Quickies: What Homosex Hath Wrought

     Quite a number of my Gentle Readers will find the following development astonishing:

     HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WHNT) – This month, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule on the issue of same-sex marriage. It should settle a lot of questions once and for all. At least, that’s the idea.

     In Alabama, resistance to same-sex marriage continues. We saw a weekend of rallies in favor of traditional marriage. Beyond that, we have legislation making its way through the house right now that could get rid of the entire institution of marriage as we know it in Alabama.

     Right now, if you want to get married you go to the courthouse and the probate judge gives you a marriage license.

     Attorney Jake Watson explains, “[SB377] does away with that and requires parties to enter into a contract and file it at the courthouse, as I understand it.”

     Mind you, this isn’t a new idea, but the renascence of an old one – one that was “in force” for some six millennia before the Omnipotent State got involved with marriage. The state governments involved themselves in marriage via licensure for the overt reason of combating the spread of venereal diseases. There were at least two covert reasons as well: to enforce age-of-consent laws and to prevent miscegenation. Subsequent developments at the federal level, such as the heritability of Social Security benefits by the surviving spouse, have compounded the matter.

     In point of fact, there was never a good reason to politicize marriage through licensure. It was merely one more State tentacle thrust into a working social institution. The consequences have included the various contretemps over divorce, alimony, property settlements, child custody, polygamy, unacceptable degrees of consanguinity, age-of-consent laws, the legality or illegality of adultery and what constitutes proof thereof, the applicability of foreign marriages and divorces, and most recently and luridly, homosexual activists’ vicious, relentless drive for the legal recognition of “same-sex marriage.”

     This latest foofaurauw is what’s caused Alabama to consider seriously extracting itself from the whole mess...except that the requirement that a marital contract be filed at the courthouse retains a foot in the door the state might come to regret.

     The institution of marriage was safest and soundest when you were deemed married if your neighbors and your priest / minister / rabbi said so. This is just one more demonstration that there is no room for politics in private decision making or private arrangements. Events in Alabama present a hopeful sign that the cornerstone of every stable and prosperous society might yet be saved by the rueful “we were wrong” declarations of a sufficient number of state legislators.