The Bonding of Souls Next Door.

With the plethora of weddings and engagements taking place all around me as of late, and the questions, concerns, and sometimes even downright offense I seem to incite in those around me when I maintain my refusal to take part in the institution of marriage, I've finally decided that I should explain myself on the matter.

It's not that I have anything against anyone who has a desire to get married. I just need to preface with that. I'm not ripping on anyone, and I'm certainly not trying to piss all over anyone's religious beliefs, or anything like that. It is merely an overwhelming personal feeling that marriage is a bankrupt institution, for several reasons.

In present-day Western culture, it is a well-established fact that - and I've done the math, here - two out of every five marriages end in divorce. I think this is possibly because people that get married nowadays don't know the history behind the institution of marriage, and they don't have a full understanding or appreciation for what it is to be married in the year 2010. More often than not, marriage is just "the thing to do" for impressionable people who see their friends and members of their families and those in the straight community all doing it, and it is taken far, far too lightly, by people who are exercising an unexamined privilege. Now, I will admit that the divorce statistics are likely applied mainly to a younger demographic of individuals, and given that same-sex couples can't legally marry on a federal scale, with all of those wonderful privileges and recognized unions that straight couples have, I believe that, while applying to a younger demographic of people, these numbers are also likely applied to a heterosexual demographic of people, and, for that, most of this is going to be about the traditional, heterosexual/heteronormative institution.

Now - and this is not intended as a blanket statement about everyone, and ALL young people, and ALL straight people; this is merely a personal observation - when I speak with engaged couples, they are never focused on their upcoming marriage. They are focused on their wedding. They are focused on the party, and the ritual, and the rings, and parroting vows they're not even listening to themselves saying back to a minister, and the ceremony, and the honeymoon. They are not focused on the marriage aspect whatsoever; the newfound responsibility, and the fact that you are now supposed to share the rest of your life with this person; that every decision you make, most things you have and desire, several facets of your existence are no longer "me," but are now "us." Marriage is thought of as fun and cute and it's the glorified form of living with someone, and hey, when I get tired of this, we can just get a divorce, and then it's onto the next. It is not often thought of as a serious, life-altering act that is supposed to impact you until your - or you partner's - dying day.

I'm going to do something now that I probably will NOT be doing very often, but I'm going to give a personal tidbit here, simply because I think it's a good example of an unconventional wedding practice, and without a doubt one of the most romantic things I've ever heard.

My parents eloped. In the middle of the night. With no one but each other. My mother got married in jeans and a halter top; my father in a t-shirt and a trucker cap. They didn't plan it, were never engaged, they had never lived together prior to the wedding, and - being from California at the time - they drove up here, to Las Vegas, and got married, had a quickie in a motel room for their "honeymoon," and came home. They were a on-again-off-again couple for five years. They stayed married for almost twenty years. They were married until my father died in 2000. I whole-heartedly believe they'd still be married if he hadn't. My mother never re-married, and seemingly has no intentions of doing so. And for the most part, they had a loving, honest marriage. I always cite it as the best example of true love I've ever witnessed, even if it was only for fourteen short years.

I digress.

Marriage - more often than not - is NOT viewed as the ultimate form of a romantic, sexual, loving bond. That's what it's supposed to be, though, right? You love someone, you can conceive of seeing their face every morning, you want to live with them and eat with them and talk to them and tell them your ideasthoughtshopesfearssecretsdesiresneedsdreams and share a bed with them and make love to them and watch movies with them and create things with them and possibly raise children with them and go to Applebee's with them and do all the things that married people do, and are supposed to want to do, with this one individual for the rest of your living days.

Well.

It's time for a little history lesson, folks.

Marriage - in its most archaic form - was once synonymous, not with love, but with FEMALE. SLAVERY. That's right; marriage was merely a glorified means for men to enslave women, or perpetuate the slavery of women. The marriage contract itself was originally the primary method for fathers to transfer the ownership or legal guardianship that they claimed over their daughters into the hands of another man; aka, her husband. And not only did they transfer ownership, but in doing so, the husband not only garnered a brand-new slave, but a cash bonus for doing so, and this was called a dowry.

Evidence of said practices are STILL prevalent in modern marriage customs. How, you ask?

There's this funny little custom that everyone thinks is really cute and sweet, and it still happens every day. This custom is now simply known as a legal name change. Without a second thought, every day, hundreds of women get married and take their husband's last name, in favor of forfeiting their given name; their father's name. No one thinks twice about doing this; it's just what you're "supposed" to do when you become a married woman. Originally, it was merely meant to signify that, as a woman, the legal ownership of your person was passed on from your father to your husband. You took your husband's last name because you were his property then; his slave. You no longer belonged to your father. Same goes for the custom of a father walking his daughter down the aisle and "giving her away."

In a modern sense, these are, obviously, ludicrous, outdated, primitive, sexist traditions, and many women would probably argue that it has no relevance in society now, and thus, the name-change is harmless, because it's simply not like that anymore. A very small percentage of us question it. However, I don't feel it's very much different. You've been the person you are for your ENTIRE. life. You've had your name for X amount of years, and you've always been known as that person. You've always known YOURSELF as that person. It is your given identity. So, suddenly, you get married, and you're expected to forfeit the identity you've had and known for as long as you've been alive?

I just... fuck. Fucking FUCK. In this world, only a woman would be expected to do something so fucking degrading with a fucking smile on her fucking face.

I've expressed this very opinion to many straight men over the years, who have attempted to laugh me off, or tell me I'm crazy, or what have you. The easiest way to shut them up, I've found, is to ask them, "Why don't you take your girlfriend's last name, then?" They get quiet, or mumble, or hmm-'n-haw, and I get to smirk, and pose the simple inquiry, "Kinda degrading, innit?"

Otherwise, marriage was also once used as a means of socio-political advancement. Probably still is, occasionally. The very trite "convenience" marriage we're all familiar with, in one way or another. You know the kind; two important, fat-cat corporations or countries or... whatever, form a "bond" or a "treaty" of sorts, and two figureheads from each of those respective outfits marry to cement the foundation. It's so Hollywood and trite and over-done that I don't even have anything else I can say. You know what I'm talking about. We've all seen it dozens of times.

You may be asking yourself how any of this can possibly bear any sort of relevance in modern culture and the state of modern marriage practices.

The fact is this: The institution of marriage and its roots were not based in foundations of love and commitment and soul-bonding, but in foundations of money, female slavery, power, and convenience.

In the modern sense, marriage is... a rather naive notion of romanticism. But maybe that's okay sometimes, in a world chock-full of cynicism. Marriage is based on notions of love and commitment, mutual satisfaction and individual choice. You're allowed to make your own decisions about the person(s) you love and you'd like to spend your life with; your family doesn't get to do that for you (speaking specifically about Western culture, that is - I am fully aware that arranged marriages still take place in some select countries).

Now, as a gay woman, I hear a lot of shit about how the sanctity of marriage is under attack because of some insidious homosexual agenda.

Let me address that first.

The only agenda I have is writing novels, being what I believe is a decent fucking person, book-shopping, meditation, gardening, and occasionally buying shoes, honey. I don't have some secret agenda to "steal" something that you perceive yourself as having ownership of, and it's really fucking easy for you to sit around pointing your fucking finger at me when YOU'RE the one denying people basic, human rights, because granting US any sort of leeway in the area of privilege might just force you to recognize the fact that we're full, multi-faceted, multi-dimensional human beings, who have feelings and convictions and who love and fuck and have the same mundane problems that everyone else has, on top of all of the problems you create for us. And it'd be a little difficult to still consider us sub-human that way, wouldn't it? I'm not doing that, am I? I'm not saying that gay people should be allowed to get married and straight people shouldn't. I'm saying that gay people should simply have the right to a recognized union; same as you.

The real attack on marriage is not coming from LGBTQI individuals; it's from the media, with television shows like "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?" and "Who Wants to Marry My Dad?!" and the constant scrutiny from the paparazzi on the lives of celebrated individuals, and the way it sensationalizes divorce, or all the TV shows and films we see where there's a married couple with a loveless, sexless marriage, and it just trivializes something that many consider to be an honest-to-Maude rite of passage; a loving bond of souls.

If those opposed to gay marriage would like to battle someone for demeaning the sanctity of marriage, perhaps they should shift their focus to the ways in which marriage is portrayed in the media. Marriage - because of the media - has become a farce. A fucking farce. It's a joke. It's a punchline. Literally. Between the way straight people conduct their marriages and the way the media portrays marriage, you don't even NEED gay people to ruin something that's supposed to be a sacred practice. Honey, you're doing a bang-up job of that on your own.

Now, I am, by no means, saying that it's wrong to get divorced. If you entered into a marriage that turned out to be hateful, or abusive, or what have you, I would absolutely encourage you to get out of it, and fast. If you truly DID love this person at the time you got married, and, years down the road, you honestly come to a point where you recognize that you're in a truly loveless union that has no hope for repair, I would encourage you to move on with your life. There are a few other cases where I think marriage and a subsequent divorce is fully acceptable, and not necessarily making a mockery of it, but I think I've gotten my point across with that, for now.

The thing is, I believe that most people who get divorced enter into the union WITHOUT actually being in love to begin with. Divorce hasn't become a solution to a bad, loveless marriage. Divorce is almost like some kind of a sick TREND now. It's like the new en vogue; it's sexy this year! And that's the kind of shit that pisses me off. People who sit around getting married and divorced and married and divorced and married and divorced, because they can. Because the law grants them the privilege to do that. And they're allowed to get married and divorced as many times as they'd like, and their first, and second, and thirteenth and twentieth marriages will ALL be legal, binding, and recognized under the view of the law.

I can be in love with the same woman for twenty years and, under the eye of the law, we might as well be total strangers.

Long ago, I decided to personally boycott the institution of marriage for all of these reasons, and others that I haven't even mentioned here. I can't get legally married to anyone until EVERYONE has the right to get legally married to the person they love. It would be plain hypocritcal of me to constantly advocate for same-sex marriage (among other non-traditional, non-heteronormative marriage practices), only to go out and exercise a privilege to take part in a union for which so many are denied.

I am down with love. I love love. I have loved. I AM in love.

I simply refuse to perpetuate the behaviors and privileges that traditional marriage is founded on.