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Civil unions are like the prizes they hand out at the very end of an elementary school contest of skill. All the winners get books, crayons, or other cool trinkets and then the teacher says, "Because all the rest of you did such good jobs, I've got packets of Pop Rocks for everyone." Those kids know they're still on the margins and that the candy is a consolation at best but, hey, when there's nothing else, you might as well enjoy it—and see if the legend about eating the stuff and drinking soda carries any weight.
In recent weeks, I've stumbled into a rather heavy share of debates about legalizing gay marriage. I'm used to the bigots who tell us God hates the gays because they're yucky, but a new stance has been rearing its equally disheveled head. In fact, scratch that. This argument is way worse than the bigots. At least those guys come right out and say it. They don't like gay people and don't want to do anything that might encourage gays to consider life a wonderful gift full of opportunities instead of a journey to suffer through until hellfire and damnation. But the intolerant tolerance view of the new crowd is completely without sense—and honesty.
Here's the typical argument I've been hearing. A man and a man are free to enter into union. They can get all the benefits of marriage from a legal standpoint, too: tax filing, visitation rights, inheritance, and so on. Perhaps they're even allowed to adopt children. But we won't call it marriage. Maybe "domestic partnership" will do. Because marriage is a sacred vow between a man and a woman. Or a man and a lifelong sequence of women. Or one woman and man after man after man since, surely, somewhere there has to be a Mr. Right. Marriage they all can have, but it's just not for the gays. Near as I can tell, this has to do with marriage traditionally occurring under a church roof—or a chupah, if you happen to find yourself sitting through that Super Bowl of ceremonies, the old school Jewish wedding.
We'll ignore that marriage came about as a legal notion to defend property rights and inheritance. It originally had nothing to do with love or the sanctity of one man and one woman. Speaking of which, that monogamy thing is more than a little out of the ordinary, too, when you consider that for most of the world, the man doesn't limit himself to a single wife but gathers up as many as his social standing—and stamina—will allow. The Christian view of marriage is in the minority, to say the least.
That's where rock and roll comes in. You see, to the person using the "you can do whatever, just don't call it marriage" argument, the government should only allow two people to marry if the arrangement meets the criteria for the term as understood by a shrinking portion of the population. These people certainly were in the mainstream in the past and may still be now, but they won't be for long. As it turns out, teenagers are smart about one thing: in increasing numbers, they recognize that marriage is ideally about two people who deeply love each other entering into a life long commitment. If they happen to be two men or two women, so what? It's the love and the bond that count.
But let's get back to rock.
To demonstrate the point promised in the title, let me give the same argument again but, this time, I'll switch the terminology and focus. If you hang out with enough music lovers, you always find that one guy. He's the dude with concert shirts older than your parents who spends most evenings either rocking out to his collection of, well, rock, or telling other people they ought to be doing the same. Get him drunk and he'll start spewing the refrain we've all heard before: "Rock and roll ended with Jimi Hendrix (or whatever band the guy is totally into). He died in '70 and rock died with him. Everything since is crap and it's not just crap. It's sellout, corporate, stupid people crap." You then give him some line about how maybe this band, the one that just released that amazing album not two months ago, surely they're rock and roll? But, no, it's not the same thing. And, what's more, he's taking his beer and going home because to even call that stuff rock is to offend him straight through to his cockles.
He's got his own idea of what rock and roll music is and he just can't imagine that anyone else would think differently. If they do, there's something wrong, and taking his beer and going home—or getting the government to pass a law about it—is the only solution he can imagine. Fortunately, not many of us take people like that seriously, nor should we. They can sulk in their dens until Jimi Hendrix is born again and the rest of the world will move on.
Homosexuality is well along the road to acceptance—and marriage is a crucial and inevitable part of that. So let's all enjoy our new music and our new culture and realize that there will always be some who are simply and profoundly bothered by change.
