This is a letter to a straight friend who wants me to vote for Referendum 74 .. the gay marriage law.
Dear Wookie.
I intend to vote for Referendum 74 but I will do so with great reluctance.
“Marriage” has a very deeply felt meaning to millions of people. The term is bound up in romantic ideas of the relationships between men and women .. ideas that are also reflected in the white wedding gown of Americans or the ornate red gowns in China. The same ideas are related to gender specific roles as the giver of care vs. the stalwart defender of women and children.
Redefining the term demeans those people’s relationship in the interest of showing respect for gay marriage.
“Gay marriage” is newspeak .. Orwell’s term for redefining words as a means of controlling people’s behavior. I, for one, get lost in trying to remember what words like choice, war, right to life, and now “marriage” mean once they become afflicted with newspeak.
Am I pro or anti life because I support saving women’s lives by allowing abortion? Is “choice” a bad thing when liberals mean we should compel poor kids to go to our shitty public schools but a good thing when to comes to the choice of abortion?
Both sides engage newspeak for their own purposes. I assume you, along with me, object to the right’s passing laws that redefine “life” as being conception? How do you feel about laws that define marijuana as a “medicine?”
As for “marriage” changing the definition serves an agenda that has nothing to do with gay rights. The term “marriage” has been well understood in our society for a millennium or three. The rational reason to redefine it is not simply to create a privilege for same sex people who want the legal rights of married couples. That worthy goal is done perfectly well in all of Europe by one form or another of civil contract.
There is another issue here. Pairing, that is the number 2 is not implicit in being gay. Gay men and women can and do have many different forms of numerical relationships that, I assume, are as admirable as pairings. If we want to redefine marriage because some gay people want to be paired, why do we exclude harems or serial partners?
The real reason “marriage” is important to gays is not legalization of same sex pairs but public acceptance. So, for what it is worth to you as a wookie, I will, reluctantly, vote for Referendum 74
SJ