Weddings Of Mass Distraction”

Last September, my girlfriend Leslie and I decided to get married. Not wanting to waste any time, we got married one month later in Culver City, California, just a few miles from Leslie’s home in Santa Monica.

If I’ve learned anything from the experience of having a wedding approximately 30 days after getting engaged, it’s this: It doesn’t matter if you plan the event for three days or three years, there are still going to be unexpected events that transpire during the actual wedding. For Leslie and I, those unexpected events included a flower girl who refused to part with her petals and an overabundance of leftover wedding cake (I blame the bridesmaids, all of whom seemed to be on some kind of diet prohibiting them from eating their fair share of cake).

Despite the unexpected events, it was—like most weddings—a beautiful and wonderful affair. It was held at the Culver Events Center, not far from Sony Entertainment Studios where Pat and Vanna tape Wheel of Fortune when that game show is not on the road.

Leslie and I mutually decided to have our wedding at the Culver Events Center and not at a church for a number of reasons. Although both of us are spiritual and believe in a higher power, neither of us belongs to a particular congregation. To borrow somebody else’s house of worship just so we could have our wedding in a church seemed hypocritical. We also wanted the event to be about us, our families and our friends, without having to delve into the details of our personal beliefs, even though we acknowledged the power of love (God, if you like) in our self-written wedding vows.

I’ve been to all kinds of weddings and the prominence or lack of religiosity in the ceremony seems to matter not as to the sanctity of the marriage itself. That is as it should be because marriage, as it is legally defined by most states in America, is a contract between two people, not a convenient way of making more Catholics, Buddhists or Baptists.

In America, if two people of legal age want to get married, it is their right. It doesn’t matter if they are both atheists or if one of them practices voodoo or if they believe that Dorothy changed the fate of the universe when she poured water on the Wicked Witch of the West. As long as both of them are out of jail, the government has no power to stop their wedding. That’s because, as far as the law is concerned, marriage is a legal contract, not a religious one.

President Bush feels like marriage is a legal right that some Americans should have but others should not. Last week he urged the United States Senate to pass a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, despite what might be on the law books of the individual states.

Bush cited four states, Washington, Maryland, California and New York, in which he said local courts had overturned gay marriage bans.

“Activist courts have left our nation with no other choice,” said Bush. “The constitutional amendment that the Senate will consider next week would fully protect marriage from being redefined.”

Bush neglected to mention that most of the judges overturning these unconstitutional bans were originally nominated by his own administration.

Some pundits feel like the president couldn’t care less about the subject of gay marriage and is merely toying with the idea of a constitutional amendment as a way of stirring up his base of conservative loyalists the way an eleven-year-old would stir up a hornets nest with a long stick. If that’s the case, he’s disrespecting not only law-abiding gay people, but also his conservative base and the United States Constitution.

Other political observers claim that he is using the subject as a weapon of mass distraction in order to keep our minds off of issues such as the war in Iraq, record gas prices, newly proposed immigration policies, scandals in his administration, and other depressing topics.

What I believe is happening is that Bush, along with republicans in the House and Senate, is looking ahead to the November elections. Even if no constitutional amendment banning gay marriage is passed this summer (yes, some legislators actually feel like the Constitution is pretty good the way it is), you’ll be sure to see some residual mud flinging from the fray during election time.

Here’s the television commercial you’ll be sure to see this October:

“My opponent voted against a law that would have protected the sanctity of marriage as defined as a union between a man and a woman.”

See what they did there? They took an issue that is basically about giving equal rights under the law to all Americans and turned it into an attack on the American family.

It is forever and ever the same game from the same people and Americans just don’t seem to be capable of catching on. Are you really so afraid of a gay couple getting hitched that you’re willing to change the constitution? What about flag burning? That’s what they had you up in arms about last year. How about a constitutional amendment banning bilingual instructions at the DMV? Some legislators, including our own State Senator Richard Burr, attempted to do just that last month when they passed Salazar Amendment # 4073, declaring that “English is the common and unifying language of the United States.”

That sounds like a nice pat on the back for the English language but believe me when I tell you that that kind of talk is merely code for keeping the hornets’ nest stirred by making the hornets afraid of people who speak Spanish.

Personally, I don’t want the kind of politicians who waste our time and money worrying about who is speaking what and who is marrying whom anywhere near the United States Constitution.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.