Who Is Really Cheapening Marriage?

How greedy can you be? No really? She's fighting his parents for her dead former fiance's pension benefits when she wasn't financially dependent upon or living with him, has her own career and married another guy three years after the first fiance's death? How unbelievably tacky. Dear lord.

I have 2 associated rants that tie into this: my 9/11 rant and my gay marriage rant. Let's go with the gay marriage rant. We essentially have 2 types of marriage in this country, a religious sacrament that is recognized as a legal contract by the state and that same legal contract performed by the state. It's a contract, people. It's to ensure the preservation of wealth and the care of children. The California decision was right on. It's a contract, and you can't say that only some people over the age of 18 can enter into contracts with each other and not others.

So please don't give me some nonsense about how gay marriage devalues straight unions. Or at least come up with some actual reasons and examples of how this is being done instead of relying on ridiculous radio commercials that are supposed tug at the heartstrings. Oh wait, you can't come up with any examples, can you? Only mawkish stories about people getting married and how it means so much. Know how and why my people get married? They're horny. Or in the case of my grandmother, they have $300 when a really good piece of land hits the market and that gets the ring on the finger.

Know what devalues marriage? People living in sin. Hey, I've done it myself. People having fake weddings. Giving the benefits of marriage to straight people who haven't actually gotten married because you can't wrap your head around logic and not sentiment, and letting people who aren't married claim millions of dollars as "domestic partners" when they haven't take on the responsibilities to earn it.