Your Relationship Is Your Own Business, But Marriage Is Government Property

Founded as it is on love, people often get into a snit when they are reminded that marriage is a state that must be recognized by the government to be legal. This doesn’t meant that their vows to love and cherish until death were not true promises, just that they won’t be valid for bureaucratic purposes.

Personally, I like the idea of registering your bond with the government (or I did until they started getting the gay marriage issue so spectacularly wrong). It is really no different than registering the birth of a child or the death of a parent. It just helps the number crunchers work out which numbers to crunch in which way.

So I was fascinated when a lesbian couple wrote asking whether their legal, foreign marriage could morally prevent them from applying for financial aid in the US. The pair has fallen on hard times and one of them would qualify if she was not married. The question is whether the pair should be bound by a legal marriage that the government chooses to ignore.

My first reaction was “Sure, stick it to them!” until I read this reasoned argument which goes to the heart of the legality of marriage:

• Your partner’s duty is to meet the criteria for aid and fill out those applications honestly. If, for the purposes of, for example, health-insurance subsidies, the agency administering the program regards her as single, she has every right — ethical and legal — to apply as such… you have no duty to set stricter standards for such programs than the law itself.

The government is shooting itself in the foot by refusing to recognize gay marriage. It is not their job to sanctify the union, merely to record it for their own penny-pinching purposes. If they want to keep role in marriage historically accurate, they should allow all couples who consider themselves married to register.

The wedding is what happens in the hearts of the couple, in the promises they make before the people they love. Even if gay marriages are not counted, they still count.

Contact the author here: mick@morningquickie.com