SWM Seeks SWF.

Single White Male seeks Single Working Female to marry to exploit marriage law/Tax Code. Must meet with lawyers for pre-nuptial aggreement for no shared income. Appearance and personality are not disqualifiers. Can sleep with other men, be on "extended travel", and exit from agreement at anytime.

The debate rages on blurring lines between dogma and law, or what I what I like to call it: Lawgma. Or Dogamalaw.

Congrats.
Before starting this tirade, I'd like to extend a hearty congrats to the states that voted to ban gay marriage or unions, bigotry has now regained political legitimacy in America.

The sanctity of it all.
This is a joke right? Protect? The Sanctity? of Marriage? Can someone explain this to me? We want a constitutional amendment to "protect the sanctity of marriage," to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman?

Sanctity? I think we are overlooking a few abhorent problems in American Marriage.
1) Divorce Rate hovering around 50%. Of the half that do stay together, how many are couples who have legitimate reasons to divorce but can't because their religion prohibits it? And of the half that doesn't stay together, how many seperated couples rethink "yea, we probably could have worked through it"?
2) Highest amount of Annulments in the entire world. For those who aren't catholic, Annulments are essentially "recognized" divorces, allowing for the seperated person to legitimately remarry by the catholic church, because catholics aren't allowed to get divorces. Annulments can be granted on grounds of impotence, the refusal of a spouse to have children, and psychological immaturity when they tied the knot. Conveniently, annulments handed out by American dioceses make up 2/3's of the annulments granted in the entire world.
3) Let's not forget about Adultery. Once, a male dominated field of expertise, men and women cheat on each other in almost equal amounts. Adultery is the antithesis of marriage and to see that it is more prevalent today shows a greater disregard of the vows taken during marriage.

And this institution (regardless of issuing religion) is somehow STILL sanctimonious? "Fuck you Jamie, guess what, we've got problems yes, but we don't want to add even more problems to this shaky institution."

Ok, I'm always up for logical discussion, let's say we amend the U.S. Constitution to include these definitions...this "protection." Done. Oh but wait, since we have set precedence to protect this institution, and we have not, by any means, done as much as we can. Divorce is out of control and is eroding this institution. We should make a constitutional amendment to iradicate it. Husband beating you? Oh....sorry.

Oh but if we banned divorces, another dire consequence would be an elimination of an entire legal industry as well as mid-day TV entertainment. Let't change it to, say, slapping the 2 people with new (and huge) "failure in judgement" fines. On top of that, since infidelity is one of (if not the top) reason for divorce, let's fine (or even jail!) the people who sleep with married people and call them "homewrecker" fines / sentences.

And we could create and amendment putting a requirement on length of courtship. If you haven't dated for 2.5 years, you can't get married. The possibilities are limitless!

"Jamie, what you are suggesting would not be allowed to happen." Well of course not, because my suggestions, although tempting, are a bit outlandish. But my point with these examples is that an amendment to define or protect marriage sets a slippery legal precedence. Not only are you ignoring the most threatening problems to marriage today (divorce, et al), you are asking the government to do more of what so many in this country want less of: Regulating your life. "We don't want the government in our wallets, but I definitely want them dictating our social morals and virtues." "We're willing to bend our (and others) values as long as you leave more money in our pockets." That's fabulous.

But what we all are overlooking in this national (and I stress national) discussion is the main ingredient of marriage: Love. To claim that we, humanity, know exactly how love behaves is extremely egotistical. Writers from all different time periods and all different walks of life show just how unpredictable love is and how it affects us. And I figure that if more couples legitimately love each other, the better off we all will be.

Marriage is a religios entity just as much as it is a legal entity, and justice is supposed to be blind. 100 years ago, white's couldn't marry blacks; before then it was considered "unnatural"and "untraditional." The tradition arguement is an easy fall back. Tradition was to have kings and queens, surfs, and slaves. Tradition before 1776 was not to have freedom. Tradition was to get around by horse and carriage. Tradition was to interact with people face to face only. We are a society of revolutionists. This arguement is only used because we repress our urge to say "Let's write an amendment because fags wierd me out!" Once tradition is left out of the equation, the only thing left is religious law, which has no right in being involved in a "free from religious persecution" society. The fight for marriage is a religious battle, the fight for a societal and legal recognition of love is one of unbiased and universal reasoning.

God I sound like such a hippie.