Today December 2, 2013

Today, December 2, 2013, marks an important day in Hawaii's history.  Today, for the first time, same sex couples (let me be more correct in saying LGBT couples) are able to marry in Hawaii and receive all the same rights as all other married couples. We at Hawaiian Island Weddings have been advocates of letting individuals have the right to marry regardless of their sex.

Opponents say that legalizing gay marriage will degrade the institution of marriage. They say that children will be confused about marriage, their same-sex parents or their friends parents who are of the same sex. They also say that this will increase the gay population and as more and more gay couples wed, we will see more and more gay couples flaunting their sexuality on the streets and in the clubs.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Degrading of marriage? Really? First, nearly half of all straight marriages are failures. Marriage doesn't have a great track record to start with. But, how can what other people do in their own homes reflect on you or on the institution of marriage? Marriage has been around for a ages Some marriage were arranged so that wealthy landowners would not lose control of their lands and could pool their resources. Marriage was a way of keeping a family together and raising children. In ancient times it required a woman to stay in the village with the children while the men went out to hunt, sometimes for days or weeks. It was a bond between two people and in the procreation of humans. Marriage wasn't even usually monogamous. The notion of being with the same person in a monogamous marriage for life is something that the church directed people to do. Men and women often went out side their marriage to have sex with others. This was a regular occurrence for men, but women faced serious risk of censure.

Children are many times much smarter than adults, when it comes to matters of love and innocence. Children see the relationships between their parents whether same sex or opposite sex, they can see love and nurturing , they don't see prejudice and they don't see gender that way. The children are just fine, it's some of the adults that have the problem.

Increasing the gay population by making gay marriage legal? That's like saying that you will increase bread production if you give more people ovens. If you are gay, you know it, and being able to marry or not is not going to change things. There have always been people who are gay, there will always be people who are gay. Being gay is not something you can catch nor something that is catching on. As one of my gay friends put it, "Do you think that I would wish this upon myself?", when talking about how he and this partner were treated as second class citizens. People don't turn gay, they either are, or not, or perhaps they may be bi.

Back to the reason of the article, sorry I took off on that tact.... We all need to look at people and respect them for who they are, not what they are. Prejudice and discrimination have been around for too long. Let's all get together with each other and quit pointing fingers. It's really time now!

Interested in being marriage in Maui, see Hawaii Gay Weddings, a division of Hawaiian Island Weddings.

For a limited time we are making it so easy to be married here in Maui, see our Celebration Special, so cheap I can't even mention the price on the blog.

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