When I first read Norman Mailer's editorial claiming that the "war" with Iraq was just an effort by America to boost the white male ego, I couldn't help but laugh. Then when I remembered that the release of James Frey's memoir, A Million Little Pieces, coincided almost perfectly with the fall of Baghdad, I realized that Mailer may have been on to something.
Note: I plan on reviewing A Million Little Pieces, so stay tuned.
Homosexuals who promote laws protecting single-sex unions are looking through the wrong end of the telescope. If you want to kick the State out of the bedroom, the answer cannot be to take a special privilege and make it more inclusive. Many people object to homosexuality on moral grounds, and there is force to the argument that the State ought not to grant special privileges to an arrangement that many, or even the majority, of its citizens consider immoral. The proper question is, why should the State grant special privileges to any particular living arrangement?
From my experience as a married person (twice over) I believe that the State's main interest in marriage comes not at the beginning or during, but at the end. Divorce is big business in this country and nobody benefits from the horribly convoluted and confusing divorce process more than lawyers. Lawyers, lobbyists, lawmakers...a picture emerges. I know this might sound overly conspiratorial, but allow me to explain.
One could easily argue that the state has simply taken the place of the church in the case of marriage. Though most ceremonies are probably still carried out by a priest/rabbi/clergy person, the marriage isn't official until the county of residence says it is and you've forked over the hundred or so dollars to buy the state's endorsement. For the most part, the church simply serves as an elaborate setting (courthouse) and the minister as the executor (marriage commissioner) of the act. Except on some possibly metaphysical level, his or her signature on the marriage certificate bears no more weight than if the ceremony were performed by my favorite cashier at the 7-Eleven. Given the fact that the state of California allows for one to deputize (see for yourself, be warned this is a pdf) an individual of one's choosing to perform the ceremony, you can see that the Church is becoming more obsolete in matters of at least the actual wedding itself. (For those who insist on an honest-to-god priest, you can always have your 7-Eleven cashier become ordained instead of simply deputized.)
Despite the fact that my first wedding was held in a church (despite my objections), I, like everyone else, had to make the trip to the courthouse to pick up my marriage certificate. Because of my fear of needles and the fact that Florida does not require a blood test, it was only natural for us to forego our state of residence (Alabama) and head to Pensacola for the license. (Which ultimately meant having to marry in a tiny Primitive Baptist Church in the far northwest corner of the state.) As we waited for our number to be called, I started to realize just how easy getting married could be. All you needed to do was fill out a bit of paperwork, pay forty bucks for the certificate, forty for someone to perform the ceremony, and in less than an hour you were on your way to the honeymoon destination of your choice. Because we had promised our parents that we would be married under the direct supervision of the Lord, we couldn't take the easy route. We had to get the certificate, find a church, find a priest, invite people, etc. Instead of eighty dollars and an hour we (our parents) spent hundreds, if not thousands of dollars and it took another month for us to go from certified by state to certified by god. Still, though, pretty simple.
Contrast this with the process of divorce. If you haven't had the privilege of going through this procedure, let me just tell you that there is no such thing as a simple divorce; matters relating to the dissolution of marriage are only relatively simple. Again, take my case as an example. My first marriage--the one mentioned above--ended after five years. It took another couple of years to finalize the divorce. Why? First of all, the divorce code is a close relative of the tax code. There isn't the single form where one checks a few boxes and gathers a few signatures and it's done. Instead, every form has a subform and/or a coform and all of these have to be filed in a certain order with a certain number of copies and you must make sure that certain copies are on a certain color of paper. If for some reason you file one of these forms incorrectly you might as well start over. In my case, the divorce should have been easy: no children, no property, we both wanted out, end of question. Instead, I had to make a couple of trips to the county courthouse, send forms back and forth to the soon-to-be ex-wife, and make a cursory appearance in front of a judge where I had to put my hand on a bible (gads!) and swear that things were far worse than better, so help me god! Top all of this with a six-month "cooling off" period and I finally had my divorce. I could have made all of this easy on myself by hiring a lawyer, but I'm not a rich man.
Through all of my pain and suffering with the divorce process, I kept wondering why it was so easy to get married but so difficult to get out of the same marriage. I eventually concluded that this was definitely a case where the State was bowing to the Church, co-opting the idea that marriages should last forever, and if they don't, then make the couple wish they had decided to stay married, all the time providing a nice livelihood for the divorce lawyers. Despite all of this, I would still rather have the State deciding the outcome of a divorce rather than the Church. Imagine if the Southern Baptists were allowed to rule on property splits in a divorce.
posted by Jeff 4/30/2003
