Poppers For Everyone!

Now that the election is over we can all finally get back to our ridiculous debate over gay marriage.

Should it be legal, not, the same in every state or not, etc., etc.

It's all such a cluster F of hysteria that nobody can see the simplest answer of them all.

Should the government issue marriage licenses to gay couples? Of course not. They shouldn't be issued to any couples, gay or straight.

After all, marriage existed before government, it can manage just fine without it. Marriage was first a religious/societal institution that was mainly used to try and add some order and stability to society. It was a preexisting institution before the government latched onto it.

And why would the government latch onto marriage as it has and tried to regulate it?

REASON ONE: MONEY!
This is really a simple reason. Any activity that people get engaged in the government will try and regulate it for profit. When I got married the license cost $20. I'm sure some states are more, some less but no matter how you look at it, all those $20 licenses generate tons of money for the State. As does filing for divorce, divorce proceedings, premarriage blood tests, etc.

REASON TWO: PAPERWORK AND CONTROL
Marriage certificates are a great one stop shop for governmental information. It is the first piece in a long and convoluted paper trail that the government can use to keep track of what your up too. After all, the marriage license has your legal names and you need some sort of government issued ID to get one. Getting a marriage license funnels you into different tax categories, it puts a marker on you in every public database, it is the stepping stone for inheritance laws. If your SSN number announces to the government that the child you is now ready to be monitored and bureaucratized, then your marriage certificate announces the same for your adult self. In the olden days, it might be the only publicly documented paperwork a person would have attached to them in their adult lives. So government starting using it for their own reasons.

But why continue it? Whether we like it or not, (or unless we're illegal immigrants) the government tracks us from the day we are born. Our SSN's get issued in the first few weeks of birth, we have to use them constantly as ID at the Drs. office, public schools, etc. As we get older we use them for any kind of financial application, job application, college application, etc. What few things don't require your SSN, requires your drivers license. You have to submit ID everywhere you go except the voting booth. Combine that with electric record keeping and street cameras and the Gov. can find most of us at any given moment of any day. There is no legitimate reason to collect information from marriage certificates any longer, it's collected redundantly, all day, every day.

And what of the family, the keystone of the importance of the marriage certificate? There are a number of important laws regarding inheritance and estate law that hinge on the marital status. Luckily, the marriage certificate plays no part in that anymore either. All the information of that certificate is easily found on a birth certificate of any child of an adult union. The birth certificate creates the familial bond that the law sees as creating certain responsibilities on the parents, not the marriage certificate. As far as alimony, etc. goes, anybody who was unmarried or married with a mistressknows, the court can find you financially responsible for anothers lifestyle whether you have yourself a shiny certificate or not.

There isn't any one area where the government can claim that the issuance of marriage licenses is somehow necessary for State activities. The argument that they issue the certificates in the interest of promoting the family, any family, is highly suspect and hypocritical given the way the federal government has sought to destroy the family unit with destructive welfare and divorce laws. The Government cares about the family the same way a pimp cares about a whore, the only difference being that the pimp has to at least provide a work uniform.

Like most things the government horns itself into, their involvement in marriage is counterproductive and destructive. Let the churches handle it like they used to. People can get married in their own way and then get about judging everybody else for their "sham marriage". That's the way it is with all these things, there's always been churches that have "kooky" sacraments or ceremonies. People from other faiths just disregard it and move on. People only get hysterical when an official government body gets in the middle and proclaims on superior to another. Lets just end it and start fighting about legalizing weed again.