After yesterdays two thousand word rant about the battle between the Church of England and the Government over the extended rights of the GLBTQ community to marry their partners I woke up this morning feeling fully educated and justified in my opinion on the subject. I drank my morning coffee, crawled back into bed to play Final Fantasy 8 [which my very special Mr. has not yet played himself so I'm showing it off using all my meta-gaming skills] and finally emerged again gone mid-day to come online and read the days headlines.
Upon hitting The Independent's website [I cruise a lot of the countries news paper websites, I like to gain a broad opinion] I found this artical about half way down the page: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/gay-marriage-is-one-of-worst-threats-in-500-years-says-church-of-england-7836852.html
I am a man who likes to be as fair and just as possible. I am not an unreasable person and will gladly absorb new opinions provided the evidence in there to accept, yet I am opinionated and can argue a point well when I'm not seething with rage that could boil water.
Reading this artical has changed a few of the ways I now view the subject.
At first I was sympathetic to the Church of England. Their sriptures dictate that homosexuality is a bad thing and that marrying two of them together would go against their belief structure. I totally get that. It's forcing them to do some thing that they not only don't want to do but believe firmly against doing for moral reasons as well as to do otherwise would be to go against the word of their Lord. If some one of authority came up to me and demanded that I beat a sack of puppies to death as it was the modern thing to do, I don't think I'd be best pleased either.
However this is not a sack of puppies, in fact it has nothing to do with small animals of any kind. This has everything to do with the definition of the word 'marriage'.
Acording to the CofE to allow gay-folk to be married in a church undermines the meaning of the word marriage.
Well, yes. Yes it does. Obviously. Because marriage is between a man and a women. It says so in the big dusty book on my shelf, probably. I wouldn't know but when a man wearing a dress starts jumping up and down and insisting it is I don't tend to argue.
One solution is to find a religion that will do the ceramonies - problem solved. But the CofE is our national religion, so finding some one new would raise more problems culturally, as well as a few familiar hate groups and those who put too much stock in the mythic, raising their ugly heads to kick up a stick that some thing has changed. Seriously, I'd rather have a house full of cats then live with one of them. At least cats don't give you as much shit when you move the furniture around so everyone can find a place to sit in your living room [- metaphore for society. HINT. HINT].
If marriage, by definition, is purely the union between a man and a women then I have an alternative suggestion to this problem; let the GLBTQ community have a NEW word for marriage, one that directly applies to US so we don't have to mooch off or upset the straight status-quo that has desperatly tried to surpress, murder and ignore us for so long.
Why should we [GLBTQ] try to have which those who would deny us by discrimination or religious doctrine have? Why do we want it any way? I'm certainly not a fan of marriage and am fully of the opinion that if it was not already apart of our culture to get married no one would give a flying fuck and think the whole process was ridiculess.
But if they say that having a same-sex couple married would undermine the meaning of the word [duh] then lets have our own word, like Binding or maybe go right back - right, right back to the ol Latin.
The word marītāre means to provide with a husband or wife. Surely this is sufficient enough for our needs? Plus we get to claim dibs on the revival of a sexy Latin word.
Honestly, if they think that changing the meaning of marriage is the absolute worst thing that can happen to the faith in the last 500 years then they are massively deluded. There are so many branches of Christianity now that I've given up trying to google them all. If having a massively diluted faith structure ISN'T undermining of your faith I honestly don't know what is.
The way I see it, it would be much more undermeaning to marriage if the GLBTQ community did establish it's own varient. Exactly the same process, exactly the same words, rights and men in frocks...but it was called marītāre. Without the need for a CofE marriage in the GLBTQ community its relivence is removed and thus it is undermined by default - we don't NEED your crappy marriage.
Besides, our vestments would be so much more fabulous!
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