Rory Levine: Striking a blow to a 'sacred' institution

In late July, when tabloid mainstay Liza Minnelli announced that her heavily publicized marriage to entertainment promoter David Gest was ending, few, if any, were surprised. More seemed relieved that this shaky "house of cards" was finally going to obey the inevitable laws of gravity and topple. From the wild stories surrounding their $4 million wedding to the surreally goofy photos featuring a wack-job lineup including Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor, little appeared everlasting or even logical about this coupling.

Marriage has never been Liza's strong suit -- it was, after all, her fourth trip to the altar. And yet, here the once-happy couple was, living in hotel suites on either side of the country, promising nasty divorce proceedings in dueling tabloid stories.

These last few months, I've been drowning in celebrities ending their marriages, including one-time husband-devotees Sharon Stone, Uma Thurman and Jennifer Garner. Even the sex-crazed teens of the American Pie film trilogy got into the act, mocking the once-sacred ceremony in the latest installment with crude humor and salty language.

Yet somehow, the institution of marriage managed to withstand it all, rebounding for yet another weekend's worth of white Vera Wang gowns and multi-layered cakes.

Well, that is, until those pesky homosexuals popped out and started making all those unfair demands, for equal civil rights and the like.

For a while, it seemed that this was the inevitable next step following June's historic Supreme Court decision to strike down the remaining state laws banning private consensual sex between same-sex adults, thereby legalizing sodomy. Even Canada, long mocked as the bland, barely populated landmass to the north, beat the U.S. to it, when Prime Minister Jean Chretien introduced a bill to permit such marriages, following court rulings striking down the country's definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

But then, President Bush, clearly seeing himself as the country's ethical and religious savior, took up the public fight against such "unholy matrimony" while himself drowning in self-moralizing hypocrisy.

In a heavily reported speech in the White House Rose Garden in mid-July, Bush made no secret of his plans to introduce a constitutional amendment based on his view that marriage should be limited to unions between a man and a woman. However, he did take the time to warn against judgment, as he's "mindful that we're all sinners."

I'm not one to argue with the president's proclamation that we're all sinners, because he's pretty much right -- Lord knows I'm not behind Mother Teresa and Ghandi in line for sainthood. But try as I might, I can't wrap my head about Bush's decision that heterosexual sinners are in some way superior to homosexual ones.

Look, George, if you're going to take the holier-than-thou route, you've gotta ride it all the way out....

Think of any of the trashy celebrities engaged to be married, such as the recently reunited Pamela Anderson and Kid Rock. Do the former Baywatch and home video porn queen and her has-been, white trash rock star beau deserve more respect or legal consideration, merely because her fake breasts are larger than the average American head and he hasn't washed or cut his hair in six months? Surely they can't qualify solely because they have an opposite set of genitals, right?

Proceeding in that direction might mean that one day, only individuals fitting traditional gender roles will be allowed to wed -- say, a male doctor and a female homemaker, while the female lumberjack and male ballet dancer will be refused.

Actually, for an even clearer example of sinners, one needs to look no further than President Bush's own twin daughters, who have received an avalanche of press coverage over their underage drinking and partying exploits. Though this public behavior would burden them with reputations much worse than the meager "sinner" term if they were running around as everyday citizens, I somehow can't see George and Laura refusing to let these girls wed one day merely because their behavior wasn't exactly Bible-approved.

And let's look at the statistics: according to studies done in the late '90s, America is the world leader in divorces and failed marriages, Minnelli's latest among them. In this grand ol' country of ours, just over half of all marriages end in heartbreak and failure.

But rather than allow a whole untapped fresh population to come in and boost that pathetic statistic, we'd rather let the institution of marriage die a slow and painful, but heterosexual, death.

While no one had a problem waiting for photos from the now likely canceled wedding of Jen and Ben, a proposed wedding of former golden boys Ben and Matt Damon would never stand in America, because that's just too much sin to handle. Instead, apparently, we should force them to continue to live and fornicate illicitly without a marriage license, one of the original definitions of sin in my book.

Until that day, though, I guess I'll just continue to watch as the rich, famous and assumed heterosexual continue to marry and divorce -- can you pass the People magazine?

Rory Levine is a senior Communications major from West Nyack, N.Y.

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