Blogger friend Alan, who you may know as Seablogger. He speaks for me, on the issue of same sex marriage, with each word (except, of course, for discussions on how it involves him personally). And that is noteworthy since his post is five years old.

I suppose it’s past time for me to sound off, in my usual contrarian fashion, since I disagree with almost everyone on both sides of this issue. As far as I can see, this debate is a tug-of-war over the meanings of words. I’m more concerned with substance: the laws pertaining to civil unions, child-custody, taxation, and inheritance.

In older usage, marriage is not a contract; it’s a sacrament, and as such it is properly defined by religious texts and sects. When gay couples demand the right to marry, they are committing a trespass that drives some insecure believers batty. What’s the point? A lot of gay activists seem to cherish confrontation for its own sake: they seek to humiliate and ultimately eradicate scripturally-based, anti-gay viewpoints. This is a dangerous game for a small minority to play, and it’s completely unnecessary.

As a neo-libertarian, I want to see individuals treated equally under civil law. Ecclesiastical law is none of my business. Disapproval is not discrimination. I really don’t care whether some yahoo fundamentalist dislikes gays. If he throws a rock through the window over my desk, however, he may get shot. The Second Amendment and many legal precedents secure my right to self-defense. But I don’t spend my days thinking up ways to enrage ignorant people (none of whom read this weblog), so it’s pretty unlikely that rock will fly in my direction.

Under U.S. law there is nothing to prevent a gay couple from establishing joint property, power-of-attorney, and other legal protections. In this sense, gay people can “marry” right now. Furthermore, pressured by employees, firms in the private sector are rapidly rewriting pension and insurance plans to extend rights and benefits for unmarried couples of any sexual persuasion. Alas, many inequities persist in tax and child-custody laws at all levels of government. If our solons insist on rewarding procreation through the tax code, they should provide financial incentives for households to remain intact, regardless whether parents or guardians were wedded in a house of worship.

It seems to me that gay organizations ought to direct their efforts toward altering religiously-rooted laws that discriminate in favor of married people, rather than seeking the status of marriage for gays. That way we would have a lot of heterosexual allies, and we’d probably get most of the reforms we want, without inducing such fits of hate and hysteria among sectarian opponents.

Thing I Know #8. It is hard to get people to argue about private matters, but easy if you can somehow turn them into public matters.

Well, that’s it for today. If Iran, Pakistan or North Korea bomb the hell out of Los Angeles or Washington, DC, can one of you guys living in another state please chirp up and let me know? Because here in California, we’re sure as hell not going to get any news about it whatsoever.

We’re too busy talking about gay marriage…

Same-sex couples around the state began showing up to county clerks’ offices early this morning to get marriage licenses, and in most counties to wed by officials there.

At a few minutes past 9, Rich and David Speakman of Mountain View both spoke the words, “I thee wed,” inaugurating same-sex marriage in Santa Clara County. Moments later, a second couple, Ronni and Hannah Pahl of San Jose, were also married by Supervisor Ken Yeager.

After 10 years together, the only thing sweeter than getting married for Pahl, 34, and Davis, 29 was getting married in their hometown – San Jose.

“‘I love San Francisco, but it’s not me,” said Davis, a sign language interpreter at De Anza College, who became Hannah Pahl, taking Ronni’s last name, as they married. “I want to be recognized where I was born and raised.”

There’s a dirty little secret here about gay marriage. We do not, nor have we had any reason to, define oppression according to what our governments do & do not recognize. It’s ridiculous to think we can do this. Governments recognize all kinds of things individuals do not, and nobody calls those individuals oppressed. It’s not a human-rights issue; it’s a human-interest issue.

And there’s a dirty little secret about human-interest issues — you can’t measurably discern what makes them newsworthy, or even if they’re newsworthy. Newsworthiness, in a human-interest issue, is determined by the feelings of the people involved, and feelings are about as private as the contents of your e-mail inbox, if not moreso.

Nobody knows what you’re feeling, anymore than anyone can tell the contents of your e-mail inbox. Therefore, in commenting about either one, you’re free to say whatever you want. That which cannot be proven cannot be refuted either.

I know this is true. Two hundred thousand billion people have sent me e-mails, just this morning, saying exactly that.

So why are these new same-sex married couples so jubilant? Is it because a barrier has been knocked down in the equalization of homo/heterosexual human rights? Or is it because they have their fifteen minutes of fame? Who is to say?

Well, I have a test or two I can apply to this. I can take an honest, hard look as to whether this is, in fact, an historic event in civil rights history. And I must say I’m having a little bit of trouble seeing it. Let’s take a look at some other oppressed minorities, for example. Blacks, Native Americans, Asians, persons of the Jewish faith, people with learning disabilities can get married all they like. Are we ready to treat these groups as non-oppressed minorities now? Well, the answer is decidedly no. In the case of people with darker skin, the test is “there is still racism and prejudice out there“…and on the basis of that, we’re supposed to elect a guy President whose qualifications for such an office are decidedly threadbare.

This seems a little bit intolerant and prejudiced in it’s own way, to me. With persons of a different sexual preference, the test is “can they get official recognition” and if they can’t, then they are oppressed. With persons of a darker skin color — whoopsee! — it’s a different test. It’s “is there discrimination out there.” You don’t have to be a genius or a fortune teller to see what comes next. In 2012 we’ll know the homosexuals are being unfairly oppressed because “there is still bigotry and intolerance out there” even though they’ll be able to marry just as easily as people with darker skin.

There is a big fat silver lining in this cloud, though. And nobody’s talking about it, even though I suspect it’s bubbled up to the front of every straight man’s mind at some point. It is this:

One of our intellectual sins with regard to homosexual marriage, has been to use the word “loving” as a euphemism for “homosexual” when we describe these couples. Two guys want to adopt a little girl, thereby depriving her of a mother, and we’re directed to deliberate the situation in the context of an adoption by a “loving couple.” This is offensive in the extreme. It denies the existence of homosexual couples that might engage in bickering, jealousy and anger from time to time…and it also denies the existence of straight couples that might contribute to and enjoy a “loving” atmosphere.

Effectively, it promulgates a twin set of — dare I use the word — stereotypes. Gay couples are “loving”; straight couples are nasty, argumentative and bickering.

That’s offensive, but what betrays reality about this is that it denies even the most remote possibility of what we all know deep down is an inevitability: The homosexual couple that seeks a divorce.

There is a jurisprudence that needs to be built, now, that has not yet been. How do we hear cases of gay divorce?

For some time now, men who are in the middle of divorce proceedings from women — instigated by women — have “enjoyed” the status conferred uniquely upon minorities who cannot achieve defense because they cannot achieve organization. It has therefore become ritual for the family courts to fleece the husband, hand the kids and house over to the missus, and then go on to the next case. They’ve made a virtual conveyor-belt assembly operation out of this.

What do they do with the homosexual couples seeking a divorce, now? How do they figure out how to engage in the proper form of discrimination here, when both partners factually belong to the same sex?

So there’s some kind of reckoning on the horizon. And where there’s a reckoning, there’s the opportunity, no matter how fleeting and marginal, that injustices toward straight men may at long last be corrected. Speaking as a straight guy who’s been divorced-and-single for nearly half his lifespan, because of precisely this kind of issue, I can say my optimism is there.

The marriage institution is busted & broken — but good — not because we do-or-do-not marry gay people. It’s problem has to do with it’s post-modern feminist re-definition as a formalized institution of fraud and legalized theft. Maybe this latest event, which is presented so often as a profound destruction of marriage, will ironically culminate in it’s renewal and revival.

It can’t continue without a restoration of basic fairness. If it remains inherently unfair, nobody will participate in it except for people who lack self-respect. If nobody participates in it except for people who lack self-respect, then barring some explosion of out-of-wedlock births, nobody will procreate save for those who are inclined to sacrifice themselves for others who are narcissistic, selfish sociopaths.

And if that happens, woe be unto us if that’s a genetic pre-disposition. In that eventuality, we’ll be up to our armpits in self-centered narcissists and masochistic chumps. And it seems we’ve made some pretty good headway down that bunny trail already.

So bring it on. Let’s make an industry out of gay divorces, the same way we’ve made an industry out of straight divorces. And maybe, just maybe, when our courts re-inspect their formally institutionalized sex discrimination toward the end of customizing it to this brand-new class of legal coupling — as they now must — someone with some authority who is grappling with this odious re-customization task will utter the words that are only obvious: “Hey you know what? We never should have been discriminating against men to begin with.”

I’m like the ant stealin’ rubber tree plants…I have high hopes.