The concept of marriage doesn’t really do it for me.
A “sacred” and “religious” package that comes neatly wrapped in a ribbon of legal benefits, it’s to me one of the most blatant intermixings of church and state imaginable. And if it weren’t for the cake and sexy groomsmen in tuxedos, I’d pick going to a teeth-cleaning over going to a wedding any day. I have no issue with monogamy or commitment – in fact, I think both are admirable, if lofty, aspirations – but why do I need the government to validate them? Perhaps I’m bitter because I couldn’t marry the person of my choosing even if I wanted to. I’ll admit, I find it difficult to jump on a bandwagon the law says I’m not even allowed to drag behind – maybe if the option were at least open to me, I’d be more excited for others when they tie the knot. However, federally enforced discrimination aside, I still don’t see myself hopping a flight to Iowa or Vermont anytime soon; I’m just not sure I’m the marrying kind.
Apparently, this trait is not genetic, because tomorrow my 20-year-old brother is marrying his 19-year-old fiancee.
Given the sentiments I just expressed, you can imagine my reaction when I first heard the news. “You’re too young! You’re making a mistake!” I thought. But all I could manage to choke out was, “… Why?”
The two have been dating for a couple of years now, and as they’re moving to another state together this summer, they say getting married is the logical thing to do. Plus, they love each other.
“Well, I guess that makes sense,” I said. But my inner cynic screamed, “You idiots! Haven’t you heard of Bristol Palin?! Do you want to end up on an episode of ‘Engaged and Underage’?!” I wanted to tell them to wait until they have college degrees, or to try living together first to see if they’re actually compatible. I wanted to ask: Why get married at all? Why take such a drastic step just because society tells you it’s the right thing to do? Maybe if I shower them with statistics, I thought, I’ll make them see the anti-marriage light – statistics such as the fact that 40 percent of people who get married before the age of 20 end up divorced, according to a 2005 article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Or that in 2005, there were nearly 11,000 same-sex couples in Oregon who weren’t able to get married, even if they wanted to, according to a 2008 study at UCLA. Or that nearly half of marriages in the United States end in divorce anyway.
But then I remembered reading about a study at the University of Southern California, which found that members of our generation are becoming increasingly apathetic and unable to “fully understand and appreciate their fellow human beings’ emotional states” because of their dependency on quick facts and streaming statistics. According to the study, the Web site Twitter, which shows streams of news bulletins and 150-character updates, moves too quickly for people to process the information morally that they come across.
I’m not entirely sure what processing information morally means, but it made me think. Maybe I’m wrong to make such a quick judgment about my brother’s decision to get married. I’ve been turning him into a statistic – a product of my obsession with information – without thinking about him as a human, albeit a young one, who is living his life the way he sees fit.
By judging his decision and assuming I know what’s best for him, aren’t I stooping to the level of those who tell me I can’t get married because I’m gay? What the hell do I know, anyway? For the past four years I’ve labored toward earning a college degree in the hopes that it would bring me stability and a high-paying job, because that’s what society told me I should do; now it’s starting to look like the most I’ll get out of the education system is years of paying back loan debt. Maybe I don’t have everything figured out.
So tomorrow, when I make a toast to my brother and his new wife’s life together, I’ll have every confidence it will be a good one. And even though I still don’t imagine myself getting married anytime soon, whether it’s legal or not, I’ve realized that they’re doing what they think will make them happy, and that makes me one proud big brother.
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