The Empire State Says, "We Do."

Today, the state of New York began marrying gay couples. Also today, several local and state employees have quit their jobs because they felt that issuing marriage licenses to homosexuals would violate their religious beliefs. I wonder what part of their religious belief covers issuing marriage licenses to people who have a fifty percent (or so) chance of having their marriage end in divorce. It’s probably nowhere near that silly part about “do unto other as you would have them do unto you.”


In the spring of 1995, my future wife, Bonnie, and I walked into the Cuyahoga County Courthouse, presented some identification, paid a fee and walked out several minutes later with our marriage license. We weren’t asked if we loved each other. Hell, we weren’t even asked if we knew each other. We did, however, have opposing sexual organs, and were therefore granted the right to be legally married.

Therefore, the standard for determining the qualification for marriage was, and largely continues to be, the premise that a penis marries a vagina. It’s not love or commitment or support. I mean, if those things were important, wouldn’t the state ask?

It is certainly within the rights of those employees to quit, as it is within anyone’s right to be against gay marriage. But isn’t there a higher standard in this country that above all of this is the right of individual freedom and the sharing in the bounty of those freedoms? There are a lot of things I don’t like (men who beat their wives but are allowed to get married comes to mind), but that doesn’t give me some moral prerogative to co-op the liberty of others.

If the framers of our constitution made one mistake it was not including the following language: “And above all else, mind your own business.” But absent of this, I am pretty sure our country can survive the inclusion of homosexuals amongst the ranks of us married folks. In the spirit of this, I would like to offer this marriage blessing I heard from a local writer one time, “go ahead, if you think there is no hell.”