Kinsley defends Prejean.....sort of.

Just when I thought the issue of the "Miss California, Carrie Prejean's same sex marriage question and answer controversy" was old news, Michael Kinlsey weights in on the subject in a column for The Washington Post [A Crown of Thorns for Miss California?].

Kinsley defends Prejean.....sort of.

In his view, Prejean is a bigot - guilty of an innocent, mindless bigotry that shouldn't ruin someone's life - but, a bigot none the less.
Kinsley believes same sex marriage will be accepted through out the country, because......" the arguments for it are so reasonable and appealing to so many people across the political spectrum". To Kinsley, Prejean is not "an intolerable bigot" because she's just "a bit slow to wrap her head" around what he sees as "reasonable and appealing arguments".

He may have presented these "reasonable and appealing arguments" somewhere before, but he fails to do so in this column, so I'm unconvinced.

Same sex marriage would not be an issue today were it not for one thing ...... Government's decision, years ago, to take over the Church's role in determining what is and what isn't a "legitimate" marriage.

The State doesn't have any need to be involved in the question of marriage in any way what-so-ever. Marriage is a religious act. Marriage is an agreement between two people (or more in the case of polygamy) before God, wherein the participants pledge to join together - in theory - for ever and always.

There are some who claim that marriage must be recognized before the State in order to secure property rights and child support should the parties involved later decide to divorce. Child custody and financial support issues are handled now before the law when the dispute is between couples who share parenthood yet never married. It's the same with division of property. It's not necessary for the partners be married for the State to settle disagreements. There are already laws in place to take case of the civil issues.

Let the State remove itself completely from any involvement with marriage and let the matter be what it is......an issue left up to the Church (or Churches).
If you and your beloved - for example - wish to be married in the Catholic Church, it should be handled by the Catholic Church. If you and your betrothed are Muslim and wish to have a polygamist marriage, then it should be strictly a Muslim matter.
If you want a same sex marriage and the Catholic, or Baptist or Islamic Churches don't allow it but the Episcopal Church does, so be it.
Leave it up to the religious community to allow or disallow marriage as it sees fit.

I suppose, the only ones who might object to this idea would be the atheists who have no church in which to marry. Their not having a God before whom they can pledge their love does throw a monkey wrench into this. Any self respecting atheist should, I imagine, find being married before the State as objectionable as being married in a church.
All is not lost for the atheist, however. There's always the Atheist Wedding Ceremony.