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| Thimble Rock and Driggs Mansion, Unaweep Canyon, CO - Memorial Day, 2010. |
I would like to draw analogy to the word "Indian" as an accepted social identity for Native Americans. They use this word. They presently identify with this word. The current usage of "Indian," however, is an unfortunate conflation of misinterpreted geolocation (India is a lot farther away than Columbus and Spanish explorers conceptualized, whence "Indian") and colloquial repetition. Native Americans ARE Indians--a Baudrillardian simulacrum of Native American identity--because these are the words we use to describe living descendants of the original American people.
Similarly, "marriage" is an unfortunate conflation of our primarily-Christian religious historical past (with concomitant desire for divine union under god, perhaps) and the pure desire to show commitment to a partner you love (while incidentally reaping the legal benefits through official union in the USA). Non-Christians are constantly getting MARRIED legally in the United States--a Baudrillardian simulacrum of showing true devotion and love to the person you care most about--because "marriage" is the word we use to describe the legally recognized state of ecstatic devotion to your soul mate. Shit, I'd want that, regardless of the word for it. I will probably get married some day because that's part of my American dream. And everyone deserves the freedom for that to be part of their American dream. EVERYONE. That's what the word "equality" implies.
Now, whereas Columbus' expedition resulted in unspeakable, irreparable, ruthless, "divinely-ordained" genocide, this current "expedition" into the sanctity of commitment need only result in increased love, not some sub-genocidal mock-divine recurrent repression of difference. Want to discuss sanctity? LOVE is sacred. COMMITMENT is sacred. LIFE is sacred. Marriage is a human construction, and a relatively unsuccessful one at that. If you want god involved, bring him in with open arms, as he would you. Do that in a church, and conduct your union in a church too, if that best befits you. The sanctity of your union with another will never be undermined if it is real in your heart. Real in your soul. Real in the finest tendrils of your being. Christians, in particular, often purport to deeply comprehend this sort of union--especially in concert with the divine. And yet, it is somehow socially "reasonable" to subjugate and litigate gay people's "right" to marry based on their sexual identity, as if sexual identity has some bearing on the sacred quality of union.
Finally, a syllogism of sorts: if you noticed my failure to capitalize "god" throughout, recognize also that god is no less transcendental a concept for my punctuation; likewise, de-capitalizing "marriage" (that is, deconvoluting marriage from God) makes the union no less divine, it just makes it "not under God." So, smile unto others' unions as you would have them smile unto yours. The sanctity of love prevails.
Groovy. What else is there to discuss? Sequestration? The Miami Heat? Global warming?
