{...a breezy life} at briemarisa.com

{Things on Thursday}

Today a few friends posted this clip from one of my favorites, The Colbert Report, on Facebook:



Let me discuss all of the ways that I love this. I love Stephen Colbert. I love that this town has bucked the stereotype of being a small-minded small town, but not because they were trying, just because they are kind. I love that Mayor Cummings is also a hairdresser, because ohmigod, that is awesome. I also love that he looks like Huey Lewis. And I love, love, love the gentleman at the end, who puts Gods love for us as simple and as truthfully as possible.

I figure that it's about time that I threw my hat into the ring and talked about how I feel about gay marriage because obviously the world can not continue to spin without my opinion on this with my own marriage being in such a spectacular tailspin right now, it's been on my mind a lot, particularly the idea of the "sanctity of marriage".

The whole "sanctity of marriage" thing kind of throws me for a loop. In this country, the failure rate of marriages is about the same as the Phillies this year, i.e, abysmal. My husband and I (a piss-poor example of the "sanctity" of marriage, really) could have had a crazy pagan wedding, full of chicken sacrifice, blood letting, and Bible burning, after knowing each other for a week, and limped over to our borough hall and got a marriage certificate because one of us happened to have a penis and the other a vagina.

I'll let you work out who has what part on your own. {ahem}

It would seem that anatomy plays the largest part in the controversy about who can marry whom. While it's true that a Very Important Book has given the example that marriage belongs to a mismatched pair of anatomical parts, I can't help but wonder how that doctrine has leaked into our courts, laws, and presidential races. Church says that it won't marry gays? Totally get it. I don't like it, but I get it, and it is the right of a religious group to not participate in something that is in direct defiance of the core beliefs of that group. City Hall says they won't marry gays? The piles of paperwork that are Law says it won't support it?

I call bullshit.

Here's the thing. As far as the Law is concerned, you can have no intention of having children, being monogamous, or honoring your partner. You can have no regard for the sanctity of marriage. You can be legally bound to someone you met twenty minutes ago at a casino in Las Vegas. As long as you bring the right anatomical parts to the table, you can interpret your "marriage" any way you choose.

The system is all wrong. To truly bring back the sanctity of marriage, to really believe that to enter a marriage is to bring together the best aspects of two people, to honestly create something beautiful and worthy and true, we need to give up the idea and marriage is based on our penises and vaginas and embrace the idea that it's about our hearts. It's not up to the Law to decide that the Very Important Book trumps all; as a matter of fact, the Law and The Book are supposed to be separate. As far as the Law is concerned, marriage is a bunch of paperwork, a statistical anomaly. You want to give marriage a good name? Love your partner. Love doesn't make things perfect or easy. But it will help bring that sanctity everyone is looking for back. Sexual anatomy should not trump love. To quote a favorite of mine, Glennon Melton's Momastery blog, Love Wins. Pete and I had a chance at something so precious and we squandered it, and yet there are thousands of couples who, as of right now, won't ever get a chance. I want to apologize to them for being so careless with something they are fighting so hard to have a piece of. If we had remembered love, maybe we wouldn't have fallen apart.

All of this is, of course, just my opinion. I am one vote in a sea of millions and by the numbers, it could be buried under a hill of dissent or part of a new landscape all together. I really have no right to have an opinion on this with my easy, hetero life but I saw a piece on Colbert and just couldn't. stop. writing.

Just love. Remember love. It's all you need, and it has power.

Sing on, Huey.