Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Why Marriage Matters

I stumbled across this handy PDF of "Seven Scientific Reasons Why Marriage Matters" geared toward the Jewish faith (if you're interested, they have PDFs for other faiths and languages available here).

The first part of the document details the role marriage has played in Jewish life, historically. The second part includes a list of the reasons why marriage is important. Here are some choice excerpts:

  • Both men and women who marry live longer, healthier and happier lives.
  • Just living together is not the same as marriage. Married couples who cohabit first are thirty to fifty percent more likely to divorce. People who just live together do not get the same boost to health, welfare and happiness, on average, as spouses.

Most of the other points in the list relate to parenting and how marriage impacts children, and I'm going to leave aside, for now, the argument that gay and lesbian couples can and do have children, who aren't second class citizens, even if their parents may be.

What I want to focus on is the realization that hit me as I read these two bullet points, and I can't honestly believe I never noticed this before when reading about the benefits of marriage on a person's happiness and longevity. It may be softer than a baseball bat or a fist; it may hide behind upstanding moral language that can allow these fine Christians to feel okay about themselves; it may not land anyone in jail. But it's obvious.

It's just another form of gay bashing.

Why can't gays get married? Well, because they don't deserve to be happy, and the shorter they live, the better it is for the rest of the world. Why beat up a gay person? Well, because they don't deserve to live, let alone be happy.

It's also worth reading through the final part of the document, which helps you to answer those pesky questions from the homosexuals at the water cooler (which is apparently where the battle for marriage is taking place), such as "How will my same-sex marriage hurt your marriage?"

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