never mind that my Military Identification Card was changed to reflect Sarah Jane in my military personnel files. The tax clerk wanted documentation reflecting my name change in order to expedite our tax refund check. Expedite our tax refund; this was September, and we had received our federal tax check by the end of April.
The opponents of Pro 8 insist that marriage should only be between a man and a woman. And how are they going to check whether someone is male or female; by visual inspection of the genitals? How are they going to classify someone who has ambiguous genitalia; what about someone who has 2 Xs and a Y chromosome, or someone who might have 2Ys and an X chromosome; or any other combination of chromosomes that can be found within mans existence. So what happens to a marriage when, say the wife discovers that she should be male as defined by the chromosomes; does the marriage become invalid?
Would a stable, long term relationship between two women or two men not be better than a heterosexual relation where one party cheats on the other, or abuses their partner, or inflicts violence on the children and partner? How can a relationship exist when one party of the marriage brings multiple partners to the marriage bed?
Shouldn’t a good marriage be defined as two people who love each other and honors their commitment to love, cherish and honor, even if it was not spoken first by someone invested with the authority and power to join two people for life? Is there only a technical difference between a marriage performed by a civil authority and a marriage performed with religious authority? Aren’t members of the clergy also given the civil authority to perform marriages? Just how would civil marriages between two men or two women adversely affect the definition of marriage? The Federal government agencies recognizes my ‘gay’ marriage now, although it wasn’t officially defined as one in the beginning.

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