Letters: Time is right for gay marriage

Oh boy. Nancy Pelosi for sainthood. What was she doing during the "Bush years?" Obviously ignoring everything that she should have been doing. Now she will do the same with Obama and then some. I give it another three months and people will be scraping the Obama bumper stickers off their cars. The projection is that when Obama's finished each home in the US will be over a half million dollars in debt by way of their government. I guess then is when we will truly deserve to have the government buy us each a house and electrin car. At least the democrats have made sure that California is in great financial shape. Kind of like the Pacific Grove city council that doesn't have a single republican on it and has one member that just filed for bankruptcy herself. Do you see a pattern here?

Marriage: The Unholy Alliance of Church and State
Get government out of the marriage and special civil union businesses

“By the power vested in me, by the state of California, I now pronounce you Husband and Wife.” declared the minister in front of the altar of God.

We have heard it so many times at weddings, movies and television that we forget
the significance of this pronouncement and how it blurs the vast difference between the government meaning of marriage and the popular meaning of marriage.

The word “marriage” conjures in our minds and emotion the promise of love, caring, committed relationship, living together, making babies, families, and continuity. A government marriage license does not require or address any of those things. The couple does not even have to declare that they intend to like each other or live together. In this respect it is a hollow document, only a voucher for a bundle for exclusive government benefits and privileges. These subsidies have grown with little thought, challenge or debate during the 20th century.

There is a popular misconception that marriage in the eyes of the government is a contract between the bride and the groom. This is not quite true,“Though mutual assent is necessary to enter into a marriage, the marriage itself is a status or relationship rather than a contract, the rights and obligations of the parties thereto being fixed by the law instead of by the parties themselves” There are three parties: The bride, the groom and the government. The bride and groom merely agree (assent) to be governed by the government’s rules. The government reserves the exclusive right to itself to change the rules at anytime. No one reads the unsuspecting couple their “Miranda rights” or informs them about what they are agreeing to.

Our minister conducting the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony is a government official, an “agent” of the State of California. There is a conspiracy of Church and State. If a couple wishes to have the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony in their own local church they will be forced, as a practical matter, to get a government marriage license in which they assent to this contract with government which binds them to whatever marriage laws the government wishes to enact or change.

The controversy over same-sex marriage should cause us to ask: Why is the government involved in marriage? Equality? Fairness? Why is the government giving exclusive financial benefits to people with marriage licenses and not to people without marriage licenses? I submit that people will fall in love, live together, make babies and perpetuate families with or without the government. Why do we want the ministers of our faith to be government agents?

I recommend that churches stop being agents of the government; that the state governments stop issuing marriage licenses or special civil unions; and that the federal government stop giving exclusive subsidies to people with marriage licenses. Benefits for all or benefits for none.

Not only is the time "right" for homo "marriages", the time is also right for "marriages" of man (or woman) and beast, plural "marriages" and "marriages" of siblings and parents and their favorite child (male or female).

The perverted possibilities are endless.