COLUMN: Marriage vows fail to be sacred
I guess people are all irritable since the no-call list was started. They don’t have telemarketers to kick around anymore so they have set their sights on gay marriage again. It seems like yelling “gay marriage” is like yelling “fire” in a crowded theater; people go running and screaming crazed in all directions. Of course, it actually is illegal to yell “fire” in a crowded theater unless there is a fire and likewise it ought to be illegal to yell “gay marriage” unless you have thought this through a little further than what you see on the Fox network.
It is one thing if your personal beliefs or that little voice in your head tells you it is wrong, but is hard to see how you can be anti-gay marriage based on the sanctity of the institution of marriage. As a nation, we love marriage, so much so that many of us do it more than once, but sacred?
Look around. It is not exactly a sacred institution. Take a drive through Las Vegas or Reno sometime and take a look at all the sacred chapels where holy men dressing in Elvis costumes can help you through your sacred vows. Take a look at all the advertisements for weddings in balloons, on boats, while skydiving and under water. Take a look at some of your own friends’ wedding photos. Bridesmaids’ dresses and ruffled tuxedos alone should be considered sacrilegious by most of the world’s major religions.
If that’s not enough, take a look at television’s treatment of marriage. In the last several years, we have had dignified reality TV shows such as “Who wants to Marry a Millionaire?,” “The Bachelor,” “The Bachelorette,” “Race to the Alter,” “Marry My Dad,” “Joe Millionaire” and “Married by America.” These are only the shows that directly deal with marriage, there are probably a half-billion others that deal with dating, dancing, hookin’ up and all manner of non-gay Spring Break and Marti Gras premarital mating rituals.
The people who perform weddings aren’t all that sacred. You can get married by a ship’s captain or a justice of the peace, and I have friends who have gotten temporary preacher status through ads in the back of Rolling Stone magazine. But why even spend all that time dealing with the US Postal Service? I just spent three minutes on the Internet and was able to find a site that would ordain me and send me legal credentials to perform marriages for $10, and “sacred” and my name have never been used in the same sentence.
Is same-sex marriage any more non sacred than same-family? Though most people think of marrying their cousin as something only practiced by banjo-picking Appalachian despots, about half the states in the United States allow some form of cousin marriage. According to www.usmarriagelaws.com you can marry your cousin in Utah “if both cousins are over the age of 65, or over the age of 55 and can prove sterility.”
And besides all this, America is in love with gays in other ways. We just love them as hair stylists, interior decorators and clothing experts. Those five guys in “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” are so fabulous; they might even bring some dignity back to weddings.
Dennis Hinkamp is an employee of USU. Comments can be sent to dennish@ext.usu.edu.