Woe is the day when celebrities are at the forefront of common sense. However, while reading my subscription of People Magazine (more less-biased news then BBC and CNN combined) I read, to my delight, that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have promised not to get married until everyone in America (a.k.a. homosexuals) are allowed the privilege of marriage. While I applaud the two ??ber-stars for their commitment to civil rights, I think that they are missing the point. Why should we include homosexuals in marriage? Would it not be better to eliminate the state institution of marriage altogether? The government should not be involved in a private and religious decision like marriage. Only until we, as a community, throw off the state shackles that bind us, can we truly have the egalitarian society free to love. Having the state involved does not make a marriage more “real.” If standing in line at a courthouse and signing a piece of legal documentation makes you love your partner, then I suggest that you need to redefine your romantic life. The state has a history of being abusive in marriage: not allowing interracial, same gender, or inter-class marriage. Most governments use marriage as a tool of social control. In fact, some very religious states, like Israel, do not have civil marriage, because most religions feel that it’s a sacred act that is part of the spiritual process and should not be included in the state. Marriage also conflates the private and public sector. You are giving up your privacy when you ask the government for legitimacy in your romantic bond. The government decides who your family is. This is an explicit control over you and your arrangements. But it is hypocritical in our contemporary society. Many couples are now choosing to live together rather then get married. Because they don’t have a piece of paper, they are not in love? Or should they get a special form that says “John Williams and Jane Stark are now living together…it’s complicated.” These choices should be left up to the individual, like the right to choose who is in your life and who is in your heart. But how do we, as enlightened beings, escape this anachronistic drudgery of slave money (the government calls it tax cuts) that allows us to implicitly sponsor the oppression of love? By privatizing marriage. While I don’t like to say it, I think it is clear that the government has a monopoly on marriage. We must take back what is ours by right, and we must change marriage from a zero-sum game to a term that is left to individuals to define and control. Privatization will allow different conceptions of marriage to flourish side-by-side. Without one form of marriage sanctioned by the government, communities will be able to form around individuals with similar concepts of marriage. Religious groups would have to work hard to promote their idea of marriage over others and there would no longer be a hierarchy to this institution. Abolishing that monopoly would create a robust and competitive market for marriage, thereby strengthening the institution. One day I hope I will be married. By that, I hope that someone will want to spend the rest of their life with me and love everything about me. I in turn, hope to love and take care of someone and find my completeness in another. Such decisions of life partnership should not be placed on an organization or leaders that I don’t support. Giving such authorities that power impersonalizes the entire process of wanting to create an intimate bond with a person. If you really believe in marriage being the creation of passion and romance, then why would you let an old white guy who you don’t know legitimize it for you