My thoughts on 'redefining' marriage:
2/11/2005
(posted this at Mark Perkel Rantz, but I thought I'd better archive it here in case he doesn't want to approve it. Would hate to lose it to the ether!).
With so many words sporting multiple meanings, it's a shame that we allow this meme to propagate, spending all of our valuable time in a quest to make sure 'marriage' means one thing or another instead of what it already represents to so many people.
In reality, words can mean many things! The term 'marriage' can and DOES mean a union between a man and a woman - or a union between those of the same sex. Nobody has the power to change what is in people's hearts. It has nothing to do with religion or politics or legal documents, and I hold sacred everyone's birthright to marry whom they will - regardless of sexual appratus.
That said, I agree with other posts that the government has an obligation to provide the same financial and legal benefits to gay couples that straight couples have. Anything less is state-sanctioned prejudice.
I thus quote the Fourth Edition of the ~American Heritage Dictionary~:
mar·riage: n.If one wishes to 'limit the freedoms' of those of a certain sexual inclination, one shouldn't be ashamed to hide this prejudice behind a definitive technicality. This is what is happening en masse, and the issue has grown into a fog of fear, ideology, intolerance, bigotry, political correctness and indignation on all sides.
1. The legal union of a man and woman as husband and wife. 2. The state of being married; wedlock. 3. A common-law marriage. 4. A union between two persons having the customary but usually not the legal force of marriage: a same-sex marriage. 5. A wedding. 6. A close union: “the most successful marriage of beauty and blood in mainstream comics” (Lloyd Rose). 7. Games. The combination of the king and queen of the same suit, as in pinochle.
posted by novachild @ Friday, February 11, 2005,
