Marriage is...

The other day, my good friend Naftuli, the up-and-coming conservative Jewish lawyer (Lord, do we really need another one) and I went back and forth trying to work out an analogy for marriage, and how it might be changed should SSM's become recognized.

"It's like the WNBA," said Naftali, "If you let men play, the WNBA ceases to be the WNBA."

"Sure," I replied, "but basketball stays basketball. This is why your analogy fails. You insist that recognizing SSMs will change "marriage;" but, really it will only change marriage for the SS couples.

It won't do anything to my marriage, anymore then letting men into the WNBA will change how I play basketball on my own driveway.

If you let men play in the WNBA it changes the WNBA. It doesn't chnage basketball. It doesn't change the NBA, the college game, the woman's college game, or any other game taking place anywehre in the world. It changes the WNBA, and that's all.

If you let gays get married, it changes their own relationships with each others. It doesn't change my marriage or the marriage of any straight person anywhere in the world."

Naftuli, and others, continue to say that recognizing SSM will cause some terrible damage to the institution of marriage. I can't see how.

Recognizing gay marriage won't accelerate the divorce rate, it won't cause more adultry, and it won't be bad for children. [Show me a study that says it will. You can't] In fact, it will have the very opposite effect on the children of gay couples: For the first time, they will feel that they have real parents. Surely, the children of two gay parents have just as much a right to two legitimate parents as anyone else, especially when those parents are just as much capable of love, responsibility, and support as any heterosexual.

That gay people wish to become part of this institution is the biggest vote of confidence marriage -and all it represents- has received in a generation. That's a good thing, not cause for panic.