Fourth of July and same-sex marriage

[This was intended to be posted on the Fourth of July. However, this Prattler got lazy. So, first of all, apologies.]

So on the occasion of the fourth of July (Happy birthday America! btw), it seems appropriate to prattle about the civil rights issue of this generation--marriage and adoption equality for same-sex couples.

In an editorial by published in The New York Times on 26 June titled A Decent Proposal, Bill Keller wrote:

What if the state were empowered to grant civil unions, regardless of sexual orientation ­— in other words, to lay out all the rights and responsibilities of two adults who merge their lives, without recourse to the word “marriage”? The state can make you partners, but it can’t make you husband and wife. The church — or synagogue or mosque or temple or ashram — has the authority to bless (or not) this contract as a marriage. Marriage, after all, is a sacrament. We don’t expect the state to baptize or serve communion or absolve our sins.

Marriage is not just a sacrament. It is not simply a religious concept. It is a human institution that has stretched across cultures for thousands of years. In many societies, marriage bears no religious connotations. In many societies, marriage is and only is a civil, and emotional, institution.

Of course, we cannot deny that in the United States, marriage has a religious aspect to it. Many wed in churches, synagogues, mosques, and other religious venues. Many view their marital bonds as a sacred commitment before an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent force.

But religion does not constitute the intrinsic meaning of marriage, does it? Marriage signifies, above all else, a bilateral commitment, a joint declaration of union in love and purpose between two people. Stripped of all religious, civil, legal, and all other (I beg your pardon) bullshit, marriage is a celebration of love, period.

So how do you tell two single people not related by blood (this is a debate wholly separate from the issue of same-sex marriage) who love each other and want to commit their love and lives to each other that they cannot marry? The same way you told inter-racial couples back in the 1950's and 1960's that they could not marry?

The argument that civil union (or any other civil institution of similar ilk) is an acceptable substitution for same-sex marriage is, therefore, unacceptable. The only reasonable, the only right move on the issue of marriage equality is to recognise it, not just in any state, but across the United States, and, ideally, across the globe.

Recognition of same-sex marriage, of course, must come with nothing less than full adoption rights for same-sex couples, and indeed, gay individuals. I will concede, that the freedom of religion does grant a certain level of protection for faith-based adoption agencies. But not when they receive funding from the government. Any organisation, secular or religious, funded in full or in part by the government--local, state, or federal--must be mandated to treat same-sex couples and gay individuals the same way they treat opposite-sex couples and straight individuals.

Faith-based organisations receiving public funding will have two choices: either treat all human beings equally, or end adoption services. If they end adoption services... well, then we know that they would rather stick to their outdated, discriminatory doctrine than help orphaned children find a loving home.