Satire: The Case for Banning Heterosexual Marriage

Draft your legal documents and sign them over a bottle of Dom Pérignon. Invite hundreds and spend thousands on your wedding. Get your license and have your witnesses witness it. Have your honeymoon in the Caribbean and live happily ever after your divorce is finalized – but for cryin’ out loud, do it in private!

It’s an outrage that part of my newspaper is committed to non-news items like engagements (many of which will never materialize) and marriages (half of which will implode before you can say “I do…wish I’d married your brother”). As if that weren’t enough, in 20, 50, even 75 years, roughly a third of these duos will make us hear about it all over again under the guise of anniversaries. Pearl Harbor has an anniversary, too. Need I say more?

The local government dutifully tracks these non-news events, going so far as to make them part of the public record. Public!

It’s no subtle reminder just how depraved the institution of marriage really is when the official record lists who married and divorced alongside who burglarized and assaulted. Look a little closer and you’ll see some of the names repeat: The Johnsons weren’t married two days before she clubbed him with a bat. The Montgomerys weren’t divorced a week before he broke into her house and stole everything that wasn’t nailed down.

Every notable and noble effort has been made to get a handle on this societal menace to no avail. Counselors, TV hosts, seminars, retreats, and thousands of books all brought about to specifically to address vows gone viciously awry – all for naught.

In the wake of this madness are children and other relatives (many of whom chant “I told you so”) who can only stand back and watch as two people who went to all the trouble of making theirs an official union go certifiably insane on each other. Entire courts – and the costly staff to man them – are dedicated to cleaning up after that which should never have been allowed in the first place.

Let us take a cue from our gay brethren. Civil unions are where it’s at. Do you hear my desperate cry? Civil!

It’s high time we forced this concept down the throats of those who have, for too long, forced us to eat rubbery chicken and then dance like one.