Getting Government Out of the Marriage Business

The gay-marriage debate has died down for now, since the Religious Right has been unable to drum up much business using it as a bogeyman lately. The issue may have lost its sexiness for the mainstream media or the interest groups who seek to manipulate it, but the issues raised by that debate remain. What interest does the state really have in deciding who can be married? For that matter, what does marriage really mean? Is there a real difference in the legal world between marriage and civil union or some other term? Is there a difference in the moral or ethical realm? Such questions remain unanswered.

I was in New York when the debate broke out in earnest a few years back, and I had to do some thinking of my own about the issue, especially when two Unitarian ministers went to jail for performing a same-sex marriage ceremony. What would I do if some of the gay couples I knew asked me to perform such a ceremony? If I performed such a wedding as a religious ceremony rather than a civil one--what would that mean for me ethically or for that matter, what would it mean to the state legally? I came to the conclusion, that if I believed in the couple's relationship, I would perform such a ceremony--but in a religious not a civil sense. Since the state didn't recognize such unions, I saw little need to press the point.

Since that time, I've also come to an additional conclusion, namely, that the state doesn't really have any business deciding what marriage is or can be--outside of issues of child custody and inheritance, it's none of the state's business.

As Stephanie Coontz, author of Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage, pointed out in a recent op-ed column, the state already recognizes in many respects couples who live together for any length of time as legally married in terms of custody of children, division of assets in separation, etc.

She writes, "Using the existence of a marriage license to determine when the state should protect interpersonal relationships is increasingly impractical. Society has already recognized this when it comes to children, who can no longer be denied inheritance rights, parental support or legal standing because their parents are not married...Possession of a marriage license is no longer the chief determinant of which obligations a couple must keep, either to their children or to each other. But it still determines which obligations a couple can keep — who gets hospital visitation rights, family leave, health care and survivor’s benefits. This may serve the purpose of some moralists. But it doesn’t serve the public interest of helping individuals meet their care-giving commitments."

She also gives a brief snapshot of marriage through the centuries, and until very recently, it was the church that decided what marriages were recognized in the eyes of God. The state's concern was not in legislating morality but in dealing with issues of inheritance and taxes. Once the state got into the business of deciding who could be married to whom, the door was opened to all sorts of laws about marriages between people of different ethnic groups. In my mind the opposition to same-sex marriage amounts to the same sort of prejudice.

I say let the government get out of the marriage business. It's the word "marriage" that raised so much of the rancor among opponents to same-sex unions/marriages after all. So, let the government call all unions "civil unions" and let religious institutions determine what a "marriage" is. Let the state focus upon what are its concerns--namely taxes, inheritance and child custody, etc. and let religious communities make up their own minds about what is moral, immoral, sacred or profane.

As it stands now, the state legally calls a union a "marriage" as long as its a man and a woman, but I would hardly put the "marriage" of someone like Pamale Anderson on the same level as many couples I know--both straight and gay--who are not married in the eyes of the state. The divorce rate should tell all of us that many unions recognized by the state do not live up to what can really be called a sacred commitment or covenant between two people.

Grace and Peace,

Chase