Mr. William Safire of the New York Times this morning went on at great length about the Libertarian side of his lib-con political being in order to talk about his views of giving the greatest latitude to people in a relationship to obtain legal status. I think that Libertarians are fuzzy thinkers at worst and combining them with conservatives have given us the headache we now suffer during Bush Two's administration.  The only comfort I have is that Mr. Safire is not part of this current government either as spokesman or as philosopher in residence.

But, what he leaves out in his discourse is the fact of civil marriage by a judge.  My younger son was married by a judge to his wife who has religious beliefs.  This does not do violence to religious seals on marriage vows. What it did and does in all such instances, is give governmental approval to a union – without which there is no legal standing for a union, civil or religious.  In religious marriages, if I am not mistaken, the official states something like: according the laws of the state and the two are legally joined.  What religious minded gay and lesbian people want is “under God”, the religious imprimatur, added to the official papers filed in the courthouse.  I see no problem here. Many religiously pious people do.

Mr. Safire also did not mention marriages performed by Captains aboard ship.  There are no religious vows involved there either.  The need to have a third party officiate or observe the jumping over a stick or tying a knot and recording the event, is universal.  The religious overtones of any union are involved with such words as “let no one put asunder” and taking oaths to “honor and protect” for “as you both shall live” are not the important parts for, very few involved in religious marriage take those vows as binding on them.  I have no statistics for the percentages of either religious marriages or civil unions lasting a lifetime – nor do I think there are such percentages.  What we do know is that at least half of all marriages dissolve before “as long as you both shall live.”

I think that marriage, civil or uncivil, exists to protect two persons – one the woman half of the team and the resulting issue or stirpes.

I also think that the joint property of those in a union should have some legal method of separating out what belongs to each of the partner if they choose to dissolve the bonds that joined them.  Our laws at this time in all but two of our states leave these people in a limbo of third class citizenship without protection of those laws enjoyed by everybody else.  Oh, the shame and the pity of it!