Love and Marriage

In California, the State Supreme Court has just ruled that love is a human right, and that individuals therefore have a right to marry whomever they choose. But gay marriage is not what Ngugi wa Thiong'o and the late Ngugi wa Mirie had in mind when they wrote I Will Marry When I Want.

Love may not be a basic need, but it is certainly a human need. The human animal is capable of love, deep love -- but I am not so sure about the animal-animal. Thus, though we are thusly capable, we don't have to be dogs about it. We are not now even allowed to be dogs; worse still, roosters in full view or he-goats in the village barn.

Love and sex are not the same thing. Sex follows, presupposes, love. However, some cultures have for long operated on the premise that love can be nurtured via marriage, which must be arranged; nurtured by familiarity -- and by the sex which such marriage legitimizes. In many places, however, this cultural dimension has been rapidly eroded by the spread of such factors as general education and gender awareness.

Nevertheless, love continues to be, in many ways, culturally constructed. Society in general demands that its consummation -- particularly the comsummation of sexual love (for there is such a contrasting thing, dry as it may be, as platonic love)-- conform to certain prescriptions, expectations and understandings. There are even rites of passage and ceremonies that must be observed to give it the stamp of approval. Above all, at every encounter there must be consent -- of the "weaker sex." That is why there is something called wife (spousal?)rape, and something called date rape -- and why they are, to the poorly socialized, such problematics.

Love may be a human right, but it is a big stretch to argue that it thus endows us with an inalienable right to marry (and presumably have sex with) whomever we love and who loves us. We love our parents and siblings, but we have no right to marry them. It is in fact taboo in all cultures. In many cultures, marrying a "close" cousin is also taboo -- probably on genetic grounds, as some medico-historical evidence suggests, and on grounds of opportunity.

Love, marriage and sex are the building blocks of one of the core pillars of society -- the family (as an institution). Love and sex can produce children, and therefore give society a biological/genetic family unit larger than the dyad, only in heterosexual marriage or unions. To repeat, only heterosexual unions produce biological children. The technology of in vitro , fertilization, as liberating and comforting as it is, does not change this fundamental fact -- though cloning may, in the near future.

If this capacity for biological reproduction were to cease to-day (May 17, 2008) due to some unspeakable x-ray-based or related catasptophe, then the human species would be extinct by May 17, 2138! It is as simple as that. Has humanity always known of this danger. Yes, it seems to me -- at least "instinctively".

Gay marriage is thus the very antithesis of human survival. It is nevertheless harmless to that survival so long as it remains an aberration, a fringe practice in terms of the numbers involved.