Found this 12-year-old but still entirely relevant essay by Claudia Card, Against Marriage and Motherhood. You should read it, because a) she’s a lesbian, and she’s anti-marriage – gay and straight, so in case you thought we were bigots, think again, and b) she’s just right.
I really tired, so I haven’t delved into the motherhood bit yet, but some great quotes from the first portion of the piece:
About same-sex marriage I feel something like the way I feel about prostitution. Let us, by all means, decriminalize sodomy and so forth. Although marriage rights would be sufficient to enable lovers to have sex legally, such rights should not be necessary for that purpose. Where they are legally necessary and also available for protection against the social oppression of same-sex lovers, as for lovers of different races, there will be enormous pressure to marry. Let us not pretend that marriage is basically a good thing on the ground that durable intimate relationships are. Let us not be eager to have the State regulate our unions. Let us work to remove barriers to our enjoying some of the privileges presently available only to heterosexual married couples. But in doing so, we should also be careful not to support discrimination against those who choose not to marry and not to support continued state definition of the legitimacy of intimate relationships. I would rather see the state deregulate heterosexual marriage than see it begin to regulate same-sex marriage.
And:
Among the trappings of marriage that have received attention and become controversial, ceremonies and rituals are much discussed. I have no firm opinions about ceremonies or rituals. A far more important issue seems to me to be the marriage license, which receives hardly any attention at all. Ceremonies affirming a relationship can take place at any point in the relationship. But a license is what one needs to initiate a legal marriage. To marry legally, one applies to the state for a license, and marriage, once entered into, licenses spouses to certain kinds of access to each other’s persons and lives. It is a mistake to think of a license as simply enhancing everyone’s freedom. One person’s license, in this case, can be another’s prison. Prerequisites for marriage licenses are astonishingly lax. Anyone of a certain age, not presently married to someone else, and free of certain communicable diseases automatically qualifies. A criminal record for violent crimes is, to my knowledge, no bar. Compare this with other licenses, such as a driver’s license. In Wisconsin, to retain a driver’s license, we submit periodically to eye exams. Some states have more stringent requirements. To obtain a driver’s license, all drivers have to pass a written and a behind-the-wheel test to demonstrate knowledge and skill. In Madison, Wisconsin, even to adopt a cat from the humane society, we have to fill out a form demonstrating knowledge of relevant ordinances for pet-guardians. Yet to marry, applicants need demonstrate no knowledge of the laws pertaining to marriage nor any relationship skills nor even the modicum of self-control required to respect another human being. And once the marriage exists, the burden of proof is always on those who would dissolve it, never on those who would continue it in perpetuity.
[Note: Bold text styling is my own.]
