The Solution To The Gay Marriage Issue

by Pat Gundry

Historically, marriage has been many different things. The only thing it has consistently been is a more or less personal relationship between two people, usually a man and a woman.

It has usually been a secular legal agreement between the marriage partners, or between two families.

Not until relatively recently, as time goes, has it been considered a religious ceremony, with vows made before God.

Therein lies the problem, and the solution.

If we allow marriage to be a legal agreement for the purpose of protecting the persons involved and any children they might have, and their property, then the solution is to require marriage to, again, be, first and foremost, a legal agreement with certain minimum requirements set forth to qualify for entering into the agreement.

If we create a basic marriage contract that all must agree to in order to have the legal protection of marriage, we could eliminate the present conflict about whether people of the same gender should be allowed to marry.

If persons desiring to have the legal protections of marriage could simply go to a courthouse and prove their identities, meet reasonable and minimum requirements set forth for everyone, and sign the marriage document, the problem is solved.

And, if those persons desire to have a religious marriage ceremony, of any kind whatsoever, they are free to do that also.

Or, if the marrying parties want to create their own invention for an auxiliary marriage ceremony, they are free to do that.

Let those who want to marry women marry them, and those who want to marry men marry them.

And, this seems to be lost on the majority of opponents to gay marriage, inter gendered people should be free to marry whomever they wish without having to choose a gender and then be restricted in their choice of a marriage partner to a declared opposite gendered partner.

Gender is on a continuum, all the way from what we might think of as totally male to what we might think of as totally female. Many people think they are one or the other gender when they are actually a mixture to one degree or another.

Insisting that we must know the gender of a person and then restrict them to what we may erroneously think of as the opposite gender is forcing individuals to comply with a very out of date understanding of what gender is.

Allowing all adults to choose who they want to marry, not asking them if they are one gender or another, allowing that to be private, as it should be, will solve not only the problem of the gay marriage issue, but that of discriminating against and invading the privacy of inter gendered people.

Comments

[W. Lotus]

Sounds too much like doing right. :-)

I am a little confused about the phrase "inter-gendered". I have never heard that phrase, before. I have heard the phrase intersex, meaning someone born with the sexual organs of both sexes. I have heard the word transgendered, meaning someone born one physical sex but identifying with the opposite sex. What is "inter-gendered"?

[Pat Gundry]

Thanks for the comment and question. I probably should have used the term "intersex" rather than "inter-gender" because I intended to refer to people who are born with indeterminate genitalia or who may appear externlly to be one gender but who have internal organs of another gender, or who in some other manner are of mixed gender.

But, I think the use of the term inter-gendered applies as well to my point, which is that we have an abundance of reasons to change our marriage laws and practices to more reasonable, less discriminatory, and more fair and kind ones.

[Dorcas]

Ah, Pat, you are so sensible. :-)