What’s wrong with shacking up?  America became a de facto shack up society years ago.  Marriage, we were told, was passé.  Why bother about rings?  Shacking up has advantages that marriage doesn’t.  What if the guy or gal you’re “cohabiting” with turns out to be human?  Ours being a maturity-arrested society, we need easier outs when our fantasies fail.  Marriage is inhibiting and a heavy-lift – why, at times, it’s downright oppressive.  It’s so adult and so complicated, it spoils the fun.  If Jason or Amber don’t make the cut, on to the next bed partner.  Fun.      

Yet this curious current mania about gays marrying.  The institution of marriage has been under a bigger assault than Fort Sumter since, at least, the Summer of Love.  Though shacking up is the ticket for Matt and Sophia, it ain’t good enough for Ralph and Biff, or Jenny and Heather.  Why, gays should do what the rest of us are told is yesterday’s news: marry – form, well, nontraditional traditional families.  Be less cool and do the committed and settled suburbia thing.  You know, Eight is Enough with two Tom Bradfords.    

Now we have the Washington Times reporting that young conservatives want the GOP to get in step with Millennial sensibilities.  Republicans need new “approaches to social issues and particularly to same-sex marriage, arguing that the GOP is chasing away younger voters who would be supporters but for the party’s exclusionary stances.”

Following that logic, then Republicans would be better served coming out for shacking up.  Since there are many more straights than gays (perhaps 3% of the population is homosexual), and since a larger percentage of younger voters are in-step with living together – if not just for the hell of it, then to figure out if marriage is worth the trouble – why not declare for the cool and decidedly non-exclusionary arrangement of “cohabitation?”  What a magnet that would be for Millennials who don’t like rules and want their pleasures at little cost.

Then this head-scratching explanation for non-exclusion from a reputed young conservative.  Said he to Times’ reporter Kellan Howell: 

“We need more compassion, empathy and tolerance and, unfortunately, sometimes tolerance means tolerance of intolerance,” said Ryan Rauner, a leader of NextGen GOP, who organized an event last week in Arlington, Virginia. “What we can never tolerate is the power of government being used by one group against another because they disagree with their beliefs or their lifestyle. That’s not freedom; that’s not equality.”

Was Ryan referring to Democrats or Republicans when denouncing the use of government to smack down those whose beliefs and lifestyles don’t square with the reigning orthodoxy?  Granted, bullying and boycotting bakery or pizza place owners into closing wasn’t government sanctioned, but government didn’t exactly rush to defend their freedom of conscience and belief.  Come to think of it, the Oregon bakers were fined for their beliefs.  Seems that if you’re on the wrong side of cool and faddish, your rights to deeply held religious beliefs matter squat.          

This from a website called livescience.  An article entitled “More couples Living Together Outside of Marriage” offers these insights:

The trend [toward shacking up] "reflects the fact that marriage is increasingly becoming optional in adult life now," said Susan Brown, a professor of sociology at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, who was not involved in the new report.

Though marriage may be on the ropes, it’s not been entirely museum-warehoused yet.  Per the livescience article:

However, people are not shunning marriage completely. Over a three-year period of the study, 40 percent of cohabiting couples got married, 32 percent stayed together and 27 percent broke up. 

No link to the study was offered, but if the findings are accurate, 59% of folk ain’t hitchin’ up before preachers, priests, rabbis, or justices of the peace.  59% is a decided majority.  If young conservatives want to hunt ducks – young voters – eschew the fab – and inevitably fleeting – gay marriage angle.  Lobby GOP chairman Reince Priebus to champion a plank in next year’s Republican platform calling for marriage tax breaks for couples who shack up.  They’d have to live together for 90 days to qualify (come on, there have to be some standards).  Then press Priebus to give podium time to a cooler, younger Republican pol to talk about how non-exclusionary the party’s become. 

“Marriage is out-of-step in contemporary America,” the cooler, younger Republican pol could declare to eager GOP convention delegates.  “Marriage is ancient, and America today is anything but ancient.  Marriage sort of stopped making sense after the 1950s.  Okay, so maybe not for gays; there are exceptions.  But, hey, technology changes everything really fast.  If we can move from cordless phones to cells to handhelds, in, like, what, 10 years, why are we stuck with an institution like marriage?  In a rapidly changing world, marriage serves as an obstacle to rapidly changing ‘situations’ that cease to fit the rapidly evolving paradigms we call our lives.”

Then, of course, comes thunderous applause, foot-stomping, and whistling.  Confetti and balloons might be overkill.  In November of ‘16, Millennials will flock to the GOP standard like geese flying south for the winter.  Or not.

After all, whether it’s shacking up or gay marriage, per these NexGen GOP savants, short of wholesale capitulation on a wide range of social issues, Republicans can’t possibly attract Millennials.  Democrats are ready, willing, and able to one-up the GOP in any game of debauching societal institutions (marriage and family being paramount). 

Millennials who’ve been raised on the milk of me-ism know that Democrats deliver the goods, in terms of serious-sounding rationalizations for societal deconstruction and hedonism.  One doubts that the GOP can ever out-debauch the party of debauchery, anymore than Republicans can out-compassion the Democrats in the welfare racket.

But rather than lecture callow NexGen GOPers, let’s just pose questions to them.  Perhaps we’ll benefit them with an experience they were undoubtedly denied in college: learning to think rather than being told how to think.

Marriage between a man and woman has been intrinsic to civilizations and societies and across generations for how long?  Could there be good and compelling reasons why that’s so?  Perhaps homosexual marriage (or whatever permutation is tomorrow’s fad) is a conceit of the times?  Might the greater service to mankind be rendered in standing strong for eternal truths and principles, though that aces you out of party invites, subjects you to ridicule, and tags you as “uncool?”  Haven’t the greatest men and women in history (and that stretches back further than the 90s) often suffered – up to and including losing their lives – for eternal truths?

A handful of questions.  There are more, indeed.