State Sanctioned Marriage Is an Outmoded Concept

The District of Columbia, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont and New Hampshire allow same-sex marriage, and now, so does New York. On Sunday, Phyllis Siegal, 76, and Connie Kopelov, 84, were married in a chapel at the city clerk's office, becoming the first couple married under the states new same-sex marriage law. In 2008, voters passed the California Marriage Protection Act, an act recognizing marriage as only between a man and a woman. In August 2010, a federal appeals court blocked an earlier federal courts ruling that declared Californias ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals indefinitely extended the stay, stopping new same-sex marriages in the state of California pending appeal. On January 4, 2011, the federal appeals court certified a question to the California Supreme Court as to whether non-governmental proponents of the amendment have standing to appeal. On February 16, the California Supreme Court unanimously agreed to address the Ninth Circuit's request. The court may hear oral arguments as early as September. The outcome could bring the issue before the U.S. Supreme Court. Moreover, if the Court upholds the ban there is a risk the Court could make marriage equality laws in same-sex marriage states invalid. Whichever way a court may decide, the issue will continue to be a vastly divisive, and an unnecessary controversy. On September 21, 1996, President Clinton signed The Defense of Marriage Act into law, whereby the federal government defines marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman. The Act also provides that no state be required to recognize as a marriage a same-sex relationship that is considered a marriage in another state. Following suit with the federal government, across America, the oppositions argument, including politicians who lag behind voters on gay marriage, is based on the misbegotten belief that marriage is exclusive to one man with one woman. However, thats not central to the issue, for what is central to the issue is the appropriateness of state sanctioned marriage itself.

There is no history of when marriage first occurred. In the beginning women simply had children, evolving to marriage by simple affirmation (a family affair), and later by religious authority, and then to the state who then granted marriage licenses. Moreover, in ancient times, tribes strived for an environment conducive to safeguarding and perpetuating lineage. They developed rules on granting property rights (women were considered property). Marriage had to do with ethnic identity, preserving social hierarchy, property rights, and inheritance. Love was nothing more than an abstract notion. The Sixties became the impetus for significant social and cultural change, but the perspective up to that time had been that women were created to be subservient, not equal or a counterpart to men. Women were merely property. Marriage was a social contract imbued with religious values dictating that men reign supreme, and that a wife should look to her man for guidance in all things. Today, there are domestic partnerships that clearly should be granted legal rights and protections. Even though the heterosexual act of procreation is important to our evolution, that biological relationship should not interfere with domestic partnerships -- a man befriending a man, or a woman befriending a woman, or homosexual partnerships. Morally and ethically, domestic partnerships should be afforded the same legal rights and protections as heterosexual marriages. The world has significantly changed since the social revolution of The Sixties. Its a change that has created paradigm shifts in thinking. Its a world in which safeguarding means more than protecting possessions and bloodlines. It is now a world where cohabitation and partnerships are sometimes necessary for health/financial reasons, where love and compassion define relationships. The world has acquired greater knowledge, out of which have come new ways of thinking and an open-mindedness that rejects old taboos. Moreover, a fast-paced world where both spouses now need to work, where spousal separation for long periods may be necessary because of war, conflicting work hours, business travel and relocation, has stressed families, and those conditions have generated high divorce rates. As a result, men and women are increasingly living together and creating families outside of wedlock. And, consequently, state sanctioned marriage has become outmoded. If at death one can legally will lifes special partner or friend, even a pet animal -- anyone -anything they wish, why then, in life, cant we find a way to accommodate all domestic partnerships with the same legal rights and protections as marriage.