Gay Marriage is Not Liberal Enough

The institution of marriage is not sufficient for some who seek a deeper bond. As Mike Huckabee, the Republican Governor of Arkansas and supporter of legal Covenant Marriages put it, “It is easier to get out of a marriage than a contract to buy a used car.”, most agree the divorce rate is too high. The institution of marriage is also not sufficiently flexible to handle others who ascribe to older traditional relationships such as "betrothal", nor other social commitments such as "engagement", "cohabitation", "dating", and yes, "gay marriage".

Our society is screaming out for a solution to this complex problem. But the solution need not be so complex. Donald Rumsfeld taught us that "When a particular problem is intractable, enlarge it", and it is generally good advice, especially in this instance.

The debate over marriage is about love and freedom on one side; and control and stability on the other, and both sides are right! One of the blessings of our modern era is that now there can be a middle ground which benefits both sides greatly. This middle ground is based on the rule of law and has its roots in the Bible.

There are many types of relationships between people of all types. In business we customize contracts for each relationship, but each contract starts with a boilerplate. The contracts can also be modified with addendums and amendments to keep them current. Modern contracting software can add standard language to these contracts with ease
We as a society have advanced our business relationships models and left our personal relationships behind. We could very easily have the institution of "Marriage" and the institution of "Gay Marriage", as well as all of the others, it is simply a matter of packaging the appropriate boilerplates to create legal standards for each of these relationships, and letting voters decide how each of them relate to the definitions we have imposed upon our government.

The other very important leg of this effort is the various religions which give meaning to these stages of our lives, commemorating them ceremonially, and exercising the power vested upon them by the States of our Union. Most of the older religions have many liturgical ceremonies for bonding which are not widely used. By creating the additional granularity in relationships, our religious guides may infuse each of these stages of commitment with the sacred love of the church. The research shows that such events do have an effect on the seriousness with which we make these commitments, enhancing stability, and compassion, as well as enhancing both control over the process and freedom within it.

It is only in this modern era that we also have the easily available technology in order to implement these mechanisms to such a degree. The need for custom commitments has outgrown the simple list of pre-nuptial agreement, marriage, covenant marriage, gay marriage, and divorce. And our society would welcome the opportunity to increase our involvement with the religious ceremonies celebrating the loves we share. What the advocates of gay marriage have missed, and why their effort is failing, is that they forgot to include the many people who also have their own ideas of what relationships should be added.

We all want to celebrate our love and togetherness with the blessings of our loved ones under the symbols we honor, whatever our relationship might be. So the problem with Gay Marriage is not that the concept is too liberal, just that it is not liberal enough to capture the imagination of all of us who seek to celebrate holy love. The problem with Marriage is not just one of gay rights, it is human rights.

Thank you John Kerry!

John Kerry voted for a funding bill before voting against it. The bill was going to pass in any case, but John wanted more from it than was in the then current version. He wanted more accountability and visibility on the funding expenditures. The things he was hoping to fix then have only become worse for the delay, but it is not too late to start now.

The leaders of our nation in the US Senate are devoting much attention to the alleged wrong doing of Custer Battles who received two million dollars in cash stuffed into gunny sacks according to Fox News, and are listed in the Top 10 War Profiteers list for being suspended by the Defense Department from all federal contracts for fraudulent billing practices involving the use of sham corporations set up in Lebanon and the Cayman Islands.

In the United States, such wrong doing is punished. If only more of us had listened to John Kerry back then, millions perhaps billions of US$ extracted from our taxpayers could have been preserved or put to use more wisely. Instead, Kerry was ridiculed for being right by people who should have been agreeing with him on this point, but for their partisanship. Election driven partisanship is one of the costs of democracy which reduce its efficiency. It is a problem in need of a solution and I welcome any discussion on that.

I see both George W Bush and John Kerry as American heroes in our time who have and are serving our great nation honorably. United, we can expend the appropriate resources to increase accountability and visibility in our government's operation to become more effective and efficient.