Mass Marriage v. Mass. Marriage

While reading my dead tree edition of your Chicago Tribune, the pages became disordered and these two stories were briefly juxtaposed.

And it got me to thinking.

How is it that America's right-wing religious hardliners find the marriage of two individuals who love each other and want to spend their lives caring for each other illegitimate because the couple looks like this:














But they never suggest that Moonie mass marriages -- even the unions of individuals have never even met each other prior to the wedding -- are illegitimate. Nope a mass marriage of 4,600 couples -- conducted by "humanity's savior, messiah, returning lord and true parent" -- is just hunky dory because the couples look like this:














It's just something I'll keep in mind the next time someone attempts to justify opposition to marriage equality by saying the legal union of two people who know, love and care for each other and have committed their lives to each other is just too drastic a deviation from the American tradition of marriage.