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Bollocks. Where's the support for that? The Greeks "cheated" (by present-day standards) on their wives with men and boys; to this day, men in less developed countries stone, torture, and murder their wives, sisters, mothers and daughters for being raped because being a victim of rape is "dishonorable;" marriage has been used throughout history in barter and trade, with families often often selling daughters by means of "dowries," to husbands who treated them as chattle; and, of course, the American ban on interracial marriage was only lifted a few decades ago. Before that point, you could only marry someone with skin the same color as yours.

Yet, this is what a sacred institution looks like?

While marriage probably is best treated as sacred by its participants, as human happiness is directly involved and is the most sacred thing a person can name, whether or not it is treated in such a way is obviously relative, very personal, and constantly in flux. Marriage can be sacred, but, as history shows, it can only be sacred if a couple treats it that way. In a healthy society, government decrees laws in order to help its population function happily and freely. It isn't the government's job to uphold the "sacredness" of a symbolic gesture.

Objectively speaking, the practice of marriage itself is all over the map. The only common factor to all marriages is that they are contracts legally binding one person to another. Most often, marriage has been used as a bare-bones method of slavery and barter, usually justified as such by religions like Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Only we can make it sacred, and we do this via our treatment of our own marriages. Gay people are just as capable of doing this as anyone else.

The best way to grant marriage the sacredness it has so richly deserved throughout history, yet has rarely received, is by granting non-discriminatory access to it. Denying any adult couple the right to marry doesn't keep marriage sacred: it limits marriage, making it an exclusive, legally-endorsed club. Legal endorsement of such a club oppresses those it excludes by definition. And oppression, we can all agree, is certainly not sacred.

FURTHER READING (especially for bigots):

Wikipedia entry on Homosexuality in Animals:
http://en.wikipedia.or g/wiki/Homosexuality_in_animal s

The entire official California Supreme Court document on the legalization of gay marriage:
http://www.courtinfo. ca.gov/opinions/documents/S147 999.PDF

The First Amendment at Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.o rg/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the _United_States_Constitution

Learn more about this author, Currie Jean.
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