President Bush once said that marriage is a sacred institution and should be reserved for the union of one man and one woman. If this is the case -- and most Americans would agree with him on this -- then I have to ask: Why is the government at all involved in marrying people? If marriage really is a sacred institution, then why is the government controlling it, especially in a nation that affirms separation of church and state?
Personally, as a Baptist minister, I always feel a bit uneasy at the end of the weddings that I perform when I have to say, "And now, by the authority given unto me by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, I pronounce you husband and wife." Having performed a variety of religious exercises, such as reading scripture, saying prayers, giving a biblically-based homily and pronouncing blessings on the marriage, why am I required to suddenly shift to being an agent of the state? Doesn't it seem inconsistent that during such a highly religious ceremony, I should have to turn the church into a place where government business is conducted? Isn't it a conflict for me to unify my pastoral role with that of an agent of the state?
Allow me to suggest a way out of this apparent conflict and the difficult questions being raised these days about whether our country should approve of homosexual marriages. I propose that the government should get out of the business of marrying people and, instead, only give legal status to civil unions. The government should do this for both gay couples and straight couples, and leave marriage in the hands of the church and other religious entities. That's the way it works in Holland. If a couple wants to be united in the eyes of the law, whether gay or straight, the couple goes down to the city hall and legally registers, securing all the rights and privileges a couple has under Dutch law. Then, if the couple wants the relationship blessed -- to be married -- they goes to a church, synagogue or other house of worship. Marriage should be viewed as an institution ordained by God and should be out of the control of the state.
Of course, homosexual couples could go to churches that welcome and affirm gay marriages and get their unions blessed there. Isn't that the way it should be in a nation that guarantees people the right to promote religion according to their personal convictions? If such a proposal became normative, those like myself who hold to traditional beliefs about marriage would go to traditional churches where conservative beliefs about marriage are upheld, and we would have our marriages blessed there. And secularists who are unlikely to do anything that smacks of religion would probably just throw a party to celebrate a new union. Marriage would be preserved as a religious institution for all of us who want to view it as such, and nobody's personal convictions about this highly charged issue would have to be compromised.
It is not likely that this will happen in the near future, but many sociologists tell us that America is eventually headed toward making this the way we do marriage.
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Think of this: The Church cannot divorce couples. Not even the couples they join in Holy Matrimony.
All of the legal 'benefits' (and privileges and obligations) that flow from marriage are administered by (guess who?) - the GOVERNMENT.
Perhaps it is time for YOU (and all other clergy) to get out of the "marriage business" and STOP acting as an agent of the State. (Things that are Caesar's, and all that.)
Stick to Holy Matrimony and leave the civil institution of marriage where it belongs. And I say this as one who was married in my own Church. I would gladly have gone to my Church and had a Rite of Holy Matrimony after having a civil marriage if that was what I felt necessary to have God's blessing on my legal relationship.
Many churches do perform the marriage ceremony for same-sex couples (and thus are REQUIRED by 45 state governments to stop there). The happy couple of course cannot go to City Hall in those states.
Let me rephrase and emphasize: the GOVERNMENT requires the CHURCH to stop, regardless of whether that church believes in equal marriage or not. No separation there. I realize we're probably in agreement here.
The people who are against equal marriage would also be against equal civil unions. Seriously, don't be so naïve. Such persons are not interested in protecting anything. They're only interested in keeping certain people in their place. They're fighting the civil union laws too, with claims of "they're too close to marriage" or "marriage by another name".
Marriage, as a civil legal term, is far too pervasive in the law. There's no omnibus solution to changing it, either. People are worried about two million dollar expenditures? Think about the cost of changing thousands of laws across the U.S.
Lastly, as a Canadian, I can assure everyone that once equal marriage is the law of the land, very little will change. The sky will not fall.
In peace,
Debbie Jordan
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We can strip away your powers to perform legal marriages.
Sure, you can continue to conduct your religious marriage ceremonies -- but that is all the power you would have. Mere ceremonial power.
Couples would henceforth be married by a legal entity -- a judge or a justice of the peace -- to meet the state-recognized marriage laws.
Then they could march down your aisle with all the frippary and pomp and circumstance you and they want in your house of worship. But by they then would already have been married, in the eyes of the law.
See how easy it is to fix that?
Careful what you wish for, Tony Campolo.
We'll invent another term for you religious folks, and we'll even try to allow you many of the same rights as actual citizens.
This is, of course, the way it already works for those who do not want clergy to bless their marriages.
It makes no sense for the government to change the name of "a legal union of two people" just because some people are squeamish about same-sex couples marrying. I doubt I could live long enough to see all the laws changed from "marriage" to "civil union."
My challenge to clergy: want to promote equality? Take yourself out of the marriage business.
Being allowed to discriminate just within their churches never seems to be enough.
Unfortunately, as "marriage" is so much a part of our law and culture, I think the fight to get states to change to civil unions would be harder than the fight to get states to allow gay marriage.
So explain why gay families are not building blocks of society.
What have the children of gay parents done to you that you would deny them the protection that having married parents would provide them.How does it benefit society to deny them that protection? How does it harm anyone to give it to them.
Explain how letting gay people have access to the civil contract known as marriage has any effect but a beneficial one of those people and families, and how it has a negative ffect on heterosexually based families. It's not enough to pull a huckabee and blame gay people for the failures of heterosexual society, with no logical or factual connection, but definitely an ideological agenda.
Please define structure of society, and explain by some means other than saying "It has always been so" how recognizing families of gay people subverts it. Please explain how even one heterosexually based family is attacked by the legal recognition of gay people and their families.
Why has civilization always characterized families as a union of men and women? Because men and women are the natural source of the children that allow civilized culture to persist. As the building blocks of civilization, families are logically prior to society as the parts are prior to the whole. Bricks aren’t the result of the building because the building is made up of bricks.
Societies are large groups of families. Since families are constituent of culture, cultures cannot define them. They merely observe their parts and acknowledge what was discovered. Society then enacts laws not to create marriage and families according to arbitrary convention, but to protect that which already exists, being essential to the whole.You must have the first before you can get the second. Same sex marriage is radically revisionist and strips marriage of its normative content. As with liberalized divorce laws, a new special right of same sex marriage would weaken marriage and society.
On the issue of children, those who support marriage and wish to strengthen it also wish to support the best environment for children, a home with a father and mother. Of course children should not suffer for the narcissistic decisions of their caregivers and we should provide them with the counseling and support they will need. That being said, there are many forms of marriage American society has no problem denying, even with children involved, such as polygamous marriages, bigamous marriages, and incestuous marriages.
Gay people are part of families. They come from families and create families of their own. They, too, contributed to the building of society.
Saying laws against same-gender marriage are "to protect that which already exists" is ridiculous. Our marriages do not threaten or attack your marriages.
Re: Those who "wish to support the best environment for children, a home with a father and mother." There are studies that say children do very well in same-gender parent families, and there's a huge body of evidence out there that show that many "father and mother" households are NOT ipso facto "the best environment".
DO BETTER.
You would probably have no problem proving that families are prior to culture. we are animals, after all.
However, marriage prior to culture? Marriage is a cultural act and a cultural fact. In some societies, it has means one man and one woman. In others, one man and as many women as he can support. In othetrs, one woman and as many men as she wanted. For some it has been a civil act, in others, a rleigious one.
Government Free Marriage is a subject upon which rational people should be able to agree. Conservatives should welcome the reduction of government and getting government out of our intimate personal lives; the Christian Right should welcome the church having authority over the marriage of its members and rather than the government; 90 million single people should applaud no longer having to pay increased taxes for benefits exclusively going to married people; gays will have finally have achieved true equality; liberals and progressives should welcome the justice of the situation; and libertarians will rejoice at a small move in the direction of “live and let live.” Everyone should be satisfied except those who relish the fight itself.
The solution is finally here! The solution is found in “Gays Ain’t Got a Civil Right to Get Married! (neither do straights)”—a book that takes a third stance on the gay marriage debate. This book solves the problem of how gays can have all the legal rights and responsibilities that current-day marriage affords, and how the right-wing religious folks can protect the sanctity of their religions. By removing civil rights from marriage we re-separate church and state and reallocate civil rights and religious rights. Baptisms and birth certificates, along with funerals and death certificates already lay out a structure of how religious ceremonies can coexist with civil rights. Anonymous, MD approaches marriages and civil unions with a similar methodology. A marriage should be a commitment that defines a non-legal relationship. A civil union should be a commitment that defines a legal relationship. Anonymous, MD offers examples of canon law and civil rights, politicians and prostitutes, Catholics and Mormons, S/M and incense, foreskin and fidelity, and gay sex and the afterlife to graphically illustrate the sensibly simple solution.
Thank you for your contribution to this very important issue.
I can be reached at theanonymousmd@gmail.com.
The Anonymous, MD
“By the power vested in me, by the state of California, I now pronounce you Husband and Wife.” declared the minister in front of the altar of God. Our minister conducting the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony is a government official, an “agent” of the State of California. There is a conspiracy of Church and State. If a couple wishes to have the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony in their own local church, their minister will force them, as a practical matter, to get a government marriage license in which they assent to a contract with government which binds them to whatever marriage laws the government wishes to enact or change. On the other hand, the civil marriage ceremony conducted by a justice of the peace closely mimics a religious ceremony.
The churches can help establish Government Free Marriage by taking back marriage for themselves. They should be encouraged to stop being government agents. The government should get out of the marriage and civil union business.
Why are gay people threats to religion, family, children and marriage, according to every current and past debate on the subject, but under your plan, we are no longer threats, but welcome members of the community, entitled to have our lives and families respected by law and community? What changed?
If we never were such threats, then why are you not writing about the Great Baptist (and conservative religious) Conspiracy to defame, demean, and destroy gay people through a campaign of lies, distortions, half-truths, villification, and gays-are-gonna-get-your-kids fear mongering? what are you doing aobut that? when are you going to call your own denomination to task for...
bearing false witness, as unbiblical as that is?
Who is trying to redefine marriage? Gay people, or the people that want to change EVERY marriage into a civil union? And what a safe proposition. It sounds liberal, but ain't ever gonna happen. You can have your cake and eat it too..
Who is trying to redefine marriage? Gay people, or the people whio claim that if two men in a 40 years relaitonship can marry, then everyone ought to be able to marry their goat, their car or their 10 year old sister. No gay person is proposing that.
Who is trying to redefine marriage? Gay people with children to support, or those who claim it is about penis-in-vaigna procreation only.
for decades in this country. Homophobia is not so much about fear as it is about power.
Your rage is understandable. Religious leaders and politicians, I believe will be seen as the
shoddy individuals they are for egaging the nation of 40 years of know-nothing culture war
politics.
private forum with BeninOakland. Why are you not so forthcoming, publicly? Yet you want
the public to read what you write and you want to be privy to what the public thinks? I
would invite you to please step up to the plate, Sir.
It is the 'religious' 'right' that say the "it's like wantin' ta marry ma dog" (a verbatim quote from a proud Baptist during the debate in Canada).
It is the 'religious' 'right' that say we ARE a "threat", that we ARE "attacking" marriage", that compare our relationships to beastiality, child-molestation, rape, incest, murder, theft, adultery ad nauseam.
Plus, "the government" CANNOT "get out of the marriage business". The government is in charge of the laws of the land. They administer all of the laws that flow from the legal contract of marriage and all that it affects. Marital status comes into play in laws governing divorce, custody, alimony, not being forced to testify against one's spouse in court, to immigration and deportation laws, insurance, health benefits, some 1,176 Federal benefits.
The government was IN the marriage business far earlier than the Church. And the Church cannot decide on ANY of these matters.
Please re-think this.