Gay marriage. You either go red with anger reading those two words or shrug and go "so, let them have it." To me the issue of gay marriage is the best example I can find of a first world problem.
The issue of gay marriage is not restricted to developed countries. There are many undeveloped countries where gay marriage would mean massive riots. Even giving gay people rights in these countries would be a massive step forward. But I'm not talking about these countries. I'm talking about developed countries here. And with good reason.
The term first world problem has been going around the internet for a long while now. These are issues that people in developed countries essentially cry over but in the grand scheme of things they aren't issues at all. Like internet speed. My husband will have a full blown rage fit over a slow internet connection. Or if you can't find your keys, your mobile phone drops out, can't get the colour you want in that shirt you were going to buy.
So how do these issues, pointless in the grand scheme of things, related to gay marriage. Because at the end of the day allowing gay people to marry only affects them. It doesn't affect those who are not gay. And certainly in this world there are far more important issues. Like the sex slaves that are being pulled out of European and Asian countries to service men against their will in Western countries. Or children in poor neighbourhoods who have no lunch at school because there wasn't enough money in the household to buy food. Or helping to give cats and dogs homes so that they don't pay for human ignorance with their lives simply because they didn't find a home in time. Don't you think these issues are a little bit more important than two men, or two women, getting married? And these are just a couple of the issues out there that I think are infinitely more important than gay marriage.
But marriage is a religious institution many will say. I will argue that it is not. First of all there are laws in every country in the world that govern marriage. Doesn't matter where you live in the developed world, there are very clearly defined laws that dictate the contract of marriage. And contracts are not religious. When we look at countries like America where church and state are supposed to be separate, then how can marriage be declared a religious institution if the state issues it?
Marriage is also not specific to one religion. Every single religion has some form of marriage. A religious institution to me says that it is a set of rituals specific to one religion. And marriage is not specific to one religion. You don't find Muslims practising communion do you? In fact not all branches of Christianity practice communion. But you have to be of that particular faith to practice or want to practice communion. Therefore I would label that a religious institution. But marriage not only is practised by all faiths, even the non religious among us, atheists and agnostics, can get married. I'm atheist and I was able to get married. I even had a couple of pagan rituals I found to be spiritually significant and beautiful in the ceremony.
You cannot claim marriage as a religious institution if people who follow no religion can practice it. This moves it out of the realm of religion and into the realm of free for all. Marriage in the past was often practised for reasons other than love - to join two families, to gain wealth, to prevent war. Marriage was a union of convenience more than anything in times gone past. Its only the last 100 years or so that marriage stopped being about what the two families got out of the union.
Then again modern celebrities have taken that aspect of marriage to a whole new level. Lets look at the number of quickie marriages some celebrities have entered into only to abuse the legal system in America to get a quickie annulment. Or the fiasco with one particular marriage of one Kim Kardashian. You would have had to have been living under a rock to have missed her short lived marriage which she came out and said was essentially for the money (no matter how she tries to spin it).
Two straight people can pervert a marriage for their own ends. That is a fact of life. How many people have we all met in our lives that we look at and wonder about why they are married? Marriage has lost its meaning as it becomes all about love rather than a legal formalisation of the partnership in the eyes of the law. For that is what marriage is ultimately. It is about forming a legal contract with your husband or wife that gives you protections and right under the law that you might not otherwise get if you were unmarried.
I'm going to expand upon this by asking you to think of a situation where you have fallen into a coma and are essentially a vegetable. It doesn't matter how. Under the law, the next of kin is your husband or wife if you are legally married. They are the ones that get to make the final decision about what happens in this situation. Whether the doctors should pull the plug or let you continue to be a vegetable in the vain hope you might awake one day.
If you have a husband or wife then you have probably described to them what you want to happen in this situation. I have told my husband what I would like and he has told me. But where you are not joined by marriage or similar contract the next of kin is your parents. So if we look at a gay person, either gender is fine for this example, and they have been with their partner for the last 20 years or more, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that these two have lived together as a married couple for this long. The parents can come in and force their choices on the situation.
So what you say. Why shouldn't the parents have a right? What if they have disowned their child 20 years ago and haven't spoken to them since because they were gay. What if they come in and instead of pulling the plug like said coma person would have wanted they decide to keep their child alive completely against their child's wishes. Or visa versa.
Marriage gives a relationship a lot more than a piece of paper. It gives legal standing. And why should two people be denied that because they are not a man and a woman? I don't even give a rat's behind if its called something else, like in New Zealand where you can get a civil union. At least its something. But to deny people the chance to have a legal standing and to have commitment in their lives is ultimately just another first world issue.
If two gay people get married does it impact on a straight couple? Not really. I don't care if the two guys two doors down from me are doing each other. It doesn't impact my life. Does it mean my kids will grow up gay? Being gay is a choice and if my kids are gay I would still love them. What about letting gay people adopt? Well a gay woman can get knocked up easy enough and have children in a gay union. And I can think of far worse straight couples who have children than gay men. Why not give a family to the millions of children out there that don't have one.
Every argument I have heard about gay marriage I can invalidate with examples. I have not heard one good one yet. And to be honest, if they want to get married let them. Let them have the same headaches and triumphs as we do in marriage. And lets get on to worrying about more important things in life.
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