It's National Marriage Week and our new governor has proclaimed this week Marriage Week in Wisconsin as well. I believe in marriage. I've been married for a good long time now, and intend to stay that way, so it's not like I have anything at all against marriage. I do have something against Marriage Week. If you go to the Marriage Week web site you'll see pictures of lots of smiling couples and kids. Different colors of people. That's great. But I note that all the parents appear to be heterosexual, so I think there's a little exclusion going on.
Even in Wisconsin, we are having marriage week because the Wisconsin Family Council requested it. The Wisconsin Family Council web site says
Wisconsin Family Council is the education, c(3) arm of Wisconsin Family Action. Its mission is to forward Judeo-Christian principles and values in Wisconsin. WFC largely accomplishes this mission by informing Wisconsin citizens, churches and policymakers about important pro-family legislative and cultural issues so they will be inspired to get involved in preserving and strengthening marriage and family in Wisconsin. Our vision is to help the general public and policymakers discover historical Judeo-Christian principles and traditional values. Through this we believe we can promote principles and values that will support family and public life today.
So - straight, Christian marriage appears to be the agenda here. Stricly speaking I don't know that my marriage is part of this exclusive club, and I know that those of a lot of my friends are not. God forbid that any of my LGBT friends should want to take the plunge and make a commitment to each other. Further reading on their web site will make it clear that there are a lot of agendas involved, including teaching Intelligent Design in the schools and increasing the school voucher program. Julaine Appling and her group have not been satisfied with denying marriage rights to gay and lesbian couples in the state, but are now also fighting the ability of couples to have other legal rights if they are state employees. This is much more than support of marriage, it is support of only one kind of marriage, and also involves a group that wants to spread their message by using our schools to spread their own gospel. Let's not fool ourselves into believing that his is in support of marriage - it is an attempt to deny non-Christian and non-straight couples their right to commitment, dignity, and happiness. I object.