COLUMN: Love, marriage are not to be confused
Reading recent letters in The Statesman, I was not surprised at the commonly used play on words: rights, love, and sexual preference. One stated, “I love my wife more than life itself, and it would kill me not to be with her.” This concession that love may exist in domestic partnerships and plural marriages is where the crux of the argument lays. It implies that love is not reason for the government to grant rights. Further links between these partnerships are still unclear to me.
This argument is old, incomplete, and an oversimplification of a complex issue. I don’t need the government, society, religion, or anyone else to recognize whom I love. Love is the most personal and intimate emotion humans can experience, it is not a right, and cannot be governed. Using love as the basis of rights is impossible. Domestic partnership and polygamy are very distinct and different. I am not an individual wanting rights to marry more than one person. I am an individual who deserves the inalienable rights that each is promised in the Constitution of the United States. I deserve protection, security, and the respect and dignity due all tax-paying citizens. Perhaps the best course of action to take as a nation would be removal of all rights from marriage, declaring it a celebratory ritual of love. No tax credits, no joint this and that, no divorce court, no insurance benefits, no financial aid bearing. Just two people, or three, or whatever your preference in love may be. No more soapboxes, no more fighting, and no more sanctity, just love with no rights. How is that for an oversimplification?
I expect more letters and articles filled with simple statements and trite expressions of natural, right and choice. But I am hoping that before compiling your message to “them” and how they should sit quietly paying their taxes and be contributing members of society, I ask for a few minutes you try and clear your mind, heart, and your argument long enough to ask yourself, “What if it were me? What if my son or daughter comes to me one day and says, ‘I am in love with the most wonderful person’?”
I once was just like you and fit very nicely among the norms of my culture, my society and my religion. It is difficult to express the agony, trial and rejection I have experienced by no earthly choice of mine. When I told my mother I was gay she said, “Satan is laughing. If you make this choice he wins.” I was sick in my stomach and I wanted to know who wins when a gay teen commits suicide because they know from the lips of their own family that rejection is inevitable? Who wins when a lifetime of deceit finally surfaces and destroys a family? Who wins when a USU student proudly states in a classroom they think all homosexuals should get the death penalty? Who wins when people are hated, disowned, beaten, and killed? I grew tired of being a pawn in the chess game of God and Satan long ago. But in reality I don’t think God or Satan is playing a game; I think we humans are, and it’s called: Us against Them, and the losers pay.
I know an amazing woman, one whose character, integrity and spirit are unmatched in most women. She is the love of my life and I lost her two years ago. After five years together, society, family, religion, culture and ignorance got the best of us. They won. There is not one day that goes by that I don’t feel the effects of that loss. I could easily blame every entity I listed above, but I am responsible for my happiness, and I allowed it to be governed. I suppose I learned a great lesson. However, things should have been different.
Marriage is used in so many ways already. I would hate to see it used as a premise for avoiding the responsibility to recognize the rights of a minority group. Marriage is an amazing thing and creates a strong bond among a family; love can do the same. So is love stronger than marriage? I will take love. You can keep marriage. And the rights of a tax-paying citizen should have nothing to do with either one.
The views expressed are those of Jill Henderson, a junior majoring in social work. Comments can be sent to jhenderson@cc.usu.edu.