This One-Man-One-Woman crap is really annoying. Religious fanatics spew it incessantly, they think, to prove their point about gayness being wrong. But it's so lame. Even putting aside the gay thing, it's lame.Why should anybody be stuck, for the rest of their life, til death do them part, with the same person, regardless of anything? Because some archaic tradition has ossified into an institution? Because One-Man-One-Woman + however many offspring is the basic unit of society and to go against something so basic is to go against God and Country?
Pa-leeze!
The divorce rate needn't be lamented. Oh no! The disintegration of our so-called values! What're we gonna do now?! We should be proud of the divorce rate. It reflects the state of our hearts...hearts we are finally starting to follow. And, in matters of love, it's our hearts we need to follow, not society's rule book. Love is not an institution.
It is a raging river, a tiny seedling reaching for the sun, a super nova, the mystery of birth, a wolf hunting a caribou. It cannot be tamed. Sometimes love comes crashing into our lives like a bull in a china shop, smashing everything gloriously to bits. Or it sneaks up on us slowly, only becoming visible in the tiniest of increments, until one day, it surprises us with its fortitude. Other times it's a snowflake landing on our cheek, its cold-wet-melting piercing our hearts with poignancy, before disappearing forever. It takes whatever form it pleases, and stays as long...or as briefly...as it likes. There is no controlling it, it is like the wind...on a high and windy hill.
What if I'm a woman and I love two men...and they love each other? Or what if I love a woman? What if I love a lot of people over the course of my life? Why should I worry about trying to find a way to make my love(s) fit into one ill-designed box? Why is it even assumed it has to be a couple? If love between only two people genuinely lasts a lifetime, that's wonderful. But its beginning...or ending...needn't be a legal activity.
Same-sex love is no different. Why would anybody want to be that straight, conforming to the outlines of the religious fanatics' master-slave mentality? That's what marriage began as...a system of church and state sanctified male possession of women. Something with hideous roots like that cannot be the model for love, or legitimacy. If people really need to express the love in their hearts through something as absurd as legislation, why not level the playing field? Instead making same-sex marriage legal, let's make opposite-sex marriage illegal.
Anne has finished her first novel and is busy peddling it to agents and publishers. She can be found wandering the streets of Crestone, CO and hanging out in Internet cafes. Contact her at annepyterek@gmail.com
