Busy; Also, "Marriage"

We're heading into finals week here at the University of Chicago, which means that the impetus to post becomes sparse as the impetus to bury oneself under a ton of sand and papers becomes all-consuming. I envy The Virginian, who will be done with his work a full two and a half days or so before I am...but anyway.

Since I was trying to think of something to throw up here as a stopgap, I remembered that at one point I indicated I would post on gay marriage, or as it's fashionable to refer to it in some circles, gay "marriage". I guess I've got the monopoly on gay marriage posting here, because as my blogging-cohort told me, "I've already written a post on abortion; I don't wanna touch that with a ten-foot pole." I imagine the Virginian overestimates both the size and the reactionary tendencies of our readership, but in the interest of filling space:

It has become apparent over the last two months that the Virginian and I unexpectedly share pretty much the exact same position on the issue: the federal government should not be in the business of handing out anything called a "marriage". The federal government should be in the business of handing out domestic partnership contracts to any pair of people who desires one (and frankly, I don't care if they hand them out to three or eight people either), and marriage should be left as an institution of religious organizations. We have seen no argument in favor of restricting civil marriage to heterosexuals that does not reduce in the end to an appeal to this country's Christian-normative foundations, and those are not foundations which we feel can dictate policy. If the Catholic church doesn't want to marry gay people, that's the Catholic church's business, but the federal government can't parade around these Defense of Marriage mockeries and pretend that civil marriage still exists as anything other than a contract which is relatively easy to get out of. U.S. Gov. Out Of My Wedding Ring, I say.