Evidently, my Anchor Rising shirt with the target on the back ended up in Marc’s laundry, yesterday. Perhaps if I make a similar point to his, but stepping outside the boundaries while the garment is in the wash, we’ll manage a fruitful discussion.
Although it is without doubt the hope of many who support same-sex marriage that the homosexual community will absorb the traditional ethos of marriage (fidelity, longevity, domestication, and so on), mixed in with the culture’s romantic implications for the institution, the manner in which the change arrives is deeply subversive. I’m not talking about the process of legislating via the judiciary as much as the way in which things are phrased, specifically California’s new marriage certificates reading “Party A and Party B.” Why not just label each blank “husband/wife”?
The reason is that, for many on the leading edge of the movement, the traditional mores of marriage are as key to the change as the removal of the opposite-sex requirement. It isn’t sufficient, for them, that a man could marry a man; they require the notion of husbands to be erased.
So I wonder: If the law is such that corporations can become legal entities, for the purposes of organization, liability, taxes, and so on, why couldn’t a business owner “marry” his business, if the legal arrangement is a closer fit with his desires?
To be sure, the culture will disallow such subsequent innovations, after same-sex marriage, for a while, based mainly on the very traditional expectations that will have been erased, but plain logic and legal opportunity create their own logic and motivation.