Marriage in America: Reality TV's Influence and the Legality of Homosexual Marriage
I have frequently used this blog as an outlet for my disgust with reality television, so for those of you who are my regular readers go ahead and say to yourself
..."Here we go again!"
As a general rule of thumb I watch very little TV. I watch
Alias, West Wing, Friends and
Will and Grace just about every week, but outside of that the only TV that I watch is either news or sports programming. However, Monday night, I had some extra time on my hands and found myself sitting in front of the tube flipping channels at about 8pm. Realizing that I had my choice between Michael Jackson documentaries on ABC and NBC, sitcoms on CBS or the
Joe Millionaire finale on FOX I decided to bite the bullet and watch the
Millionaire finale. I had never seen the show before and I quickly found myself in a fit of disgust, not because of the show itself but because of the commercials for FOX's newest reality TV show: Married BY America that ran at just about every commercial break.
If you're keeping score at home so far America has witnessed Darva Conger marry Rick Rockwell on a game show in which she was basically awarded as his prize. We've seen two men select women to be their finance's on the Bachelor and tonight a woman will select her own fiancé the same way on the Bachelorette. But this newest show stoops to a new low...the two people getting married will not have ever even seen each other until after the knot is tied. That's right, America will call in and select two complete strangers who will marry each other on the show. The ratings are predicted to be huge! And we wonder why America has a divorce rate over 50%.
Seriously people, what happened to the sanctity, the insolubility and the respect of the union of marriage? I believe that Marriage is a sacrament. It is a covenant between two people that is blessed by God. It is the creation of one entity from two....you know that whole "What God has joined let no man break apart" line? What do you think it means? No man can break it, as long as you weren't married on a TV show or that you didn't find someone that you think would be more fun to be married to? Wrong! It means, it's unbreakable. Period. Marriage is not about ratings or entertainment. It is about love, commitment and the understanding that what you are doing it FOREVER...that's a long time folks!
Jeff
and I have discussed at length how American's view marriage and we are both disgusted. We are both 26 years old and we'll have been married for 2 years next month. We're at the time of our life when most of our friends are getting married and in the last four years we've been to almost 30 weddings together. It's hard to believe that statistically half of those couples will end up divorced. When we were preparing for our wedding we both took the time to think to ourselves and talk about with each other what we were doing. I understood when I stood at the alter on March 31, 2001 in front of 350 of my closest friends and family that I was making a commitment that I would take Jeff as my husband for the rest of my life. I had thought about all the "what if's"..."what if I get bored of him?", "what if he cheats on me?", "what if...(there were hundreds of scenarios)" and I knew in my heart that the commitment I was making was one that I could be true to regardless of the what if question. I admitted to myself that no matter what the "what if" was, no matter how angry I would get or how much pain could be brought to me, I was going to be with this man forever. Luckily, I know that Jeff and I love each other enough that we weren't going to have a lot of the major issues that couples face in loveless marriages. Still, I was still ready to face whatever was thrown my way. My guess is that a good majority of people don't think about these things before they get married, if they did, we wouldn't have the divorce rate that we do. (And we certainly wouldn't have complete strangers marrying each other on TV for ratings or money. These shows let people think that marriage is a game. I disagree with them one hundred percent.)
On to the second part of my rant: All of that said, I understand that not everyone has the spiritual belief in marriage that I do and that is perfectly fine, everyone is allowed their own opinion. A lot of people believe that marriage is a legal union approved by the state rather than God. Jeff's youngest brother, Doug, is getting married next February and he and his fiancé have chosen to have a secular wedding ceremony which I am really looking forward to. Doug and Alberta both believe in the unbreakable bond that marriage is, even though they don't believe in the spiritual sacrament. What has amazed me about their wedding is the research that Doug has done about how to get married. Specifically, Doug has discovered that in the state of Colorado anyone can perform a marriage ceremony for anyone else. You don't need to be certified by the state as a minister or judge. I presume that Doug and Allie will have to file for an official marriage certificate from the state in order to have their marriage recognized by the state, but that's it. It's going to be easier than getting a drivers license.
Here's what I don't understand: If the legal part of marriage has become nothing more than filing for a license and it is increasingly easier to end that marriage, then why don't we expand the limits on marriage in this country? Seriously, if legally (in the eyes of the government, not in the eyes of any church) marriage is simply a certificate that allows two people to share the same last name, make decisions for each other when one is incapacitated and pay higher taxes, then why don't we let anyone marry anyone? Specifically why are homosexual marriages illegal? I understand that the reason the legislation has never been passed to allow homosexuals to marry is because of the spiritual opposition of the law makers . But that seems silly to me because these same people who oppose homosexuals marrying, citing that the bible says it's wrong, should be opposing marriage in it's current disrespected state, period, no matter who's marrying who and opposing the ease of divorce.
Thanks to the separation of church and state, the government is not a spiritual entity and they don't have the right to make laws that promote religious teachings. Therefore, the government allows divorce, they allow people to marry in any type of ceremony presided over by anyone, they allow complete strangers to marry, and I don't understand why they don't allow homosexual marriage.
(Note: I am in no way shape or form saying that homosexual marriage is ok from a religious/spiritual perspective, rather simply from the legal perspective.) The laws the way they stand seem like a double standard.
