Sacred Vows

I can see where a gay marriage advocate might see some inconsistency in our society, where many of the same people who oppose gay marriage will be chuckling at the news of Britney Spears' 14.5 hour marriage.

Sullivan, naturally, is one of them:

Look, I know some of you will object to the logic, but can you not see how something like Britney Spears' insta-marriage in Las Vegas might infuriate long-committed gay couples who, even now, don't have a shred of the rights Ms Spears enjoyed for a few days?

I'd wonder who would object to the logic?

Yes, I'm a divorced guy - but I think Ms. Spears' little act was repugnant.

Over the holidays, I found myself watching all those VH1 list shows, and happened across the top ten or twenty (I forget which) shortest Hollywood marriages in history. Ha ha ha. We live a world in which Britney Spears just engaged in something "sacred" (in the president's words), where instant and joke hetero marriages and divorces are a subject of titillation, and where a decades-long monogamous lesbian marriage is a threat to civilization as we know it. Please. Can we have a smidgen of consistency here?

More than a smidgen would be nice.

Marriage should not be a joke - and Britney Spears was only the highest-profile marital jokester in recent years. Nor should it be merely an economic union or a political statement - which seems to be the main interest of many gay marriage activists, who seem more interested in poking a finger in the eye of the establishment than in the religious significance of marriage.

In a perfect world, the government would be out of the marriage business, treating unions as contracts and letting churches handle the sacred business among whatever combinations of constituents they can theologically justify.

Will it happen? Of course not. The more I think about this, the more I think civil unions - contractual marriages - are the only rational solution.

Posted by Mitch at January 5, 2004 06:01 AM