O
OraLabora
Guest
How can you be certain that gays who marry are doing it to “make a mockery of marriage”? If a gay couple has children, it behooves them to ensure their union has some legal protections, if not for them, then for the sake of the children. Until there was “gay marriage” (I agree it’s an oxymoron), there were “civil unions” that gays could contract for that purpose. However in some places, like my jurisdiction, civil unions do not confer the same rights as marriage.How is that equivalent to people engaged in a mockery of marriage?
The only way to ensure those rights, and the only legal mechanism, is marriage (in this case, necessarily civil). So it isn’t so much the couple making “mockery” of marriage, but the State. In a civil union in my jurisdiction for instance, retirement accounts (“RRSPs”, sort of like US 401k) are taxable when they are transferred to a non-spouse, but can be transferred tax-free between spouses. It isn’t a negligible amount. It’s deemed taxable in one lump at time of death. So someone with, say, a retirement account of $500k, which can generate about $20k in pension income annually, would be taxable at the highest rate and drop to $250k, thus generating only $10k in annual income. That’s not small potatoes. But if the couple are legally married (leaving sacramentality out of it for a moment), the whole $500k passes on to the spouse, still sheltered from tax.
This applies equally to heterosexuals or homosexuals. You could see a similar case in for instance, a heterosexual couple who cannot marry because, say, they are unable to engage in the conjugal act (e.g. a elderly couple, both widowed). They would be well advised to enter into a civil union to protect their legal rights, even though the Church does not recognize the validity of their marriage.
I wouldn’t, therefore, presume to know the state of a gay couple’s mind who turn up to have their children baptized.
And regardless of the condition of their souls, it is most certainly not the infant making a mockery of marriage. Personally I think the biggest mockery of marriage is no-fault divorce, not a legal provision aimed at only 5% of the population. But that’s another discussion for another time.