Is same-sex marriage a civil right?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 But I don’t think different-sex marriage is a civil right, either.\u00a0 It is a practical matter.<\/p>\n
The institution of marriage is a human invention.\u00a0 It started out as a property deal, for people with property.\u00a0 Poor people need not apply, though eventually the idea spread and “common law marriage” came to be, and even formal marriage.\u00a0 (Yes, the definition of marriage was expanded to include poor people.)<\/p>\n
People do pair up, usually opposite sex, sharing property, and frequently having children.\u00a0 Sometimes there are problems, often they are quite familiar age-old problems.<\/p>\n
This pairing up happens.\u00a0 It has consequences for society, it makes sense for society to recognize it and stamp a name on it, “Marriage”.\u00a0 Once it has a name it can be easily be referred to in laws and regulations–so much easier than dealing with each case on its unique merits, because face it: most marriages are the same in so<\/em> many ways.\u00a0 It makes sense to take what we learn from one marriage and apply it to other marriages.\u00a0 Instead of having to invent laws that deal with things like divorce and child custody issues, from scratch, every time a marriage fails, it is only practical to send the feuding couple to a court that is already experienced with feuding couples, and sort it out with well settled case law.<\/p>\n One can imagine a world without the institution of “marriage”, but it seems an inefficient place.\u00a0 People are going to do some predictable things that have predictable consequences, it makes sense to have an institution ready for them.<\/p>\n Enter same-sex marriage.\u00a0 A few years ago it seemed ludicrous that there could be such a thing, yet now it is inexorably becoming obvious to everyone.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because the closets opened and different-sex couples have become commonplace.\u00a0 They are everywhere and are being accepted as existing.\u00a0 (Like them or not, call them “normal” or not, they very clearly “are”.)\u00a0 And as with different-sex couples, it is merely practical to have a shorthand way to deal with them, too.<\/p>\n So dang it, let them get “married” it will make all our lives so much easier.\u00a0 It is a practical thing.<\/p>\n What about the slippery-slope worries?\u00a0 If we let same-sex couples marry, what about people marrying their horses?\u00a0 Well, if human-horse pairings become common, then we can figure out how to deal with that. In the meantime, same-sex couples are falling pretty neatly into the same pattern as different-sex couples, so let’s treat them the same.<\/p>\n It is not a civil rights issue, but it is sensible and practical and humane and fair.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Is same-sex marriage a civil right?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 But I don’t think different-sex marriage is a civil right, either.\u00a0 It is a practical matter. The institution of marriage is a human invention.\u00a0 It started out as a property deal, for people with property.\u00a0 Poor people need not apply, though eventually the idea spread and “common law […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.borg.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.borg.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.borg.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.borg.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.borg.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.borg.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.borg.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.borg.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.borg.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}