They Just Want Gum

Fourth grade. 1984. Wednesday. Sunshine. The day I got caught cheating. We had these desks with four legs and separate chairs. Not the kind where the books fit under the seat. I’d figured out that you could take the list of spelling words, hide it just inside the front and if you pushed back just enough, you could see the words as the teach called them out. I’d done it a couple times before, but this time I leaned back a little too far or something and she cause me looking. It really upset me when she caught me at it, because I really liked my teacher. I never cheated on a school test again.

Oddly enough, the Wednesday test was just a practice test. The real spelling test was on Friday each week. But the people who made spelled all the words right on Wednesday didn’t have to take the test on Friday and they got to chew gum in class on Friday morning. I cheated, just so I could chew gum. It seems like such a little thing now. My mother would’ve bought me gum, if I’d asked, but that wasn’t good enough. I wanted to be one of the people who got to chew gum in class, even if that meant cheating on the test.

As I look at this gay “marriage” thing, we may have a similar situation. Why did anyone have to cross paths with Kim Davis in Rowen County? There are other counties in Kentucky that were more than willing to issue marriage licenses. Why did anyone have to try to get a license in Kentucky? There were other states that had already legalized issuing licenses. But even before any state declared gay “marriage” legal, there was nothing preventing them from getting on a ship, going out into international waters and saying their vows in front of a ship’s captain. To the extent that two men or two women can get married, they would be no less married if they did that than if they received a license in Rowen County.

This has never been about “marriage.” There’s nothing that marriage gains any of these people. They’re already doing things the human body wasn’t designed to do and aside from some employment benefits that many companies had already decided to give them anyway, nothing changes. They say their vows, then go back to the same home and sleep in the same bed. But what they’re looking for is gum. Not just any gum, but gum from the teacher. What they want is official recognition, but just as I did, they’re cheating to get it.

See, there never has been such a thing as marriage between two men or two women. There never has been and there never will be. Oh, some people may call certain civil unions marriage, but “marriage” is just a word that we use to describe a concept. That concept is of a man from one family joining with a woman from another family to create a new family. It is impossible for two men or two women to have that. That knowledge makes them feel inferior. They know that they could go and find someone of the opposite gender to marry, but that’s not what they want. They want the recognition of marriage, without having to get married. Sure, they could say their vows in front of a ship’s captain, but once they came back to the United States, people would say, you aren’t really married. So, they cheat and work toward getting laws that require people to recognize their civil unions as marriage. It disturbs them that a County Clerk in Rowan County tells them that what they are doing isn’t real marriage, so they take her to court to get the judge to force her to recognize their civil unions as marriage. It shouldn’t matter to them. She’s just a clerk. She’s just a paper pusher. But it disturbs them because they know it’s true.

You can be certain that they will also be disturbed when churches continue to tell them that their civil unions are not real marriages. One of them will get saved and want to join a church. The pastor will say, “Sure, but you need to dissolve the relationship you’re in first.” So, the new convert will move out and file for divorce. The other person will be steaming mad, because the church doesn’t recognize their union as marriage. Cheating may get you what you think you want, but you’ll always end up questioning its true value.