Old-fashioned Marriage

Well, here we go again. Same-sex marriage will lead to man-turtle sex.

J. D. Hayworth, candidate for the US Senate for Arizona, suggested here that marriage being defined as 'the establishment of intimacy' is absurd. He opines, "I guess that would mean if you really had affection for your horse, I guess you could marry your horse."

Aw, J. D. You are so cute when you try to reason. Slap Upside The Head offered this in response:

Hayworth is essentially declaring that if marriage is all about love, then it is impossible to legally deny marrying other “lovable” things—like horses.

The problem here—as if such an argument deserves any dissection—is that marriages aren’t one-way; they involve two people that love each other. Does a horse have the capacity to consent to such a partnership? Can it sign the necessary state documents? Can it uphold its legal responsibilities involving property, decision-making, taxes, etcetera?

The answer, of course, is neigh.

Clearly, our friends at Slap are quite right. Marriage is a kind of voluntary contract (covenant, if you will) between two consenting people who are in all respects capable of entering into a relationship. Hayworth, and similarly 'minded' people, simply miss the voluntary, consensual aspects of what marriage is like.

But what interests me even more that the fear of man-turtle-horse threesomes are the following aspects of their argument:

a) we are talking about man-nonhuman animal, because as we all know: if there's no penis involved, it isn't really sex, and 

b) the implication that regular man-woman marriage is non-voluntary, non-consensual for the woman. 

At the very least, consent doesn't matter when it comes to good ol' fashioned marriage. Otherwise, why would it even occur to anyone at all to compare same-sex marriage to a man marrying his horse? That affection thing seems only to matter with respect to whether men should marry; the consent of women to marry is simply irrelevant.

Fab.