Marriage?

(It appears to be my relationship phase.)


How funny is it that the French took so long to legitimize same sex marriage? Perhaps I am stereotyping, but France seems much more laid back and tolerant than we do. After a quick search I found only 129 Baptist churches in all of France. Heck, there are that many in my little Texas town. So, what’s the big deal and why did it take so long?

I think the answer lies in the fact that we are looking at this all wrong. 150 years ago African American slaves were not allowed to get married. They had a 0% divorce rate, much better than their Anglo masters. I suspect that many of the gay couples currently living together who desire to get married after years of co-habitation may find wedding vows very binding. Once those marriages are legitimized we will start tracking gay couple divorce rates, probably by gender. Won’t that be interesting? Who gets divorced more, male couples or female couples? We may finally find out whose fault it is really! See, there are research benefits to allowing gay marriage.

Perhaps what we should do is ban marriage altogether, heterosexual and homosexual, inter-racial, transgender, and intergalactic. I am pretty clear that most of my 5 or 6 husbands would have voted for that after about 6 months. Not sure I wouldn’t have voted for it myself, but in those days it was harder for a woman to make a living. It seems to me with both parents working, it makes little difference whether you are married or not. One is not staying home doing the wash, cooking and minding after junior in high heels, hose and a twirly dress. House husbands never really caught on, I think because there is still so much discrimination against women that women cannot earn as much as men. Nope, single parents and married parents are dumping kids at day cares right and left. Funny thing is they both have to work to afford childcare.

I digress. If no one were married we would send a very different message to all our little girls. What do you want to be when you grow up will not include working on your MRS. Choose a career. Get to work. Have kids if you want – you could even audition the potential fathers. Men have done this for eons.  This could be great. As it is now we are wasting a large percentage of human capital on women whose ambition is marrying well. Come on you bums, get off the couch and go to work!

If we ban marriage we would have to grandfather and grandmother the 1% or so of couples who really are happy and allow them to remain married. We could allow all currently married people to remain married. All we have to do is ask. If either the man or woman says they are unhappy, the marriage would be instantly dissolved and property sorting could happen next door.

Divorce rate would go down. Happy homes would abound.

Oh well. The French have finally recognized that love crosses all boundaries. Fighting it is as futile as the Capulet and Montague effort. I’m glad for French gays.

Now how do we help all the miserable married people?