WHAT’S SO FUNNY: Who is and isn’t marriage material

It’s typical of my insularity that I wasn’t aware of our local post-election anti-Proposition 8 protest until it had already taken place, and I’m ashamed of that because I should have been there.

The proponents of Proposition 8 consider themselves capable of mandating who’s qualified to be married, or more accurately, who isn’t. And according to them, as everyone knows, gays and lesbians aren’t marriage material.

I don’t consider myself an expert on much besides baseball and obscure ’60s actors, but I can speak on marriage with some justification because I’ve been married off and on for about 23 years.

I’ve had two marriages, one short, one long, the long one largely a testament to my second wife’s forbearance. The truth is I’m not marriage material. My default personality is self-absorbed, reclusive and lazy and although I’ve loved being married, at least this time, I’ve always had to muscle up considerably to approximate a husband.

As long as we’re all voting on who doesn’t deserve to be wed, it might be worth considering a proposition to ban Self-Absorbed Reclusive Lazy Partner Marriage. But I’d be against a SARLP proposition too, because once you start assessing actual character flaws you’re looking at the end of the wedding industry.

The late columnist Sydney J. Harris wrote that marriage is not, as people say it is, a 50-50 proposition; on the contrary, both partners have to give 60%. This has nothing to do with same-sex or opposite sex, it has to do with prolonged commitment, or endurance, and you don’t know ahead of time if you can do it.

My own right to marry was never challenged by Mormons or Catholics or anyone else except the friends and family of my vict — er, my partner. And if I were allowed to get married ... if my dad, who had a disposition like Yosemite Sam, could get married ... if death row inmates and the followers of nearly every belief system imaginable can get married, it’s not an exclusive club.

I hope and believe that eventually Proposition 8 will be overturned. Even if the courts don’t so rule immediately, there will be other votes, and the historical American tendency is toward fairness, even if that tendency is erratic or glacial.

Marriage is our basic reciprocal grown-up adventure, and in a largely laissez-faire system such as ours, any two adults should be allowed to take it on if they’ve got the audacity.

If Proposition 8 adherents really knew anything about marriage they’d know that you don’t find out who’s qualified until well after the wedding.

SHERWOOD KIRALY is a Laguna Beach resident. He has written four novels, three of which were critically acclaimed. His novel, “Diminished Capacity,” is now available in bookstores, and the film version will soon be out on DVD.