Webster's America

by Brian C. Turner

Recently, a friend of mine asked me what the best argument for "gay marriage" is. First of all, wording the question like that doesn't really point out the issue. To take this question literally, I would simply answer, "If your gay and truly love your partner, marry him/her." However, it is in seeking to answer her simply worded question with a clever joke, that I can't help but realize what the real problem is: they wouldn't be able to follow my advice. SO I responded with this instead: No politician wants to completely say, "hey, I'm totally for Gay Marriage being recognized in every state in this country." Even the ones who claim to be liberal 'walk on eggshells' around the subject. They always say that "marriage" is between a man and a woman, but gay "couples" should be able to file their union legally and receive tax assistance, (by the way, if the gay and lesbian community were really fighting for the benefits of being a married couple in this country, they're doing so for naught since whatever claims to be assistance or advantageous under our government usually amounts up to change saved over a lifetime; let's not kid ourselves, we're fighting to make a point, to be recognized, in all senses of the word [that's right I did say "we" and threw the objective tone of this commentary out the window]). If the problem is semantics; no political hypocrite wants two men's or two women's love legally categorized under the same word as the bond they have with their wife or husband, especially since the word has a religious connotation. We all know that however many ecumenical councils there are, most religious followers just ignore their progress and, instead, find comfort in the quotations (or guised inspirations) of some ancestor whose larger problems were "how many pyramids will I break my back building today" OR "Gee, I hope I don't get doused with lamp oil and used as a torch at Nero's centurion pre-game party." Point being, the biblical stance on important issues of today is groundless since to those who wrote the "damned" thing (no pun intended), these modern day issues were nowhere near as important much less even debated (could you imagine a Leper colony arguing over whether a woman has the right to get an abortion? That argument would last for about 3 minutes before one of the opponent's ears or lips fell off.) I have a solution to this semantics issue, why don't we award homosexuals the right to receive governmental benefits of being legally bound to one another but not under the word "Marriage." Instead, let's create a new category: "long-time fuckers." This will be perfect in that it will breakdown such a bond to its basic nonsecular parts and justly offend any asshole who can't deal with homosexuality by forcing them to picture every gay couple in the act when they are informed that the two women/men, with whom they were just having a delightful coversation, are newly "long-time Fuckers." Despite my preoccupation with language, can we just cut all of the semantic bullshit and start valuing human rights, or what's left of them, for once?