Hey, Gay People! Come Join Me On The Island Of Misfit Toys
It seems as though yet another person has decided I am not married. I cannot be married. I will never be married. This, of course, surprises my husband, my extended family and the roughly 300 other people who attended our wedding. I think it would also surprise the State of Indiana, which so kindly provided us with a marriage license. I know it surprises the four women who had to pay money for a burgundy dress made by the most difficult and rude seamstress in the world.
Alas, sadly, marriage is for procreation. This would seem to me to mean that you can't be married unless you have children.
When I was a kid I would often make it through the more boring parts of church by reading the more thrilling parts of the Bible. (Hey, it's the Bible! Who's gonna yell at you for reading the BIBLE in church? ) Genesis is far better than most movies and television shows. I was eight when I stumbled across the story of Lot's incest with his daughters. Boy, was that more interesting than the Offeratory! So I had this childhood steeped in those Old Testament stories, and soon enough my biggest fear became barrenness. In the stories of the OT a woman's only true currency seems to be as a vessel for offspring. Babies are better than any type of wealth or intelligence. A baby was the only thing standing between a woman and poverty, starvation and death. Tamar was so desperate to secure her place in Judah's household with a child that she dressed as a whore, seduced her father-in-law Judah and became pregnant with his child. Babies were a big deal, and barrenness was worse than blindness. So of course I feared barrenness and of course--lo and behold--I'm as barren as the high desert. My womb may as well be a steel bowl for all the good it does me.
As I've grown older I've realised that despite society, God loves and values barren women. But it still ticks me off greatly when some politician or armchair wannabe politico blogger announces that they're in step with that fertile crescent bigotry. That they've determined me unworthy of marriage, ready for the ice floe of modern society to carry babyless me out of their sight.
posted by Kat Coble @ 11:00 AM
11 comments
11 Comments:
Finding more unevolved dumbasses in the world is hardly news.
If that's what they believe, then have them put their idiotic beliefs to the test: Push for a marriqage amendment that states, "Marriage is between a man and a woman solely for the purpose of procreation, and is therefore null and void without children."
I would make a joke about asking if these troglodytes only have sex with their wives for the purpose of procreation but sadly, I'm afraid of the answer.
It would certainly explain why they're so pissy.
I've often wondered where I fit in with this framework. I might have children, but being the male form of "barren", I've never had children.
Shoot, they'd probably make a deal out of the fact that my kids aren't REALLY 'merican (piles of paperwork notwithstanding)
It seems as though yet another person has decided I am not married. I cannot be married. I will never be married.
You are, of course, taliking about Maynard and not me, right. Because I did not state a position on the issue in that post.
That extra "i" in talking is free of charge, BTW.
I feel for ya, but at least the government recognizes your marriage. If we could just get that far I'd be happy.
Since you brought it up I just have one question: when you got married did you INTEND to have children?
Because if you did, I have a had time finding you the victim of this sort of rhetoric that you make yourself out to be.
I have always wondered at the lack of fertility pressure placed on men in these biblical stories. If there aren't any children in a marriage it must be the woman's fault and the last party considered is the man. Look at Henry the VIII.
My sister went the fertility route to get #1 Niece, I was so totally offended when my MiL presumed to tell me that because of my sister, I must be infertile as well since I didn't have any children. I told her that my Sister's husband was infertile and she could draw her own conclusions about her own son. She shut up rather quickly then. People ask the rudest and most insensitive questions without always thinking about the answers.
I find that bias really surprising even in these so called modern times.
Well, in Tamar's case, the fault is rather explicitly her husband's. He is not (so far as the story is aware) infertile, but he refuses to get her pregnant. Hence her recourse to her father-in-law.
did you INTEND to have children?
I'm sorry, but what? So if a couple gets married with NO intention of having children then it's not a marriage??? Would you rather they shack up and "live in sin"? Procreation is not the only reason to get married. Procreation is not the only reason to have sex.
And Malia, you expressed the point perfectly I think, that KC was making.
As a woman who cannot ever have children (that would be me) to here this rhetoric on so many websites is so sad and demeaning.
I agree so much with Ms. Kat.
Call me crazy (many do), but I always like Hebrews 13:4 when judgmental folks get to trying to fark around with marriage laws:
Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.
(Ahem. Occasionally that old misogynist Paul got it right.)
Also, does this good preacher think that Abraham and Sarah were living in sin all those years? And it wasn't until Abraham set about creating the eternal Middle Eastern conflict that they were officially wed in God's eyes? Gaaah.
And by the way, Anonymous, I don't believe anyone could ever perceive Ms. Coble as a victim. Not if he or she had ever read any of her writings with an open mind and heart.
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