Sunday, May 28, 2017

The Invisible Asterisk

Sometimes, when someone writes (or says) that they support the freedom to marry or, marriage equality, or #Marriage4All, #LoveMustWin,  or “love is love” or something like “The sex lives of consenting adults is nobody else’s business.,” there is an invisible asterisk. You know, one of these: *

What might really be going on is this…

“Consenting adults should be free to marry each other.”*








*Unless you mean something I don’t like or think is disgusting, like polygamy, open marriage, or consensual adult incest.



I don’t do that. There is no asterisk in this statement…

I support the rights of an adult to share love, sex, residence, and marriage with any and all consenting adults, without prosecution, bullying, or discrimination.

There is no asterisk after “adult.” An “adult” includes any person, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, race, or religion.

“Any and all” means “any and all”. If an adult woman can vote, be Secretary of State (or Prime Minister, which we don't have in the US), serve as a Governor, be a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, sign contracts, enlist in the military, operate heavy machinery, be sentenced to life in prison or the death penalty (which we do have in many places in the US), and can consent to group sex with three cage fighters she just met, it seems to me an adult woman should also be free to have sex with and/or marry any consenting adult(s), even if that means another woman, or two women, or two men, or a woman and a man, or a married man (not hidden from his existing spouse), or her sister, whether an adopted sister, stepsister, half sister, or full blood sister. All of this goes for men, too, of course.

This basic right means all adults having the same right to not marry at all, and to divorce, and to be free of domestic violence. The basic freedom of association should mean that adults can share the entirety of love, sex, residence, and marriaqe, or any of those without the others, and any civil union or domestic partnership that is offered. That’s a funny thing called… equality. There is no good reason to deny equality. Now is the time to get it done.
So, do you support full marriage equality, or marriage “equality”*?


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