The New Normal

In this assignment I plan on debunking the idea of gay marriage as a true desire of gay people and prove it has absolutely nothing to do with equality but instead the continued assimilation of cultures by the white male anglo saxon view point that engulfs our society today. The Imperialist European cultures of the West have removed the traditions and displaced the harmonious lives of indigenous people across the globe and the argument for gay marriage is just another attempt to coerce conformity instead of enhancing the individuals rights to be other and equal.

The marriage that will be discussed in this paper will not just take into account what we in the Western world believe to be marriage, but will include the many types of marriage that have and still exist in other cultures. In the Western world we usually suffer from androcentic ways of thinking that have christian morals applied for good measure. We very seldom ask what else there is in the world other than a heteronormative marriage, child producing, monogamous partnership paradigm. Gay men; for example; since time began have been known for a less ridged life style. The act of cross dressing leads back as far as Quan Yun in early China. This cross dressing poet is credited as one of the fathers of Taoist thought and was said to have many lovers but was married to the King who was also married to a woman.

Other Asian cultures such as India have arranged marriage where it is more of a transaction between families to secure status and the woman*s family must provide a dowery. The Hindus even have a third gender dynamic the Hijras that are traditionally exhaulted as spiritual ties to the Gods. Many native American tribes also have this dynamic in the two spirited people who could marry same sex or opposite sex partners. In several Native American tribes the men moved in with the women*s family and if he misbehaved he would come home in the evening finding his clothing outside of his wives house letting him know he was divorced. A number of West African hunting gathering tribes have what is known as woman marriage and permit homosexual partnering as a way of life and even encourage same sex play in adolescents. In the Andes women who seek wealth and control of their destiny marry other women who then go and get pregnant so that they raise a large family to have many hands to work the fields and sell crops in the market. This marriage can be sexual but does not have to be anything more than a financially beneficial arrangement.

With all this in mind I will choose to use marriage as a word that means a cultural and/or sexual union between two or more individuals. This will allow us the freedom to include polyamorous couples who live together as well as more traditional views. I will argue through the Utilitarian and Kantian views that the idea of marriage should be left only for those who choose to call themselves married but no special privilege should come with with this title and governments should not be dealing with the creating of uniformity in the unions that any of us make be they same or mixed sex or other.

Kantian theory realizing morality based on God is problematic because it is a poor motive for action and very hard to get past the fact that Gods existence may indeed be a fallacy itself. We must rely on our reason or gut instincts to tell us what actions are morally based. These actions should create good will and follow the categorical imperatives. Creating moral agents, acting as moral agents, towards the moral agents that are our fellow man. It asks us not to justify our actions because when we justify how we are acting then we are more than likely not treating our fellow man as an equal but instead as a means to an end. To do so we compromise both their and our integrity and violate their moral autonomy. If you would will it to be moral law then you are on the right track.

Does marriage need to be moral law? Are we as Queer peoples really saying that we would rather give up our culture instead of preserving our traditions and duality? Instead we should heartily call out the idea that Gay Marriage is a Gay problem and instead say the very idea of marriage is a heteronormative nightmare created by western christian minds. A forced belief, along with the rest of our culture; as moral law for all who would be conquered by Western appetites for wealth and control. Although the west has been quite good at erasing the evidence of our natural instincts; what we have seen in the indigenous peoples of the world is varied and extraordinary relations that have involved every sort of coupling and sexual expression with very little moral consequence.

To will marriage as moral law is to destroy the essence of variation that is innate within nature and all her creations. To act that marriage is somehow to save women from the terrible man or to pass her his wealth after his demise is also a fallacy of the West. When ever we enslave a minority; or in the case of women a majority; we do so for control. This control is used to justify the need for this control and violates the principals of the categorical imperatives. Instead we should release the special hold our governments have over the value of marriage and rely solely on the individuals who want to get married to provide the legal documents that they feel are valued and needed in their chosen form of relationships. The government can deal with those legal documents and stop glorifying the christian value system and allow the idea of marriage to die the death it deserves. Thus applying Kantian ethics to our dilemma of Gay Marriage we see that it is not in the best interest to stop marriage or approve it but to remove the privilege that comes with it.

We will come to the same educated conclusion after applying the theory of Utilitarianism or Mill*s *Happiness Principal*. Utilitarianism is at its core a numbers game and the idea is to act in ways the are for the greater good and create the greatest happiness. The greatest happiness is a hard one to define since it asks us to speculate on the future and be accountable for people we can not truly comprehend being involved in our actions or inactions. This creates an undue burden on the person trying to reason on how to morally act. However if we were to simply act in ways that create happiness to the greatest extent we could arrive at exploitation of minorities. This suppression of minority culture would lead to the suppression of non dominant cultural thought and new and original solutions and ideas would cease to exist. Homogeny and assimilation bring with them a natural greying of ideas. This exploitation would lead to only one; or a limited few; predominant ideas being expressed as dissenting views are absorbed. Moral programing by majority. This stagnation would certainly not bring the greatest happiness.

Thus for reasons stated before we can see that abolishing the authority the word marriage brings with it is the only way to preserve ideas and cultures that differ and our greatest happiness. It is again the fact that marriage, be it gay or not, is not in the best interest of the general population. It is truly our forced Western christian homogeny that has created speculation that other points of views on family and sexual practice is wrong when indeed the privilege that comes with marriage is the problem. Certainly the social pressures and anxiety around marriage and the effect on couples; as well single people; is not creating the most happiness possible. Being forced to ad hear to a moral judgement about what signifies a union that creates happiness is in clear violation of Utilitarian practice.

It is easy to see that only Judeo-Christian and a forceful Western influence on the world have created a debate about marriage not because it cares about the moral state of the world but instead because it wishes to enforce its practices on a global scale. When we have everyone believing the same thing we can more easily control their desires and sell them the ideas and products of the wealthy puppet masters. Gay people don*t need marriage and all the trouble it brings as this will not truly make us more equal. It simply makes us more alike or normal and continues to march the world towards homogeny and away from being free thinking individuals. It is the latest in the assimilation of cultures and varied points of view in the name of greed and power. Marriage is not the issue that begs to be morally dissected in the name of my Gay brethren but the question is actually, Can a culture retain its character and ways of life in the onslaught of forced morality? Gays should not be being asked to be the new normal but the heternormative majority should allow us to be different but equal and do away with marriage all together.