TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Marriage Protection? From What?

ADVERTISEMENT

By DANIEL RUTH

@tampatrib.com

Published: October 23, 2008

More than 16 years ago, the Bombshell of the Balkans and I flew to Las Vegas and there, at the Little Chapel of the Bells, we were married by a minister who was something of a cross between an Elvis impersonator-in-training and a poor man's televangelizing Jimmy Swaggart.

OK, this was not exactly a Princess Diana/high Mass/New York Times society pages moment.

But we are no less married. No less committed. And certainly no less in love. The last thing we ever needed is some dubious law, pushed by a bunch of Bible thumpers that pretends our marriage should be "protected."

Protected? From what? During our years of marital bliss, not once has a fiend leaped from the shrubbery, put a gun to our heads and demanded we get divorced.

Fiddle-Faddle

Yet this election cycle, voters are being asked to weigh in on a constitutional proposal titled the Florida Marriage Protection Amendment, which reads: "This amendment protects marriage as the legal union of only one man and one woman as husband and wife and provides that no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized."

Or put another way, this fiddle-faddle would ban gay marriage.

Florida has always had a bizarre, schizophrenic view of homosexuality. On the one hand, the state already has at least four statutes on the books making gay marriage illegal. However, you can be so gay that you make Elton John look like Jesse Ventura and you are still more than welcome to be a foster parent in Florida.

Rather Delicate

The presence of the Florida Marriage Protection Amendment on the ballot suggests that the state of marriage is so fragile, so teetering on the brink of extinction, so easily imperiled that if two men or two women are permitted to exchange vows of fidelity, commitment and their love for each other, then somehow heterosexual marriages - your marriage, my marriage - are inexplicably something less, something devalued, something morally reduced.

Well, if you believe wedlock between Betty and Bonnie, or Todd and Tim, undermines your marriage, it probably says more about the delicate state of your nuptials than anything having to do with discriminating against people merely on the basis of sexual orientation.

With a divorce rate fluttering around 50 percent, one could make a case that there are many more threats to the sanctity and stability of marriage than Rosie O'Donnell getting hitched to Kelli Carpenter.

So if it's all the same to John Stemberger and his self-righteous sack cloth and ash fellow travelers at the Florida Family Council who are pushing their homophobic demagoguery, the Sunflower of Sparta and I really don't need your help protecting our marriage.

If our vows were good enough in front of the Liberace-lite of Las Vegas 16 years ago, they're good enough to trump Stemberger's hand-wringing busybodies today.

Keyword: Book of Ruth, to read and comment on Daniel Ruth's blog.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT