Several conversations with friends recently involving their various relationships have gotten me to do a lot of thinking on why people form relationships. Do people only get married, settle down, and have children because they are deeply in Love? My research says no. It looks more like most of the people I know are together because they are afraid of being alone. If you look around at the people in your own life I am sure you will find at least one, if not several couples that do not really Love each other. They might go through all the motions, but if you watch their behavior it is really just mimicking of what television and society has taught a marriage should be. They spend most of the time arguing or being resentful of each other, this is not what I understand Love to be. Most people slip easily into roles that our media has already defined for them. We are after all, a nation defined by it's Fear.
You are expected to meet some one (of the opposite sex, and only one of them), date for a while, fall in "Love", and then get married and start popping out children. This leaves very little room for interpretation. These are the societal influences that speak out against same sex marriage and polygamy. In America we love to point out anything that is different, and then dismiss it as weird, or in the extreme, as "Evil" based on the religious perspective of churches less than half of us believe in, much less attend.
When two people (or more) decide to commit themselves within a relationship based on Love and mutual respect, we should honor it. Looking at the divorce rates in America, we should stop discouraging people who are actually in Love from being together. If enough of people find another that they want to spend their lives with, and are brave enough, we can change the views of others. Just as many of them are starting to see paganism as just another religion (instead of burning us at the stake), they will soon see that Love is what really should make the world go around.
If any of you have experience with any of the things I have mention, I would love to hear about it. Love in the modern world is something rare, and should be treasured, not dismissed with small minded bigotry. Spread the word, Love is on a come back tour.
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