What is Marriage?

The other half had a fit with me on Sunday. She saw a few messages between myself and a few ladies and wanted to know what I was doing messaging other ladies. While I protested my innocence, she made the point that I am a married man and marriage is about being committed to a single partner.

Coincidentally, the news has come out that Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend Indiana, just withdrew from the race to be the Democrat’s choice for President in this November’s Presidential Election. Just as I read the news on the wire services, I got a text from one of the cuter and moretalented people I know saying that the young mayor, “reminds me of better times, back with America had decency and respectability.”

I think of this statement because Mayor Pete is probably as close as it gets to being a picture-perfect candidate. He looks good on TV; he communicates clearly and is capable of doing so in more than one language. He’s served in a combat role in the military (Afghanistan) and is a devout person. He’s been faithfully married to the same partner for a few years. As Trevor Noah of the Daily Show remarked, “Even his skeletons have nice things to say about him.” You’d think that and America that claims to believe in things like family values would vote him in a flash.

There is however, one particular issue with Mayor Pete as he’s popularly known. He’s what most women would call, the man who is too good to be true. He checks all the boxes that women look for in a man except one – he’s openly gay and the person he’s been faithfully married to happens to be another man. As much as find Rush Limbaugh repulsive, I do believe he has a point when he claims that America may not be ready to elect a “gay” president (America has yet to elect a woman, unlike several majority Muslim countries and it took them 200-years to elect someone who is shade darker than pink)

While America may not be ready for an openly gay President (unlike conservative catholic Ireland, which has an openly gay Prime Minister of Indian decent), we should be grateful to Mayor Pete for highlighting one great issue – the definition of marriage.

One of the greatest achievements of the Trump Administration has been the way it has gotten conservative evangelical Christians to support it for the mere fact that the Trump is as close to the opposite of Christian as it gets. Leaving aside his race-baiting rhetoric, and description of the lowest forms of humanity as “fine people,” Mr. Trump’s personal life is a mess. He’s been married three times. His current wife is so much younger that most right-thinking minds would make the motivations behind the marriage for both parties cannot be based on pure love.

In addition to his three marriages, Mr. Trump has had numerous mistresses and once remarked that if Ivanka wasn’t his daughter, he’d probably be dating her – as a dad to a good looking 20-year old, my only reaction is – eww. The biggest surprise in Mr. Trump’s personal life is the fact that his children are surprisingly normal or as normal as it gets given the circumstances.

Yet, despite all of that, the “conservative” element accepts Mr. Trump has being a man from God because despite his various marriages, mistresses and paid off porn stars, Mr. Trump’s relationships meet the “one-man and one-woman criteria, even if some of his relationships involved a certain amount of coercion.

Mayor Pete’s relationship by contrast has been spectacularly monogamous and yet it fails to meet the one-man, one-woman criteria and so its panned as “immoral.” Singapore’s conservatives would even say that accepting that a marriage like Mayor Pete’s is wrong because you’re accepting the “gay lifestyle,” which apparently the majority of people don’t accept.

Yet, the question remains, shouldn’t our concept of marriage be more like Mayor Pete’s than the Trump’s various marriages? After all, shouldn’t marriage be a case of two parties wanting to be in committed relationship rather than a case of one party getting everything out of the other without giving anything in return?

The question of “Gay Marriage,” has focused too much on the “Gay” part. Too many of us are obsessed with whether its between “one-man and one-woman,” rather than what actually goes on in the marriage. Mayor Pete may not be in a “one-man, one-woman” relationship but as he rightfully said, his marriage didn’t involve paying off porn stars.

I go back to the fact that I’m a dad of a young girl. Yes, ideally, I’d be more than happy if my little girl found a decent guy to spend the rest of her life with. However, if her preference was for another woman, so be it. Better to have a same sex marriage of equals rather than a series of abusive “normal” relationships.