Excerpt from "Committed"-the follow-up to "Eat Pray Love" that got me thinking about a subject I have been quite luke-warm about.
"Think of it! Marriage is on the decline everywhere, all across the Western world. People are getting married later in life, if they are getting married at all, or they are producing children willy-nilly out of wedlock, or (like me) they are approaching the whole institution with ambivalence or even hostility. We don't trust marriage anymore, many of us straight folk. We don't get it. We're not at all convinced that we need it. We feel as though we can take it or leave it behind forever. All of which leaves poor old matrimony in the winds of cold modernity."
"But just when it seems like maybe all is lost marriage, just when matrimony is about to become as evolutionary expendable as pinkie toes and appendixes, just when it appears that the institution will wither slowly into obscurity due to a general lack of social interest, in come the gay couples, asking to be included! Indeed, pleading to be included! Indeed, fighting with all their might to be included in a custom which may be terrifically beneficial for society as a whole but which many-like me-find only suffocating and old-fashioned and irrelevant."
In the past when it came to the conversation of gay marriages I chose not to partake. I was torn between my belief in equality and civil rights for all and what I have been socially informed by mainly through my religious beliefs and community. But now, I am partaking.
I realized it is not my role to judge others or to tell someone they cannot marry but I can. When I don't even know if I want to enter into the institution of marriage. Why waste that right on me? Instead, give it someone who truly desires to express their love through marriage and wishes to legally solidify their relationship. As for the religious sanctity of marriage, again it is not my role to be the ultimate judge and thank God for that.
So now when a social activist asks me to sign his or her petition to legalize gay marriage I say please hand over that pen.
What do y'all think? Where do you stand on the subject?
PS: "Committed" is a great book and I really suggest reading it. The author really asks a lot of great questions about marriage.
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Great post Sam! Made me think...
ReplyDeleteI've caught my mom saying to me a few times, "Marriage is the only institution in which everyone inside wants out and everyone outside wants in." It always fills me with a mixture of laughter and fear when she says that.
This quote on marriage from the above passage caught my eye though: "a custom which may be terrifically beneficial for society as a whole but which many-like me-find only suffocating and old-fashioned and irrelevant."
I wish she would have explained why marriage may be beneficial to society as a whole. Does she believe it might be? Or do others believe this? Is she not a part of society? -- it might be good for society, but for her, who is apart from society, it's "suffocating" "old-fashioned" and "irrelevant"--how can something that is beneficial to society also be irrelevant? That part confuses me. It seems that it's not irrelevant or old fashioned since so many people are still getting married, fighting for it, wanting it, plus it's a legal, even spiritual, agreement. Also I believe feelings of "suffocation" have to do more with character than marriage itself.