You Just Knew This Was Going to Happen

Did you see the story about the two straight guys in New Zealand who got married to win tickets to next year's Rugby World Cup in England?

Two heterosexual New Zealand men who got married to win tickets to the 2015 Rugby World Cup in London have managed to anger both gay rights campaigners and conservative groups.

Travis McIntosh, a 23-year-old engineering student from Otago University, and Matt McCormick, a 24-year-old teacher at Musselburgh School in Dunedin, were married at Eden Park in Auckland on Friday.

Gay rights groups are understandably pissed off at this, which was a stunt by a radio station in New Zealand -- the kind of contest radio stations do all the time. After all, the fight for marriage equality has been pretty serious business world-wide, and this just belittles the whole effort.

Of course, the anti-gays are all over this. Here's Jennifer Roback Morse, via Good.As.You:

Two men can get married for any reason they want. The law does not require them to prove that they are actually “gay,” or that they “love each other,” however those terms might be defined in a legal context. (!)

I hate to say I told you so. But I told you so.

Back in 2010, I created this talk that showed what life under a genderless marriage regime would look like, thirty years on. The story did not contain a single “gay” or “lesbian” person. The story showed that changing the law would induce a whole series of behaviors among people who are not same sex attracted. Two men may want to get married to get off-base housing in the military. Or to get one of them a green card.

Or to win a radio contest.

Gay activists and their wealthy patrons seem surprised that they do not get to control what everyone does and why they do it.

They have not really thought through what redefining marriage will actually mean for the whole of society.

Let's do a little bit of dissection here -- actually, I don't even have to go into much detail: everything she says applies to straight couples as well as same-sex couples. No one asks why you're getting married.

The crack about "Gay activists and their wealthy patrons" is nothing more than pure projection. (And let's guess whose "wealthy patrons" are more than likely a couple of very rich churches who assume that everyone must do as they're told.)

As for the "radio contest" bit -- how many TV shows have there been that can be loosely grouped under the heading "matchmaking for ratings"? -- "The Bachelor," "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?" "The Bachelorette," "The Dating Game" -- and there are more than I can't remember the names of. And as far as taking marriage seriously, check out this from Wikipedia:

Dating game shows are television game shows that incorporate a dating system in the form of a game with clear rules. Human matchmaking is involved only in selecting the game's contestants – usually for amusement value as opposed to any concern for their happiness or compatibility. The audience sees only the game; an important feature of all dating game shows is that the contestants have little or no previous knowledge of each other, and are exposed to each other only through the game, which may include viewing a photograph or at least knowing the basic criteria for participation (typically participants are not already married).

(Emphasis added.)

Eventually, of course, there were gay versions, but late in the game (if you'll pardon the expression). "Boy Meets Boy" ran for sex episodes in 2003 and wasn't particularly straightforward (a lot of the contestants were straight).

Roback Morse's final comment is a moderated form of "The sky is falling!" People very seldom think through the ramifications for society of anything they do. The only people who worry about it are conservatives -- those people who stand in front of the march of history screaming "STOP!" And all they can do is make wild predictions of doom, based on nothing.

Roback Morse and the other outraged conservatives are missing the point, a fact best illustrated by a comment from one of the contestants:

Mr McIntosh told the Otago Daily Times he thought the marriage would last about two years.

Opposition was understandable but the wedding was not mocking the institution of marriage, he said.

“It’s just seeing how far two good mates would go to win a trip to the Rugby World Cup.”

The institution of marriage is in trouble, but not because of gay couples wanting to get married. It's in trouble because of straight people.