If It was Nasa It'd Be Gone By Now.

There other day I was up and running little erands around the house. I either had the television or radio on and was listening to a little debate about the purposed "Defense of Marriage" act. The guy was talking about how if this bill passed that his marriage probably won't last another year. That for the bill to work there would have to be standards that would have to be established and that he and his wife wouldn't make the cut.

Beside making me laugh, I had to think about what he said. After all, this bill is being used to try and prevent gay marriage becoming a reality. As a gay man, this issue effects me on some level--but it is also a fight that I haven't given much thught to. I guess I have my own views and problems with the act of marriage--my mother and most her family have been married multiple times and so I doubt the sincerity of the act. But I am for everyone having equal access to government benefits like shared property, next of kin in medical issues and shared child custody. That being said though, this bill raises an issue.

What is marriage really? It is a social act with fringe benefits or something that the government needs? I would argue that it is a social act--standing up in public to lay claim to someone else for life or whatever breaks them up. But if it is a government program and act then it should be held to the same criteria as other programs. And if you look it that way--then there;s a problem.

As a government adgenda and program that we are forced to examine the benefit of political intervention. If a bill is passed then it would have to have set guildlines not only for the act itself but what the purpose and outcome of this act is to be. Then we would have to create position with the political system to establish and monitor these guildlines. How do we determine these rules for something as abstract as love and relationships? It is an issue like regilion and also very connected to religon--something that we don't monitor outside of keeping it seperate from state.

And if we decide still to go forward with a government program for marriage then we would have to keep records and document the process and failures of it. That would point out the biggest problem with the entire bill. We would have to prove the value and importance of the act and government need to be involved.

We would be forced to aknowledge the fact that this is an act that has a close to 50% failure rate. That if we had any other governemnt program with that kind of failure we would be up in arms as to the taxes and efforts being put into it. That if Nasa or the Military had those type of numbers we would pull funding like that. The idea that are taxes are already being spent on the issue and that any outcome might require even more of this is useless, pointless, and just silly. But this is a question that will be brought into play as the government continues to play this out.

So I say, let the gays have marriage. It saves us alot of money, time and introspection that the American public may be surprised by at the end of the day. The government has no point being invloved in a social convention, which where marriage currently lies. That the churchs can choose to aknowledge gay marriage if they want but let us have the legal paperwork and benefits implied in the one act. It can be argued that we can set up the same rights through other means, creating more governement work, more money being spent and a waste of our taxes and the government's time. because if we continue down this road then we may open ourselves up to laws that none of us want and the actual realization of marriage's failures and problems. I say let it stand and let us all keep the hope and faith of this act about love and not the government's desire to tell any us of what is acceptable.