A Reasonable Solution To The Gay Marriage Debate

The gay marriage issue has never been about equal rights, marriage nor religion. It is about gay activists’ desire to change society's basic institutions out of the frustration that they are not included.

The proof is the term “gay marriage”. “Gay marriage” is an oxymoron. It is an attempt to “redefine” the word marriage. During all of recorded history, the word marriage (in every language) has been defined as the union between a man and a woman (or multiple women in some cases). Marriage has always been the foundation for families and it provides the means to care for the resulting children. Although there are some childless marriages, there would no necessity for the legal institution of marriage if not for the probability of raising children. Virtually every civilization in recorded history has instituted marriage to insure that both parents are legally responsible for raising their children.

 Most all Americans that I know, whether conservative or liberal, whether agnostic or religious, are not opposed to civil unions between consenting adults. Civil unions give gays all of the legal rights and responsibilities of marriage without re-defining the word “marriage”. Many states, including California, currently have civil unions available for gay couples. Unfortunately, gay activists reject civil unions for no logical reason what-so-ever. Their reason is emotional, not logical. Gay activists claim that only the word “marriage” would give them true equality. IMHO, this is absurd. The only objection that most Americans have to gay marriage is the redefinition of the WORD “marriage”. 

Therefore I suggest a reasonable compromise. Instead of re-defining the word marriage to include gays, we should create a new word to define gay marriage. I propose the word “garriage”. Gay couples can get “garried” while straight straight couples can get “married”. Many languages use different words for feminine and masculine genders. Some languages even assign genders for inanimate objects such as car or boat. In English we say him or her, he or she, count and countess, king and queen, etc. Since a gay union is technically different than straight union, there is no reason why we can’t use different words to define them. 

Unfortunately gay activists will not accept this compromise under the guise of equality because they are unwilling to accept the fact that they ARE different in significant ways when it comes to marriage. They will compare using different words to define different unions as “separate but equal” which was a term used for segregation of blacks. This excuse is a ridiculous as saying it is not fair to differentiate between apples and oranges, men and women, or whisky and rum. Traditional marriage, as it has been defined for 5,000 years, IS different than gay unions. A different word to define gay unions is appropriate and very reasonable.