This video is the “Mrs. and Mrs. Smith wedding slideshow.”
As God by creation made two of one, so again by marriage He made one of two.
— Thomas Adams
By David Tulis
The ideologues for the homosexualization of culture claim constitutional definitions for marriage are bans. They like to say “gay marriage is banned in Tennessee” and the like because such language appeals to emotion.
Who couldn’t sympathize with two men or two women who want to enjoy the benefits of marriage but who cannot because it is “banned” in the Tennessee constitution and not recognized at common law? It seems unfair and inequitable — even hateful and churlish — for the majority of Tennesseans to deny equal treatment. It is selfish and vain for honest men and women and for regular marrieds to deprive these other decent citizens their due.
Appeals to emotion are needed so that you will overlook other important things about the blessings in marriage that uphold and advance civilization and long-term social capital. And they make you overlook the fact that self-styled gays are free to marry any member of the opposite sex they choose. They have no less a right than you.
Two women marry — are not arrested
Two women, Megan Smith and Lindsey Wagoner Smith, are among the sharp, active people seeking to overturn Tennessee’s definition of marriage as established in the Tennessee Marriage Protection Amendment in 2006. The couple has won an ACLU contest that pays F$5,000 for a wedding ceremony in a state where man-man and gal-gal unions are recognized as marriage. The two women, founders of the Tennessee Marriage Equality group, “are passionate advocates for equal marriage rights for same-sex couples in Tennessee,” as Nooga.com puts it.
“Our relationship is based on trust, honesty and other traditional values,” the two women declare. “Equality would mean not having to worry about visitation rights if one of us was hospitalized, filing joint taxes, someday being able to have both our names on a child’s birth certificate and more.”
This media outlet, following the establishment line, uses the ban terminology to describe Tennessee’s law. Yet the two women had a wedding ceremony March 30 in Chattanooga, an event filled with expressions of delight and promoted on YouTube.
Ban? Hardly
If pretended marriages by lesbians, or faux nuptials were indeed banned, they would be positively prohibited and penalized. That is not the case. Tennessee and its people simply decline to recognize and sanction their union and intimacy as marriage.
The people of Tennessee, through their general assembly, do not accept a revisionist definition of marriage that is, effectively, a deconstruction of marriage. Miss Megan and Miss Lindsey can do everything now that married people can do, and nothing is barred from them. They can have a church wedding. They can cohabit. They have a form of sexual intimacy. They can file joint tax returns and name each other beneficiary on mutual fund or stock broker paperwork.
They insist marriage be redefined to make their union presumptively marriage. They insist on having the common recognition and legal property rights within marriage be accorded to them. To suit them, marriage must be redefined in law so that an extra administrative step by them — in filling out Hippa forms at the hospital, perhaps, let’s say — can be avoided presumptively. They propose a cart-before-the-horse arrangement that denies any recognition of the innumerable blessings marriage — your marriage — brings to Chattanooga and civilization and capital here and afar.
State recognition of tenderness
These lovebirds had a church wedding in Knoxville, Tenn., in 2012 and were not arrested or charged under a state “ban” on gay marriage. (Photo Facebook TN Marriage Equality)
The state with its interest in the public welfare does not recognize and record their earnest and heartfelt union as a marriage. It does not criminalize their social activities. They are not under a ban, they are not outlaws in any sense vis a vis Tennessee or federal law. Their union is simply not a marriage. It is a lugbutt (OK, OK, LGBTQ) union based on an emotional and subjective state of mind and spirit, not on an objective reality. Marriage is an objective reality premised on the distinction between male and female; it is physical and interpenetrative between husband and wife in lovemaking, that spiritual and physical one-beingness that is, ultimately, mystical and a divine gift to our fallen race.
These two women have a tender relationship, an emotional and friendly bond, doing everything together, as Sean Phipps reports at Nooga.com. In trying to overturn marriage as a legal institution and cultural baseline, they want the state to enter into recognition of tenderness, friendship and private roommate arrangements. They will not be satisfied until the state’s recording and licensing apparatus is overturned against the forms of union begun by Adam and Eve.
If that is the goal, to give legal imprimatur of emotional states of heart decorated with a sexual twist, why have state recognition of marriage at all? Why would marriage matter if it is made to mean nothing but approval? Do these women want honest and normal friendships to become a provenance of the state?
Sources: Sean Phipps, “Here come the brides! Local couple wins dream wedding from ACLU,” Nooga.com, April 18, 2014
Megan Smith and Lindsey Wagoner Smith give an interview about their relationship.
