People love yelling about marriage. The sacred rite dates back centuries and has always consecrated in the eyes of the church and the state. Today, gays and lesbians are fighting for their rights to be included in that sacred bond between two mortal souls. This angst to be a part of this institution is misplaced. Over the centuries, as marriage grew intertwined with the public sphere, people placed markers on the rite of marriage. It became a huge affair costing thousands of dollars and an enormous explosion of love and commitment.
The defined and unbreakable terms to which people chain their hearts, like cans chained to the back of the limo, limit the range of human emotion and experience.
We shouldn't have an institution to confirm the love that people have for each other. We shouldn't have a piece of paper to boil down the passion and desire of love.
The well-respected anarchist writer, Emma Goldman, said, "Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State and Church-begotten weed, marriage?"
Why would the love that gays and lesbians have need to be whittled down to this institutional confirmation? Why does the LGBTQ community find that they must be accepted in both the church and public spheres? Love is love, and society should accept that instead of trying to put labels, limits and litigation upon it.
A cynic would say that a man would want to marry a man so that their taxes are lower. That argument sure sounds different than the "true love, adopt three kids" fairy tale that the LGBTQ monolith wants you to believe. Equal rights for all, but let's not get carried away and drag more people into the backwards system of marriage.
Karl Marx, a more famous political theorist, said that the "bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and naturally can come to no other conclusion that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women."
The history of marriage falls to the subjugation of one sex over another, and for some reason the LGBTQ community wants to be a part of this repressive arrangement.
Women, regarded by some as cogs in the patriarchal system, once were suppressed (and some might argue, still are), thanks to the "ownership contract" inherent in a marriage license. The LGBTQ community should not want any part of the contractual bureaucratic language that entails marriage.
Marriage and love are not equal and should not be confused.
Goldman again says that love and marriage almost never intersect. Why would any lesbian or gay man want to identify with a structure that doesn't always respect love?
But, you may ask, "What will happen to the foundation of society if marriage is torn apart?"
The divorce rate in the U.S. today approaches 50 percent and cannot truly be the basis upon which the most productive and technologically advanced nation in the world exists.
We're at a crossroads. We must decide if we really want to lock ourselves into this historically backwards institution that forces people into commitments they are incapable of making.
People, including me, support marriage for anyone who wants it. But let's not just say that marriage is the gold standard of love and equality.
Just because equal rights are the goal does not mean that the rights that the LGBTQ community strives for are actually "right" and without flaw.
Reach the columnist at peter.northfelt@asu.edu or follow him at @peternorthfelt
