Regular readers of mine know that I comment on gay marriage on a regular basis. After having gone through both intense and sombre rhetorical and logical exchanges, and having written some insightful perspective (which may be called “talking points” by some) of my own, I’m taking a step back from this issue because there can only be so much that I can say before I end up feeling like a broken record.

Early this morning as I was about to turn in for the night I went by The Spoons Experience just for the heck of it. He and I have not had a rapport before — nor do I agree with him regularly (and that would just make him boring if I did) — but this particular entry of his just pulled most of the thoughts out of my head. It pains me as a writer to concede that I find it unnecessary to write more to further someone else’s post. It irritates me more when I consider using bullet points to summarize what I think apropos of Spoons’entry, so I won’t. It further grates at me, as I read his entry over and over, that I cannot find a single series of paragraphs that I want to blockquote as representative of his post. However there is one that I would like to take very great note of:

Speaking of which, I utterly reject the popular libertarian suggestion that “The government should get out of the marriage business.” Who are we kidding? There are dozens, probably hundreds of instances in which the government needs to decide who is, and who is not, married. Tax consequences. Social Security benefits. Testimonial privileges. Inheritence, where there’s no will. Divorces. Family expense debts. Medical decisionmaking. And the list goes on. Those who cavalierly say that “the government shouldn’t be involved in marriage” may not realize that what they’re saying is essentially that they want to abolish marriage.

I was leaning along these lines for a short while until I, too, realized that it boils down to abolishing marriage. I see that this attitude — one of cutting through this tangled Gordian knot of a social issue — is approaching self-parodic levels in the blogosphere. On one hand I disdain the “destroy what you cannot have” approach, on the other I also see a kind of weariness towards it all. Getting dragged kicking and screaming into rhetorical arguments that have no end can do that to even the strongest of wills.

I have wasted too much time, too many words, to simply tell you all, dear friends, to “go read the whole thing.” I am not a fan of that kind of post. I want to convince you to go ahead and click through to something I find noteworthy.

I hope I have done that today. Now, go give Spoons a visit.