Spare Some Change?

Gay marriage is good; anyone against it is a homophobe. I'm not sure how to talk about this subject, lest I get accused of being homophobic. I still don't know what that is, since in Latin it would means something like hating myself, but I get their drift: if you don't think gays should e allowed a marriage or an adoption, it means you hate them.

Accusing people of being homophobic simply because they wish to discuss one of the biggest possible changes in our cultural history is irresponsible. It is no different than the women that declare you're a pig if you want to discuss another massive change that's already happened: women not being at home raising children.

Change for change's sake, or change simply to appease the feelings of a minority should not be taken lightly. Because really, that's what this is all about. It is certainly not about rights. When people think of gay marriage, they aren't thinking about taxation laws, inheritance tax, welfare, life insurance, etc. They're thinking about the love felt between two of their gay friends. And they think it is unfair that those friends and others like them can't declare that love publicly, and have it sanctioned by the state.

People that get upset when someone wants to talk about such a big issue, and have a good debate about it, aren't worth my time. When feelings drive laws, you should be very nervous. Today's good feelings about gay marriage could be tomorrow's bad feelings about not having Jews own supermarkets, blacks teach school, whites swim in pools. Seem ludicrous? 30 years ago, so did the very idea of gay marriage.

Maybe the bogus climate change subject got me thinking about change in general. You often hear people say that "change is good," but this is usually said by someone when a friend tells them, "Becky dumped me," or "I just lost my job." When we say, "Change is good," it's because we don't want to say, "Damn, your life's going to be a mess for the next month. Call me then."

Change is just change, but our perception of it is on a pendulum. If the change is good for us as an individual, or matches our ideals, then it is good. If it doesn't, it's bad. The collateral damage of change (other people) usually doesn't enter into it until much later, and then only philosophically. When change occurs, the first person we naturally think of is ourselves because human beings are at root an animal, and all animals are selfish. Call it a survival instinct or whatever you want, but the most important person in our lives is us, with the exception of our children, who are an extension of us. Spouses, to judge by divorce proceedings and the myriad ways that parents fight for child custody, are a lot more expendable than children.

Even so, child custody cases can be seen as selfish acts: only I can raise this child properly, I can't live without the child, the child would be better off with me, he/she doesn't deserve the child as much as I do. All of these are subjective statements, provided the other parent isn't abusive or negligent. A man or a woman that cheats on their spouse is simply a bad spouse; it doesn't necessarily make them a bad caretaker of children.

Change is unsettling only if it means something bad for us. Rarely do we argue against change if it means we're going to be happier. When it is change of the happy sort, we're also the first to take credit for it. This amuses me. Our successes are claimed as victories, while our defeats are usually somebody else's fault.

Think back to school, when people received their marked essay papers . You'd ask a friend how they did and they'd say, "I aced it," or "The bastard flunked me." Notice the difference. Very rarely did you hear somebody say, "I wrote a total piece of crap and he recognized it." Nor did they say, "I've been kissing his ass all year. He knows I'm an A-student, so he passed me without looking at it."

School is where we first learned how to deal with change. Receiving good marks and pats on the back taught us that good change (graduating from one class to the next; receiving an award; winning popularity through a touchdown pass; getting put in the 'good books') was done through our own achievements. We never questioned this, and took it as only right. Bad change, of course, was something to be protested. A failing grade meant a trip to the teacher's desk to ask for a re-test, or a grade bump, or anything, as long as we didn't fail. When we didn't receive it, we called them a bitch. Their fault, not ours. "I'm a starter on the basketball team because I'm a good player." Versus: "The coach benched me, the jerk."

Yet good change may not have been our doing. Some years ago in Chicago, more than a few teachers were caught cheating on tests. Not their own tests, but their students' tests. They were rubbing out the wrong answers and putting in the right ones, to bump the test scores and make the teachers look like better teachers.

These cheating teachers were caught and they were punished. But I wonder how many students today, if reading that, would feel bad if they were one of the assisted students. Would they return to school to re-write the test? If you were in a similar situation, would you?

The effects of change are all in our perceptions of it. Winning the lottery: good change for you, bad for the jealous neighbour. Losing an election: bad change for you, good for the people that voted for the other guy.

This next example of change gives you some food for thought. In recent years, there have been a few high profile cases of husbands killing pregnant wives, and mothers killing their own children. Now think of a traffic accident, where only one family member is left. Maybe the father. He loved them, and now his life is a living hell. That auto accident is a bad change.

But take the wife-killer. Let's say the day before he plans to do her in, his wife is killed by a drunk driver. Suddenly, in his mind, that auto accident is an excellent change. And we'd never know it.

That's what scares me not about change, but in people's reaction to it. If perception decides whether it's good or bad, we have to take people's word for how they feel about it. They could be lying. It's doubtful that a hateful mother whose children die in an accidental fire is going to turn around the next day and say, "Well, it's for the best, because I wanted to drown them, anyway."

Cultural change is the same as individual change. That is, when a change happens in our lives, we are very selfish about whether it is positive or negative to us as individuals. Cultural change has the same dynamic.

I had an argument with a friend some time back about gay marriage. No matter how many times I said I wasn't against it, the friend was still upset with me for saying that we shouldn't just run it into the legal books overnight. I said there needed to be a good, open debate about changing one of our fundamental institutions so drastically.

No matter. The friend has a personal stake in seeing gay marriage happen (she is not gay, but some of her good friends are), and that was that: from cultural to personal, a good change all the way around.

I don't see it that way. I'm as opinionated as anyone else, but it doesn't mean that I think my beliefs should hold true for all people, even if my beliefs happen to be a political hot topic at the time. The trouble with massive change is that once you change it, it's extremely hard to change it back if you think you've made an error.

Imagine talking to a child some years from now, after gay marriage has been passed nationwide. In a conversation with the child you say something like, "Back when Elvis was the king of rock," but instead you say, "Well, only men and women could get married in those days."

The implied logic for the child is that marriage is malleable. Divorce laws may have hurt the idea of marriage for everyone in my generation, but make no mistake that gay marriage will completely change (destroy?) its meaning for the next one. When something is malleable and ever-changing, it loses its sanctity. It becomes just another bit of politics.

Gay marriage troubles me because it will change the very meaning, the essence, of a cultural institution. Once that has been done, it is easy to tweak it just a little more, and a little more, and a little more.

When a bigamist shows up at the door from name-a-religion and says you're discriminating against him, will you let him marry three wives?

Let's discuss.