Marriage, Timing, and a Dose of Reality

While I'm on the subject of marriage, can I rant about my other pet peeve that pertains to it? Oh, yeah, this is my own blog and I can write what I want, no matter how unpopular it may make me. I don't do this to get fans but to air out my brain, which is why I try to stay anonymous here.

Okay, to the topic at hand now:

My state, New Jersey, has a 3-day waiting period for a marriage license. Wisconsin has the longest in the country at 6 days. Nevada famously has none.

Waiting periods seem to frustrate people who wish to elope immediately, as hilariously portrayed in How I Met Your Mother a few seasons ago (the "Atlantic City" episode, to be specific). I have actually heard that complaint in real life, too.

So, here's my question for the world, why elope? I understand wanting to go do it alone if you have loved ones who might cause trouble if you announced your marriage, but I don't understand the immediacy unless one of you is about to deploy and is worried about survivor benefits (I still think that can easily be a mistake but at least there's practical logic behind it). Come to think of it, if your family or friends could ruin your decision to wed what chance does your marriage have?

Marriage is the second biggest decision you can make (after the choice to have children or not). Even with the option of divorce a marriage will affect the rest of your life. Shouldn't a whole lot of time be dedicated to considering such a leap?

People are amazingly good at hiding their true selves for about one to two years. Those under 30 are especially capable of this as they probably don't know themselves all that well yet (there are likely exceptions but I know that was true of all of the people I've ever come in contact with). According to the CDC, the chance of a marriage surviving goes up dramatically if the woman is over 25 (the highest age group they accounted for was 25 and up and they only surveyed women). I find that incredibly unsurprising despite the fact that I have been with my partner since I was 20. Then again, if we'd married back then we would almost certainly have divorced, there was plenty of turmoil and times where we thought it was over in the early years. Instead, we're a happy couple who are more bonded than I ever dreamed I could be with anyone and I give a lot of credit to the fact that we had the freedom to easily split up. We didn't even live together until just before our 10th anniversary.

An old acquaintance once told me that the main benefit to marriage was that it creates an extra hurdle to leaving each other, which makes trying to work things out more appealing. I disagree. To me, that extra hurdle can leave you feeling trapped and we all know how a wild animal reacts to being cornered. It's not pretty and rational thought is long gone at that point.

To those who say love isn't a rational thing and marriage should be all about love, well, you're right but any time you sign ANY legally-binding document there should be plenty of non-emotional thought put into it. Marriage is, first and foremost, a legal mechanism. Can you be 100% sure of the decision to marry? Of course not, but you can hedge your bets by taking the time to get as objective as possible about your prospects.

Love does NOT conquer all, either. Nor is it something that can happen at first sight, as one of my favorite people used to say, "It's really lust at first sight. Love takes a long time to develop, until then it's all about hormones and brain chemistry and those factors fade." Real love needs to be tested thoroughly as well. I have been through a lot of traumatic experiences and found that they can wreck a relationship or strengthen it. The latter is the kind of relationship that can last, as there is no avoiding a certain amount of catastrophes in life.

If you haven't spent a minimum of two years with someone, how can you have shared the experiences that give clues to how your partner reacts to stressful situations? If you haven't seen those reactions how can you even guess that you have the capability to survive real life together?

If anything, the waiting periods for marriage licenses should be lengthened and maybe we should even take a hint from the Catholics and their pre-cana requirements. I rarely agree with the Catholic Church on anything but my parents were pre-cana volunteers and many of my views were shaped by listening to their sessions with young couples. Quite a few had no idea what they were getting into before pre-cana and taking the time to talk about the reality of marriage not only taught them about what could be expected but they clearly learned a lot more about each other by participating in the process. If pre-marital counseling of any kind makes one or both partners uncomfortable how can you possibly expect to be able to work together effectively once legally bound?

Marriage is the beginning of a journey rather than a goal. You should prepare for the trip just as you would prepare for a long-term safari in a dangerous region without a guide or any other grand adventure.

What Does it Really Mean to Be a Married Gay Today?

I may seem like an unlikely proponent of marriage equality, as I'm generally not pro-marriage, have never wanted to marry, and live with a man who is my long-term partner. So, you'd think marriage laws wouldn't be a passion of mine, but I abhor inequality and anytime people are restricted from doing anything they would like to do that doesn't hurt (or, in this case, even affect most) other people.

So, gay marriage is a cause I care about to the bottom of my brain and heart. I would also like for society to accept people (especially women) who choose to never marry, but I think marriage equality may actually be a more achievable goal in this country.

Why am I bringing this up today? I followed a "Follow Friday" message from my friend (@souphead) and ended up on a new site by one of her friends, Ruby. Ruby is a very smart and funny lesbian who married her wife while it was legal in California and mother of one of the most beautiful babies around. The happy family has decided to take a road trip across America to ponder the question, "Are We Married?" and what it really means as they spend time in states with widely varying laws. I'm looking forward to following their story, I'm sure they will have wonderful and thoroughly horrible adventures along the way (based on my own experiences traveling around America as a non-traditionally-minded person) and that Ruby will wittily report on them all.

If this family isn't a perfect example of why marriage equality is vital to our citizens, I don't know who is.

It's impossible to understand how anyone can preach "family values" and yet tell two loving mothers who value their family above all that they are in breach of them. I am very smart with test scores to prove it and quite creative in many ways and yet I can not wrap my brain around how people even come to these notions that have no bearing on reality.

Regardless of where you stand on this issue you should read Ruby's blog and get a glimpse of what it really means to be married as a lesbian in this nation at this crossroads in public policy and private beliefs.

Next up: What is really the greatest threat to the sanctity of marriage?

Death Penalty Truly Does = Homicide

Capital punishment. Just the words make my blood run cold. I am not a great believer in the Bible but I have often thought that was one of the best lessons of the New Testament, that capital or even corporal punishment are not the way to handle justice on any level.

On a logical level, it is nearly impossible to know a person's actions with 100% accuracy. Even video can lie, heck, you could be standing there watching something happen and not know the truth. It happens all the time, even to highly observant types.

The only good argument I've ever heard for the death penalty can be summed up in Ted Bundy's escape from prison via a law library and the subsequent murders he committed before Florida put him to death. However, that level of cunning is rare and Ted Bundy is an exception to many "rules" of criminal behavior. We like to pin the label sociopath onto all kinds of criminals but the truth is they are incredibly rare yet share the trait of most criminals that the death penalty is not even slightly a deterrent to them. If anything, it just ups the stakes of the game and makes it more interesting.

Well, I'm off on a tangent again. The point is, I've always been against capital punishment, but today I read an article that made my veins particularly icy and included a sentence that, to me, is the truly unrefutable argument to be made against it: "On his death certificate, the cause was listed as 'Homicide.'"

I don't know if that's standard, but it certainly makes sense, as it is quite intentional and thus homicide. Still, to see that we completely admit that we, as a society, are committing homicide on a regular basis just makes a horrifying concept seem that much more contentious. I'd honestly never thought about what they put on the death certificate in such cases before.

Even scarier, what the article was largely about was the appalling state of arson investigation in this country. If you watch much prime time television you must have seen some amazing arson investigations using all sorts of gizmos and scientific methodology. Well, it turns out that is more fictional than I thought. "In 1997, the International Association of Arson Investigators filed a legal brief arguing that arson sleuths should not be bound by a 1993 Supreme Court decision requiring experts who testified at trials to adhere to the scientific method." Seriously? I don't even have words (and that is extremely rare, as you may know if you've been reading this blog). Arson investigators often claim their profession is more of an art than a science. I'm sorry, but if you are going to kill me over something, I'd like some solid factual science to be behind it. Luckily, in this case the Supreme Court agrees, but arson investigators are still grappling with the concept.

Why is this country so much more accepting of art than science? Alas, that will have to be a discussion for another day.

The excellent article from the New Yorker that inspired these thoughts is a long one but well worth the time:

Cameron Todd Willingham, Texas, and the death penalty: newyorker.com

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World's Smallest Political Quiz

One fact about my family has defined more about the way I look at everything than any other: My father has been a passionate Republican for my whole life while my mother was just as passionate of a Democrat. It was like growing up with James Carville and Mary Matalin in reverse, only not political operatives but just intelligent and educated voters who care. Objectively, their points of view were unsurprising, as he was an executive at large companies while she was a Ph.D. who opted to teach in and, eventually, run public high schools instead of working in the relative luxury of colleges. They generally lived by what they preached and that obviously led to some heated debates at the dinner table. While this drove me absolutely nuts as a child it also made me learn the importance of being politically aware very early on.

The second most important lesson I learned is to respect people who disagree with you. Sometimes it feels like I'm the only person in Generations X or Y who feels that way. The vitriol between parties makes me physically ill when it's my friends spouting it. Disagreements are necessary and even helpful but the sheer petty meanness from both major parties is purely depressing and helps not one single person in this world.

Even worse, I've never fit on the right/left line, so the debates have always made me feel like even more of an outcast than I felt from being a geeky girl with odd interests all my life. I've also found that a lot of people I've met who THINK they know what party they belong in actually disagree quite a lot with that party. That's one of the many problems of a two-party system, many (if not most) people join a party that fits one or two of their pet issues and ignore that party's position on everything else.

So, you can imagine how thrilled I was to receive an email from Dad with a link to The World's Smallest Political Quiz and a note about how he was surprised by his results. I immediately took it and, while not surprised when it told me I was a libertarian (I joined the Libertarian party a while back after doing a lot of research before transferring my voter registration to a new state), it was a revelation to see just how intensely libertarian I am. What validation! People have been trying to convince me I'm a Democrat for years despite my enormous issues with many of that party's stances and their underlying system of beliefs. I knew that wasn't right.

Being a natural skeptic in general, though, I felt the need to test the quiz a bit further and had my boyfriend take it. He scored precisely where I expected, as pretty much a super-liberal. Yup, I ended up with a significant other almost as different in his beliefs as my mother was to my father. We really do grow up to be our parents!

So now I want to encourage everyone in the country to take this quiz, it only takes a couple of minutes but it is by far the best way I've found to distill what you think into something quantifiable. The other wonderful thing about the quiz is that it will lead you into ways to explore the parties you might fit well into, regardless of which they may be. No matter how politically aware you may be there is always more to learn. Always.

Perhaps the most important thing about this quiz and the group that publishes it is that they are trying to redefine the political landscape, get away from the left/right line that leaves so many people like me out in the cold. Libertarians AREN'T conservatives, as many people think, and statists aren't liberals. They use a diamond-shaped chart that makes so much more sense than any straight line ever could, the world isn't flat and neither should our political options be. There is no category where you can divide the nation's population into exactly two positions, let alone one as sophisticated and complicated as politics.

John Adams famously said, "There is nothing I dread so much as a division of the Republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader and converting measures into opposition to each other." The man should be considered a prophet.

Please take this quiz!

The link again: The World's Smallest Political Quiz