I Write Letters

Dear Sanctity of Marriage Folks:

Because voters in Maryland, Minnesota, Maine, and Washington will be voting on marriage equality-related ballot initiatives this November, I'm seeing and hearing a lot of your tiresome "sanctity of marriage" nonsense again.

And while I realize it's a largely futile effort to appeal to whatever infinitesimal traces of reason and decency you may yet have buried beneath the metic fuckton of desperate insecurity about your super-special relationships losing the shimmering, golden glow that only denying equality to same-sex couples conveys upon your gloriously gilded unions, I'm nonetheless going to give it yet another shot.

You and I have talked plenty of times before about this issue, and we've gone over how marriage equality won't force you to get same-sex married, and how more inclusive marriage actually enhances the institution (at least from my perspective), and how hypocritical it is that you want to prevent same-sex couples from getting married while retaining your own right of divorce, and how losing privilege isn't the same as losing rights, and how rights aren't a zero-sum game, and how extending basic equality doesn't actually harm you and in fact is the decent and democratic thing to do, and how religious supremacy stinks, and other things, too.

I've also mentioned in the past how I don't like my marriage being appropriated by your "hetero marriage is the only and best marriage!" arguments. And that's because my marriage isn't sacred—and I want the right to define it that way. You want religious freedom, and I want freedom from religion, and I explicitly do not view my marriage as sacred.

God has fuck-all to do with my marriage.

Religion has fuck-all to do with my marriage.

In fact, none of the things that are associated with sanctified marriage have anything to do with my marriage.

Our marriage is a contract taken out in a courthouse between two atheists, one of whom was divorced, neither of whom were virgins, both of whom are intent on not procreating, and each of whom made a commitment contingent on continued happiness and fulfillment, not on some terrible belief that ending a dysfunctional relationship is a failure while grimly sticking it out for "eternity" is a success.

We are not interested in a consecrated union. We are not delighted by the idea we were ordained to be together. We have no need of the weight of eternity on the foundations of our partnership.

We want the choice to be together, so that we may choose every day whether to be together.

There's nothing sacred about my marriage—and I like it that way, thank you very much. It is earthly and profane and eminently human by design. And by virtue of the two people who comprise it.

And the blanket assertion that marriage—any marriage, my marriage—is sacred, as long as it's between one man and one woman, undermines my ability to define my marriage outside of your religion.

You are the ones trying to redefine marriage. My marriage isn't yours to redefine.

And it sure as shit isn't yours to appropriate, to subsume into the sanctified marriage borg, in order to deny access to someone else.

Knock it off.

Contemptuously,
Liss