What Ruined Marriage?

    Referring to my last blog, Gay Marriage is still a widely-debated topic- a moral issue turned into a highly political, polarizing one. The most extreme opponents of Gay Marriage, such as Representative Gipson of Mississippi, use religious texts such as the Bible in order to condemn people in the LGBT to severe punishments due to their sexual orientations and nothing else. The most common, cliche argument I have heard about Gay Marriage is that it ruins the "Sanctity of Marriage"- in order words, it just plain ruins Marriage altogether!

  But who are we kidding? 

  As if Marriage was this exclusive, beautiful, wonderful, utopia-type of "thing" with a flawless foundation until the issue of Gay Marriage came along. As if Gay Marriage became a threat to something so allegedly holy. I am sure that former Republican Presidential Candidate Newt Gingrich, with his more "traditional" and "normal" sexuality, is the best example of family values in this Christian nation.

   I am 26 years old. I am "Generation Y", a Generation that others see as lost, underemployed, spoiled, the type who eventually communicated with people over a screen instead of spending more precious time talking to people in person. To an extent, it is true. It is also true that in America, it is more accepted and less unusual to be a 30-year-old living at home. I have kept in touch with many contemporaries over the years only to see that many marriages have unraveled. Before age 25, many people I know (even the self-proclaimed church-attending ones)  have already moved onto their second marriages, the newly-changed Facebook profile picture and shift from "Divorced" to "Married" (again) taking over the newsfeed and making people wonder in such a Hollywood tabloid kind of light. As someone who used to work in the financial industry, I have met too many early-twentysomethings with damaged credit and negative cash flow due to their divorces. This also contrasts with the many single women who don't know how to handle a relationship, and who have to use He's Just Not Into You as a their own alternative Bible; and the very young men who need stable jobs and who aren't ready for a lifelong commitment. 

   Generation Y males are practically victims of "extended adolescence" that may extend to age 30, if not past that- and in a Reality TV world and consumeristic society, many Generation Y females, with their slew of Facebook profile pics, may feel a strong sense of material entitlement. Where is the house? Where is the car? As of August 2011, the unemployment rates in California were highest among teenagers and males, even though the unemployment situation was improving more for males than females. In 2005, author Jennifer Kesler wrote, "What once supposedly guaranteed a life of rewarding employment, a gold watch at retirement, and hopefully a reasonably nice family life just doesn’t cut it. Employers would rather deal with cheap hires who don’t know what they’re doing than pay for talent. They punish loyalty because they’re too busy looking at the steady raises and earned retirement benefits they’ll have to pay. And even if a man makes enough to keep a wife and kids in nice style, his family will want more. In fact, they want the same elusive thing he wants: identity."

   Now, don't get me wrong, because I still do know a handful of people who have successful marriages, including some people who married very young and who are still doing well today. But they are rarities in this entire cultural scope I am exploring here. 

   What exactly ruined the concept of today's marriage?

   It certainly wasn't the Gays.