I See… Redefining Marriage: I Now Pronounce You Man and Chocolate

“If you love it so much, why don’t you marry it!” – Peewee Herman

It seems that nowadays, the really cool, tolerant thing to do is to redefine marriage. You’ll be shocked to know that my latest redefinition of marriage is even more liberal than Rosie O’ Donnell’s. I’m proposing marriage go way beyond mere human relationships. I wholly support laws redefining marriage to allow men and women to marry things that they love.

First and foremost there is eternal marriage. Then came same-sex marriage. Now there is… material marriage. I say we keep the first one, get rid of the second one, and start practicing the third one. Peewee Herman had it right; if you love something sooo much that its absence will break your heart, you should marry it.

Ever since I discovered this form of material matrimony decades ago, I have seriously considered marrying the following items:

• Chocolate Orange Sticks
• My wife’s Chicken Salad
• The Projection TV in my basement
• Jen’s crabcakes
• My brother’s swimming pool
• Back massages

My wife, at various times in her life, has expressed wedded-like devotion towards:

• Disneyworld
• Linderballs
• Our new clothes dryer.

With government approval, the result could be proper polygamy- one wife or husband for eternity, then a slew of material spouses for time only, till death do us part. An understanding, tolerant mate could permit their eternal companion to enter in multiple material marriages under the condition that you could quickly divorce anything you fell out of love with, and would have to take the appropriate action on other material possessions you were caught cheating with. For example, if you started ignoring the projection TV in the basement and spent more time working in the yard, you could divorce the projection TV in the basement and absolve yourself of any responsibility to take care of it. In another vein, under the material marriage law, if your wife caught you spending an inordinate amount of time with chocolate orange sticks in lieu of spending time with her, she could legally ask to either marry the sticks or get rid of them. I now pronounce you man and chocolate!

The discriminating conservative, moral reader may be tempted to interpret my explanation of these new rules of wedded bliss as devaluing the sanctity of marriage or cleverly mocking the modern, more liberal construct of disposable matrimony. I still believe in old-fashioned eternal families led by a complementary husband-wife pair, and I don’t mind being found guilty of making fun of today’s selfish, throwaway relationships founded on a shared appreciation for mostly the physical and material dimensions, masquerading as some form of marriage.

Richard, you may now kiss the chicken salad!

If mankind buys into my proposal, what wonderful things would you marry?