for some reason, i've done a fair amount of academic work on gender and sexuality. and through that study, i've become convinced of a couple things. the first and main point is that these two abstract concepts are heavily, heavily influenced by the social context a human being finds themself in. how you conceive of your identity based on gender and sexual attraction and sexual object choice is inseperable from your larger cultural context. obviously (like my weasel word there? :) these things originate in one's bodily, physical existence, but there is no consistency or universal across human cultures or history.
you're just going to have to take my word for it since this is a blog and not a thesis.
so today, SCOTUS has, in a deeply divided opinion, struck down the major provision of the federal defence of marriage act (DOMA), stating that DOMA's main purpose was to discriminate unconstitutionally and deprive a subset of state-recognized marriages equal protection under the law.
as predicted, this has caused both an uproar and a celebration.
in my opinion, SCOTUS was completely right. our constitution indeed guarantees people equal protection, and the federal government breaks that guarantee when it treats one set of government-recognized marriages differently from a different set. and the main point here is government.
here's a quick crash course: marriage is a wealth-management strategy. in the earliest human civilizations that we have record of, the purpose of recognizing a marriage is to determine which children legitimately inherit the family's wealth and name, and which children don't. because having children are necessary to have someone to inherit your property and name, the gods get invoked in the recognition, in prayers for fertility and childbearing. marriage is all about sex and babies. it is not a religious institution. it is a civil one, with religious additions, because until the 18th century or so, no human culture ever recognized a difference between civic life and religious life.
we've inherited (ha) this setup, with the odd wrinkle that in an exception to the establishment clause in the first amendment, religious figures that perform marriage ceremonies are actually deputized to act as agents of the state for the purpose of officially recognizing a marriage. in countries that have state religions, this is not an odd wrinkle, because in that context, religious officials are always also officials of the state. in other countries, it's the opposite. my brother and sister-in-law have 2 wedding dates: the date their union was registered with the Japanese government and the date their religious wedding took place (a few days later).
therefore, a statement like this is entirely wrong, legally speaking:
“Obviously it’s a loss to say that the federal government has no right to define marriage as it’s always understood,” he said. “It is just legal chicanery. It’s untrue. It’s a bad decision.”the only thing the federal government should be concerned with is how society and the state governments define marriage. if we as a culture have changed to recognize two people of the same gender pledging lifelong commitment to each other as marraige, then how marriage is understood has in fact changed. what was "always understood" is not important. how people are managing their wealth today is. and don't forget, the DOMA case was about inheritance and taxes.
our individualistic age has made one's choice of marriage partner about love, since we know love and sex are closely intertwined. people of the same gender have always loved each other. in patriarchal cultures where children were necessary for inheritance and keeping the wealth in the family, exclusive same-gender relationships were socially impossible. today, we're in a vastly different situation. and love is love.
