Marriage is STILL really sacred

Those of us arguing for marriage equality are obviously wrong. Heterosexuals are constantly demonstrating how marriage is far too sacred for anyone but them.

Three years ago, I wrote about how a radio station was hosting a competition in which a woman would meet two potential grooms on the wedding day, then had to pick one to marry immediately. That’s obviously so far superior to gay people spending decades with their partner, but being unable to marry.

Then, some 18 months later, I wrote about an Indiana woman who had been married 23 times. What? She obviously values traditional marriage!

Now a radio station is running a new competition, “Win a Wife”, in which some guy will be flown to the Ukraine to meet a potential wife at an agency that specialises in such things. They’re not insisting on marriage, and the winner must indemnify the radio station against any claim “for any accident, injury, loss of life or failure to find love”.

And not just any man can take part. They promise to “weed out the no-hopers and time-wasters” through their application process. Then, the finalists will be subjected to “character assessment from friends and family and psychometric testing and suitability for marriage testing.” Sounds more thorough than with a typical groom, doesn’t it?

So, the station says, “If you're interested in holy matrimony with a potentially hot foreign chick, fill it out to the best of your abilities.” Because when the top priority for matrimony is that it’s with “a potentially hot foreign chick”, that matrimony would be very, very holy, indeed.

It’s been pointed out that because only a man can win the competition, it violates New Zealand’s Human Rights Act, which is true. But since only a man can marry a woman under New Zealand law, well, so what, right? What’s a little discrimination and human rights abridging among friends?

Personally, I’m really glad that we have these fine examples of heterosexuality to show us how sacred marriage really is—so sacred, in fact, that it can be a prize in radio contests, a woman can marry 23+ times and Britney Spears can marry for 55 hours. Every single one of those marriages had more legal standing, more rights and more automatic legitimacy than most same-sex couples in the US can ever hope to have, no matter how many decades they’re together, no matter how many lawyers they see and no matter how many thousands of dollars they spend drawing up legal documents that heterosexual married couples would never need.

Marriage is FAR too sacred for any of that.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Update 16/02/11: In response to growing criticism, including a complaint to the Broadcast Standards Authority by the Ukrainian Embassy in Australia (which also serves New Zealand), the radio station today changed the name of of the competition from "Win A Wife" to "Win A Trip To Beautiful Ukraine For 12 Nights And Meet Eastern European Hot Lady Who Maybe One Day You Marry".