Wrong word to describe union

Published 1:44 pm Friday, August 20, 2010

It occurred to me, concerning the legal wrestling now taking place in California over whether homosexuals should be allowed to marry, that the use of the term “marriage” to describe this relationship could very well be the wrong word. Rather than describing the relationship between similar things, whether living or inanimate, the term, marriage seems to be more correctly used to describe a useful relationship between things that are different.

For instance, two common locks could be connected to each other, but without a key, they wouldn’t serve any on-going useful purpose. However, a lock and a different item, the key, do serve a continual beneficial purpose. The absurdity of trying to produce real music by bringing two violins together is immediately evident. A clever musician may be able to produce some recognizable tune, just as he could from two bows, but the audience would soon be bored. A violin and a bow in the hands of a master violinist would keep the audience enthralled.

If in the conclusion of this legal wrangling the homosexuals should win, then they should be able to refer to this relationship any way they want, except it can’t rightly be called a marriage.

Harold L. Watson

Marysville