Kardashian marriage proves little about marriage

There is a lot of junk out there about the biggest non-news story of the year: Kim Kardashian has filed for divorce. Shocker.

This story over at Good is more interesting than other Kardashian stories that you have read—less than great but still worth a read. The headline is “Marriage Isn’t Sacred.”

Judging from the the public’s guffawing, it seems like nobody is surprised by the breakup, especially not after reports claimed Kardashian made nearly $18 million auctioning off the media rights to her Big Day (a lump sum she protected with a rock-solid prenuptial agreement, of course). In retrospect, the Kim-Kris union appears to have been less a consecration of love and more an elaborate moneymaking scheme, a lucrative sideshow pawned off to suckers as true love. Now that it’s all officially over, let’s let Kardashian’s loss serve as a lesson gained: Marriage isn’t sacred.

For years now, conservatives (and some liberals) fighting against same-sex marriage have done so by defining it thusly: “Marriage is a sacred union between one man and one woman.” The act’s sacrosanct nature was part and parcel with its heterosexual nature, meaning it couldn’t be broadened to include the LGBT community because eliminating the man-woman imperative unravels the holiness of the whole thing. But what that definition assumes is that marriage is holy in the first place. What if it isn’t?

Wait. $18 million? Who wouldn’t enter into a little fake marriage—except over course for parties that see marriage as a holy unity.

I do. And, frankly, I think Cord Jefferson makes a terribly weak argument here in claiming that “Based on all the evidence at hand, the only conclusion we can reach is that marriage isn’t holy.”

Holiness is not in the eye of the beholder, but recognition of a holy act to an extent is.

When I got married, my wife and I made a commitment to God. But that doesn’t mean that others are thinking or doing the same thing when they get married.