Diktat

Gay marriage. Yep, here in the Golden State we have the progressive institution of gay marriage. Us and Mass. I'd thought Hawaii, but apparently not. They're too backwards. Our four-three Supreme Court has done what Supreme Courts do -- corrected the faulty opinions and erroneous religious convictions of the great unwashed, and is leading us by the nose-ring to right-thinking. Thanks for the high-minded moral guidance, California Supreme Court Justices. Now will you rewrite our Bible for us? It's so hateful.

Well, I won't belabor the matter. Not much. Like how marriage is an actual thing. Like, what the word definition means: making something definite. Limiting its meaning. Excluding things that don't qualify. That is a rather harsh reality, the fact that one thing cannot be another thing, just cuz it would be nice if it were so. As I say, though, I won't go on and on.

Nor will I rattle on about how this very thing has happened before. Abortion. By diktat, court diktat, the most profound socio-biological reality of all -- the meaning and fact of life -- was taken out of the bedroom, the household, the hospital, the halls of legislation -- and made the exclusive province of the court. They will inform us what life is, and we will obey. By fiat, the court mandated that life is the same as death. They are equal, a matter of neutral choice. A moral equivalence.

And now, gay marriage. Equal. To actual marriage. Shall we examine what the word marriage means? It is not a simple bond between people who love each other. We do not marry our children or our friends. Not a bond recognized by society or law. Business partnerships are not marriages. Not merely a biological pairing that produces offspring -- or there would be no illegitimacy ... if there still is such a thing. Not only the lifelong commitment of one human adult to another, which encompasses a sexual relationship. First, marriage is no longer for life; second, not all marriages are sexual. We can't bring children into the definition, since not all couples are fertile.

So here's what it is: marriage must be -- can only be between male and female. Humans. In what passes for Western Civilization, marriage would be between one man and one woman at a time. Polygamy is only slightly problematic. Biblical patriarchs, and Moslems, and pagans of various ilks include multiple spouses, but that is not Western Civilization, and in any case such marriages include both sexes, with the purpose of producing offspring. Mormons have renounced their formerly essential doctrine, and those fundamentalists of which we've been hearing in the news are classed as criminals.

Yet gay marriage, which includes no diagnostic element of what marriage must be, is not criminal. Go figure.

It has to do with equality. A good thing, isn't it. But an infant is not equal to an adult, in all the obvious ways. The love you feel for your family is not the feeling you have for strangers. That's because not all equalities are equal. Before we can even approach the issue, we must first place things in their proper category. We love our children equally -- they are in the category of our children. We expect equal treatment before the law -- it is fundamental to our system. We give up our seat for a woman but not for a man -- courtesy requires it. As for gay marriage, it has the same relationship to marriage that an anus has to a vagina.

Yes, that's harsh. I can't say, as is my wont, "Show me where I'm wrong." I can't, because such terms as marriage are defined by convention, and conventions change. To point to history, or religion, or biology, or common sense is simply insufficient in this matter. The judges will point to history, as of slavery, and say convention was wrong. They will point to biology, and say that it is not determinative. They will point to common sense, and say that marriage is a state of mind. They will point to an anus and say it is a vagina. They will point to themselves, and tell us that they have the power to do as they please, and have done so.

More and more I'm coming to the place that says, just be happy. I don't care if you're gay. I don't care if you love sodomy. I don't care if you were born that way or simply failed to make that necessary pubescent leap away from your own gender and toward the other. How is that my business? But social institutions are my business. Equal standing before the law is my business, as is the sanctity of the life of the unborn, and as is the definition of marriage.

Gay marriage. A new thing under the sun. Here's how we will always know that it's not actual marriage: it needs to be called gay marriage.

But I expect we'll lose. Decay is a function of time. The writing is on the wall. Mene mene tekel upharsin. Measured and found wanting.


J