KFX: “As far as I am concerned all the gay couples around the world campaign to be allowed to perform a legal ceremony of marriage, the ones who have a sense of love and committment between them......they're already married. For all intents an purposes they fulfill the most important part of a marriage. What they are campaigning for is legal recognition of the fact, and as such I fully support them.”

The following is the text of a comment I wrote to that article, though the links have been added.

I'm with Jonathan Rauch, who wrote an excellent book on marriage (and not just gay marriage, but marriage in general), and he argued that marriage has more to do with creating a home and family as well as making a commitment to the community than it does with two people making a commitment to each other. People (not just a man and a woman, but adults of all sexual orientations) who get married are saying to the community "I promise to be the first person at this other person's side when they are in a crisis and I also promise that I will be faithful to them at all times". Sometimes people break promises, and the second promise is especially easy to break. There are social punishments for people who break them. How many people do you know that have slept with someone other than their spouse who have a good reputation in the community because of it?

Rauch in his book argues that marriage has been history's most successful tamer of wild young men, so he argues that social conservatives should really see gay marriage (especially marriage of two gay males) as a social positive: here are two men who have decided that they want to once and for all not fit the stereotype of the male who cruises for sex. Hello! Conservatives! What better institution than marriage is there for people (straight and not straight) who fit that stereotype? Basically he's arguing that to save the institution of marriage, you have to let gay people do it.

James Moore, Canadian Member of Parliament for Port Moody — Westwood — Port Coquitlam, in a remarkable—for an MP, not for him, evidently—email to his constituents: “believe in equality under the law for all Canadians for civil marriages, which in a perfect world would be termed civil unions. And I also believe strongly in the separation of church and state in order to protect the rights of religious institutions and people of faith from having to embrace or perform same-sex marriages if they choose not to.”

Port Moody and Port Coquitlam are suburbs of Vancouver, British Columbia, which may help understand why he focuses on B.C. in his email. Moore opposes use of the term marriage for the legal union between two homosexual adults, but argues that civil unions cannot discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. It's not a compromise I'm fully comfortable with, but Moore is proof that the Conservative Party at least has some room for diversity of opinion on the subject of gays and lesbians. There is a strong-enough conservative argument (as I outlined above) for gay marriage and a strong enough argument that civil unions (a "marriage-lite" solution) is not good enough. Increasing the amount of types of marriage only serves to weaken the institution, as does the exclusion of gays.

In #joiito, the one, the only, AccordionGuy points me to a review of oddities in sports, and, well, you can read for yourself in conjuction with my previous thoughts on marriage: “the whole exercise was a prank. "Many times in NBA arenas you see marriage proposals that result in a happy couple," Washington Wizards vice-president of marketing Ann Nicolaides said. "We thought it would be fun to see the fans' reaction if a marriage proposal went badly. Judging from the response we've had, I think we got everyone's attention."”

Two stories about marriage caught my attention recently. No, not that one. First, Dare Obasanjo has the story of seeing a man propose to his girlfriend on the train: “They were engaged in conversation and he was comparing her favorably to ex-girlfriends, then all of a sudden he got down on one knee and pulled out a box with a ring in it. After a stunned silence she took it, said some words softly then said "I appreciate the sentiment but the timing is inappropriate" and handed it back. This was followed by her voicing her concerns about his ability to support them and him rattling of how much he made a month plus various bonuses, etc. I think it went downhill from there.” Then, via Photodude comes this story. There is even video of the event, this being the 21st century and all. For readers who come to this weblog entry and the NBC10 link is dead—first of all, welcome to the future!—let me describe what happened. A woman is blindfolded on an NBA basketball court and is asked to find a mascot. She does, and wins tickets to somethingorother. Then her beau comes out of the costume, takes the microphone, and asks her to marry him. She bolts, going right past the alter, heading down the ramp, and out the door. Okay, that last part was from a movie, but thing is, she ran, and the crowd—evidently—was aghast. Both are funny, but in the sense that the man suffers from public humiliation. Humans think misfortune is funny, especially when it happens to the male of the species. (It's funny when a girl kicks a guy's ass in a movie, but not when it's the other way around, right?)

I'm all for committing to someone. My opinions towards marriage, however, have been radicalized—if slightly—since reading Stranger in a Strange Land. It introduces the idea of being committed not just to someone, but multiple someones. This is from near the end of the book, so hopefully it doesn't ruin it for those that haven't read it. The first speaker is Sam, and the second is Jubal Harshaw, the principal character of the book (after Mike). Sam is an acolyte of Mike's "church":

"One institution won't be damaged. Marriage."
"So?"
"Very much so. Instead it will be purged, strengthened and made endurable. Endurable? Ecstatic! See that wench down there with the long black hair?"
"Yes. I was delighting in its beauty earlier."
"She knows it's beautiful and it's grown a foot and a half since we joined the church. That's my wife. Not much over a year ago we lived together like bad-tempered dogs. She was jealous . . . and I was inattentive. Bored. Hell, we were both bored and only our kids kept us together—that and her possessiveness; I knew she would never let me go without a scandal . . . and I didn't have any stomach for trying to put together a new marriage at my age, anyhow. So I grabbed a little on the side, when I could get away with it—a professor has many temptations, few safe opportunities—and Ruth was quietly bitter. Or sometimes not quiet. And then we joined up." Sam grinned happily. "And I fell in love with my wife. Number-one gal friend!"
Sam had spoken only to Jubal, his words walled by noise. His wife was far down the table. She looked up and said clearly, "That's an exaggeration, Jubal. I'm about number six."
Her husband called out, "Stay out of my mind, beautiful! —we're talking men talk. Give Larry your undivided attention." He threw a roll at her.
She stopped it in orbit, propelled it back. "I'm giving Larry all the attention he wants . . . until later, maybe. Jubal, that brute didn't let me finish. Sixth place is wonderful! Because my name wasn't on his list till we joined the church. I hadn't rated as high as six with Sam for twenty years."
"The point," Sam said quietly, "is that we are now partners, more so than ever were outside—and we got that way through the training, culminating in sharing and growing closer with others who had the same training. We all wind up in partnerships inside the group—usually with spouses-of-record. Sometimes not . . . and if not, the readjustment takes place without heartache and creates a warmer, better relationship between the 'divorced' couple than ever, in bed and out. No loss and all gain."

It's a radical idea, even today, that people can be 'married' or at least committed to more than one person. Marriage is exclusive, meaning that by law, only a certain amount of people (one) are allowed to do it with another number of people (also one). Open marriages such as the one described above reduce the barrier to entry into relationships. The sentence highlighted above shows that: she was happy to be sixth, because otherwise she wouldn't even be on the list (just like how there may be a power law with regards to blogging, but as compared to say, TV or newspapers, the barrier to entry is very low). In other words, it's not how you place, but whether or not you finish that matters, and open relationships, married or not, allow for more people to finish.

On what principle can we—can I—justify denying the ability and, more importantly, the propriety of people loving more than one person? Nate quotes a Malcolm Gladwell where the latter says “institutions [...] are where we hide when we can't find our principles.” It's a naive question (but naive questions are often the important ones to ask): is there a good explanation for why we are marrying? Or do we do it because, while there may once have been a good reason for doing it, we only do it now because it's the way we've always done it? We can question why these men made fools of themselves so publicly and have a laugh about it, but you'll notice that nobody questions the institution that caused them make fools of themselves.

The below is taken from When 'just friends' is wrong, which is a review of Not "Just Friends": Protect Your Relationship from Infidelity and Heal the Trauma of Betrayal by Shirley Glass, from which the following evidently originally appears:

I imagine guys don't hang out with their friends—especially their female friends—nearly as much as when the guys get girlfriends because they're worried about what the girlfriend might think, or what the answers to the questions might be (the "wrong" answers would be "yes" to questions 1, 2, 6 and 8, "no" to the other questions) might say about the guy. That goes for women too, I imagine.

Yes, it's the year 2003, and we're supposed to be civilized and mature about these things, and people are supposed to have unproblematically platonic relationships with friends of the opposite sex. But when it comes down to perceptions, well, perceptions, as they always have, matter.