Nice Day for a Wedding Period

In some semi-trashy (but totally awesome) sci-fi/fantasy/romance novel I read, there was a culture with two types of marriage available.  There was the traditional marriage intended to last a lifetime, and a limited term arrangement that could be dissolved with no hard feelings after a year, or reupped with new terms every twelve months.  For someone like me, who breaks out in hives at the idea of even working a contract job, the limited term arrangement wouldn’t do, but for a Fameball like [I will not type that woman’s name, you can’t make me, I don’t care what kind of SEO traffic it would drive to my site] maybe it’s the way to go?

Someone in Mexico must have read the same book, but decided that a year wasn’t long enough to really get tired of each other (or see your limited term wife murdered by a shapeshifting bear god before you had to face the question of whether or not to reup your contract, or return to your true love, the princess of S&M–I told you it was trashy!) because Mexico City is currently mulling an allowance for a 2-year, limited term marriage license.  It’s old news, yes, but new “news” made me think about it.

Apparently, about half of all marriages in Mexico City end in divorce within 2 years, so it makes sense to save time, money, and courtroom drama and just allow young lovers to pledge their troth til death of interest do them part.  Oh sure, it takes some of the romance out of a proposal, but so do prenups.

I did spend a day being very angry that a Fameball could profit financially from a wedding (not going to call that 72-day farce a marriage), and be granted legal status and rights as a spouse solely based on her having opposite genetalia from her prop’s (we can’t call him a groom, can we? he was as much set decoration as the cake topper), when I have family and friends denied even the basic benefits of partnership in the face of loving, monogamous, long-term relationships.  Very angry.  I was a little thundercloud of rage.

I want to say, and I want to say clearly because I don’t know that I have been clear enough in the past, that I believe any consenting adult should be allowed to marry any other adult who would consent to the arrangement.  Men should be allowed to marry men.  Women should be allowed to marry women.  If you want four wives, and you can find four women willing to agree to that–go for it.  If you want six husbands, and you have the stomach for that much laundry, have at it.  To paraphrase a favorite song, ain’t nobody’s business if you do.  Because if you’re the kind of scum to get four women pregnant seven times each, and expect the government to pay for your brood, you’re going to do it whether Uncle Sam smiles down upon your union, or not.  If you’re a pervert, intent upon harming children, you’re going to do that whether your gay, straight, single, married, or a shapeshifting bear god. 

And don’t throw religion at me as a reason to deny Bob and Dan their wedded bliss.  Bob and Dan might not even practice your religion, but I’ll bet you dollars to donuts they pay their taxes just like you do.  What right does the government have to deny rights to tax paying citizens based on religion?  And who gets to pick which religion anyway?  Or which flavor of which religion?  Are we going to play by Catholic rules, or Southern Baptist?  Or Word of Faith, where divorce is A-Okay, so long as the Lord tells you that your spouse is hindering your ministry?  Or are we going to play by Old Testament rules?  Or are we going to be Muslim?  Or Hindu?  Who decides?  Fuh.

Well, while you’re sussing that out, Fameballs are daintily lifting the hand embroidered satin of their cathedral length trains, fluttering their spider-leg eyelashes from behind their diamond encrusted veils, and taking a dump on the sanctity of marriage right in front of the camera lens.  How’s that for an image in the wedding album of the social consciousness?  Don’t talk to me about the holiness of matrimony.  Talk to me about the holiness of two people of sound mind, looking one another in the eye after ten, twenty, thirty years and saying, “I still do.”  Or the unholiness of that same couple looking one another in the eye and saying, “I still would if it were legal.”