What is Same-Sex Marriage really?

Well, perhaps we need to define marriage first. This was a question that was posed to a class of twenty-one (21) adults in an evening paralegal class earlier this week this past Tuesday night. I was asked to be a guest speaker and discuss same-sex marriage along with other family issues involving gay, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered (GLBT) folks and this was the first question the instructor wanted me to cover. Most specifically, "what is a family?".

Apparently this is not a question that is easily answered and a question that our own President Obama struggled with in his book, Dreams From My Father, beginning on page 327. After the class struggled with the mainstream definition of a Mom, Dad, and children, they started to focus on the constructs of their own realities and realized that a good portion of them did not have that experience. It was agreed that a family is generally defined by a pattern of blood and marital relationships as voluntarily defined by the parties involved directly. Huh? Basically put, we define the family we live with and acknowledge, based on birth, intimate relationships and social rituals.

Marriage is one of these social rituals. When we marry we create bonds between two otherwise unrelated individuals which produce a series of blood relationships that outsiders to the group cannot penetrate or sever. A very powerful union indeed!

The Merriam-Webster on-line dictionary defines marriage as " (1): the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law (2): the state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage (same-sex marriage)". So apparently there is a distinction here that seems to part in the area of a contractual relationship.

So what is this contractual relationship and how is it created? The contract is the marriage license itself and it is created when people take a trip to their local courthouse and pay their fee. Curiously, this acquisition of the marriage license seems to be the last thing on the list taken care of - after the flowers are picked out, the venue is chosen, the bride chooses her maid of honor and colors, and the groom, selects his best man, etc. However, necessary it is, it is often treated as an item on a shopping list for the grocery store and is not given really any more thought than that exercised to achieve the task. Here locally, many people even complain about the three day wait required before the parties can use it if they haven't gotten counseling from their local pastor/rabbi/priest or licensed family therapist. After the license is gotten we go to the church or some other venue where more than likely some religious leader officiates over the ceremony and brings the two together as one before friends and family.

So, really we have a social ritual that has been given contractual recognition within the government wherein certain statues have been created and which provide certain protections, privileges, obligations and responsibilities (provisions) not just for the parties themselves, but any subsequent children born of the marriage. No other union creates these provisions in the same exact way as that of a legally recognized marriage. These provision extend not only within the realm of the local and state governments where the parties are citizens but well into the federal arena. These provisions follow the parties and their children from state to state, locality to locality and cannot be ignored by the jurisdictions wherein they reside at a given time and are not redefined each time they cross a state line.

So a same-sex marriage is something that is made to look like a marriage, but does not afford the parties and their children all of the same provisions as that of a regular marriage. Parties engaged in a same-sex relationship have conditional recognition based upon the state in which they reside and changes as they move from state to state. There is no federal recognition, which seems like it isn't a big deal until I sit down to file my taxes and can't claim head of household even though my wife doesn't work. Even if she did - I still can't do it because our marriage isn't recognized. So, I am destined to be taxed at a single rate for the rest of my life no matter how long we live together and no matter how committed I am to caring for her.

So a same-sex marriage is not a marriage in any meaningful way and is just a way for those who "sympathize" with our plight to feel good about doing something while ignoring the fact that it really doesn't do much more than allow the state I live in (if it has same-sex marriages) to make employers offer benefits to my spouse and give me and wife some protection in probate court. Inheritance is something I can take care of no matter what state I am in, health benefits I can get, although I will pay more for it if I can't get it through my employer - but I can get it just the same. So these concessions, although appreciated aren't much more than face time given to an unattractive subject that everyone wishes would just go away, because why does it really matter anyway?

It matters because I and many others like me are being denied the fundamental right protected by my birth right here in America to choose whom I make a family with and whom I associate with as a family. Because someone else goes to church and says I am going to ruin the sanctity of their marriage and redefine marriage I am denied the right to have my relationship legally recognize and must lie awake at night and hope I have made enough preparations to protect my Wife should something happen to me. Meanwhile, at least fifty percent (50%) of these fine church going people will divorce with their children in tow, have children out of wedlock and get married an average of at least two times before they are successful at marriage or live a life where they are perpetually single - BY CHOICE!