There has been a war raging for thousands of years around whether human relationships should derive from spontaneous human emotion or social mores and economic practicality. It has been a prolonged and contentious campaigns, with many glorious victories and crushing defeats on both sides, but I am here to tell you now that the fighting itself is wrongheaded, because it has been entirely framed by the Greyfaces of the world, those who tell us who we will marry and why, those who seek to imprison our hearts in neat little boxes.

Recently there has been a battle in this war, proposition 8, introduced and supported by Greyfaces. Although their motivations were orderly, they have done an immense service for their chaos-hearted opponents. They sought to prevent gay marriage, and I agree with them - not because homosexuality is wrong and marriage should be protected, but because interpersonal marriage is a venal fraud, and homosexuals need to be protected.

Up into european modernity, and persistently in much of the developing world, marriage has been a proprietarian relationship between two families, an utterly banal contract of ownership. Marriage was not defined as a bond between a man and a woman, but between a man and his chattel. Even the notion that either person, especially the woman, would have any say in the issue is extraordinary modern. Once choice became the norm (a huge victory for the Hearts), it was immediately constrained - marriage was legally defined as being between individuals of the same economic class, religious sect, and ethnic group. These laws are thankfully no longer on the books, but they still represent de facto restrictions.

Why on earth would queers willingly enter into an institution with such an awful, sterile, economic history? Do we really want to be the property of our partners'? I'm generally kink-positive, but that crosses a line. Even when religious groups such as Mormons and Muslims have redefined marriage as potentially between more than two individuals, it's remained proprietarian in nature - a man owning several women, as opposed to just the one.

Even if the Hearts win their battles, and marriage becomes a relationship between two or more consenting adults, the history of marriage will reassert itself in our relationships. New mores, already evident, will confine our hearts - the "good queers" will be the ones who want to settle down in the Castro and have kids, and the "bad queers" will be the ones who take multiple partners and frequent bathhouses. The strength of queer sexuality comes from the fact that it has, up until this point, been unbridled by the bullshit heteronormative ownership paradigm, that it's been the wild and free expression of our hearts, minds and loins. There is a purity in that, one that will be lost when marriage becomes an option.

If we want to win this war, proposition 8 is just the beginning. Protecting queers from marriage is a first step, but what about our vanilla hetero brothers and sisters? The human spirit is sacred and whole, and should NEVER be the object of ownership, it should never be chained by society, even if it's inclinations are heterosexual. The next step is to outlaw interpersonal marriage full stop, for breeders, fags, and dykes alike.

REAL marriage is more akin to (if you'll allow me the use of a word designed for cheating at scrabble) syzygy than ownership. Real marriage is the alchemical process through which opposites are unified, and create something new and grand in their synthesis. The only marriage that should be legal is this kind, and until the transhumans develop consciousness-uploading devices, the only marriages that meet this criteria are INTRA-personal marriages. One day, when they're good and ready, I hope to see my anima and my animus get married. Maybe if they can stop fighting, my shadow and my superego can see their common ground and hitch up. If she'll have me, I will one day marry my God, and become dissolved in her divine light as a drop of honey in the ocean. This type of marriage should be encouraged, but between distinct people, it should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

Relationships between individuals instead should be prosecuted with all the joy and holy passion of an affair. There should be relationships for companionship, relationships for romance, and relationships for sex, and often some blended ones for one or more of these. When deciding whether to have a relationship with someone else, it is our hearts and hearts alone that should guide us, not society's outdated "thou-shalt-nots". With hearts so wild and free, the closer we get to each other, the closer we will be to the green pure divinity that unites us all.