Gay Marriage: Clearing the Aisles
By Jack Mauro

I have waffled over marriage like a nervous bridegroom. I have in fact been waffling for years now, so the analogy becomes more that of a nervous bridegroom with a fiancée who plans very well ahead.

My jitters were about gay marriage. Initially, anyway. At first, I was hopelessly biased against the notion itself, and lost no time in explaining to anyone who would listen how preposterous I thought the idea. Gays—certainly gay men—are notoriously frantic to brick and mortar up relationships not necessarily sound enough to survive through the weekend. They feel an attraction, the attraction is reciprocated, and suddenly pets are brought home, joint checking accounts are forged, and two more men are quite sure that two rockers will be needed, for two sets of declining years.

I have seen much of this. Relationship ballast is added like links on a charm bracelet. Validity is sought from the outside in, as all the traditional accoutrements of spousal, forever-ish unions are slapped on. So, marriage? Legal, gay marriage? To my mind, it was tantamount to giving the twelve year-old the keys to the car. It isn’t that the pre-teen can’t drive; it’s more that there’s nowhere, really, a twelve year-old needs to drive to.

Then someone uncomfortably close to me put the issue in a light I had hitherto overlooked. It’s a civil rights thing, and that’s all there is to it. And the gay man or woman should be just as entitled to make a jackass out of himself as his straight cousin. This is hard logic to refute. I found I could not do so.

Now, today, the battle rages on. Albany’s much-anticipated verdict slapped gay marriage and sent it back to its room, as the Court of Appeals upheld the New York State ban on same-sex weddings. By way of reaction, interviewed gay couples expressed anger, vowing an even more strenuous digging in of their heels until they legally may be made as one with their partners.

But, as all the hoopla and campaigning and such goes on, I find myself thinking not so much of the gay marriage dilemma, as of the whole, benighted, abused shebang. It isn’t gay marriage I would deny, were the power and the veto mine. It’s marriage, plain and simple. And I believe it’s past time for some serious restrictions on the ritual.
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