“The Stone Soup”

Since time immemorial, we have been taught that a man should only be paired with a woman. The law and religion taught us that man-woman relationship is the only acceptable relationship. It is just understandable that most people would oppose gay marriage. After all, homosexuality is not even fully accepted in the society, how much more a marriage of two individuals of the same sex? Moving on, the fable of "The Stone Soup" is a story that has been passed through generations. If we approach the story with gay marriage taken into consideration, we would discover that "The Stone Soup" fable is a good analogy for the acceptance of gay marriage.

Basically, in the stone soup story, there was a pair of traveling men who had made their stop at a poor village. One of the travelers set up a small fire while the other prepares a cooking pot. The latter fills the cooking pot with water then puts a stone on the pot. The villagers became curious about the strange recipe that they had gathered around the cooking travelers. The villagers felt that the stone soup would be tasteless. And so the villagers had offered little contributions that had resulted to a soup with many ingredients. The villagers were thankful to the travelers because they were taught how to make a delicious soup out of a simple stone.

In this analogy, we would use the villagers as the representative of the people in our present society. As for the travelers, they are two men traveling together so they would be perfect to be the representative of gay people.

In the story, the travelers were doing something that the villagers could only describe as unorthodox. The unconventionality of the stone soup had stimulated the curiosity of the villagers. It is only when the villagers wanted to know why the travelers were making the stone soup that the interaction between the two parties had initiated. This kind of interaction could be the key to the acceptance of gay marriage.

Although the travelers did not explicitly explain why they were cooking up a stone soup, the important thing is that they were communicating with the villagers. Perhaps our society's problem with gay marriage is also due to the lack of communication. If there is a platform, even if it as simple as cooking a stone soup, where people could communicate, people could know and understand each other better no matter how unorthodox individuals could be. The end of the story tells us that the travelers were not strangers anymore when they had to leave the village.

Another important aspect of the story is the little contributions of the villagers. We could use this as an analogy to brainstorming. The villagers were contributing their inputs that had resulted to an output that is beneficial to the whole village. The vegetables could be an allusion to ideas, however small they are, these vegetables are still contributing to the taste of the soup.

We could also take note of the detail that the villagers consider the stone soup as tasteless. This could be the same view of the society to gay marriages. We could not blame them entirely for being ignorant. It is just that all of us are taught men should only marry women and vice-versa, no other modifications. And so it is just understandable that they would initially object to something that they are unfamiliar. In the story, the villagers and travelers had cooperated with each other. The end result was the most tasteful soup. If we would cooperate in understanding each other regarding the matter of gay marriage, we could all taste a warm and delicious society.

Works Cited

• The Stone Soup Legend. Retrieved 29 2008 http://www.fairbanksfoodbank.org/about/stone_soup.html
• Sullivan, Andrew. An Exchange on Same-Sex Marriage
• William Bennett and Andrew Sullivan: Let Gays Marry. Retrieved 29 June 2008 http://faculty.mc3.edu/barmstro/sullivan.html