The First Hundred Years

When he heard that allowing gays to marry
would destroy the institution of marriage,
Dale thought he would say something absurd,
so he asked whether that meant he would have
to get a divorce.

A cartoon once ran in the New Yorker
(as I recall) that pictured a grumpy old geezer
commenting to his wife as he read the newspaper:
"It says here that gays want to get married.
Don't they have enough problems as it is?"

In California, opponents of gay marriage
are testifying that, although there is no evidence
for it, allowing gays to marry will probably
result in Dale having to get a divorce, or something.

"Traditional marriage" has not done so well.
Half of all marriages end in divorce.
Half of mine have. I don't think I got smarter,
so I must have gotten luckier the second time.

In the hazy past, when I taught ethics in
a college founded by church people, where
it was easy to say things like "til death do us part",
I used to open a discussion of marriage like this:

"Suppose doctors and nutritionists and scientists
some day make it possible to live to the age of 300.
Would you want to be married to the same person
for 275 years?"

Nobody ever said yes.

A good marriage takes hard work.
Almost always, the flaws are from within.
But when it works, it is wonderful!
Straight or gay.

Well, maybe for the first hundred years or so.

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