A Civil Solution to Gay Marriage
When a Jewish boy turns 13, he heads to a temple for a deeply meaningful rite of passage, his bar mitzvah. When a Catholic girl reaches about the same age, she stands in front of the local bishop, who touches her forehead with holy oil as she is confirmed into a 2,000-year-old faith tradition. But missing in each of those cases — and in countless others of equal religious importance — is any role for government. There is no baptism certificate issued by the local courthouse and no federal tax benefit attached to the confessional booth, the into-the-water-and-out born-again ceremony or any of the other sacraments that believers hold sacred.
(I couldn’t find a gay-zombie-boy-marriage-bashing picture so… whatever…)
Only marriage gets that treatment, and it’s a tradition that some legal scholars have been arguing should be abandoned. In a paper published March 2 in the San Francisco Chronicle, two law professors from Pepperdine University issued a call to re-examine the role the government plays in marriage. The authors — one of whom voted for and one against Proposition 8, which ended gay marriage in California — say the best way out of the intractable legal wars over gay marriage is to take marriage out of the hands of the government altogether.
Instead, give gay and straight couples alike the same license, a certificate confirming them as a family, and call it a civil union — anything, really, other than marriage. For people who feel the word marriage is important, the next stop after the courthouse could be the church, where they could bless their union with all the religious ceremony they wanted. Religions would lose nothing of their role in sanctioning the kinds of unions that they find in keeping with their tenets. And for nonbelievers and those who find the word marriage less important, the civil-union license issued by the state would be all they needed to unlock the benefits reserved in most states and in federal law for married couples.
about 1 year ago
Thanks to Levi, who posted this article in the milkboard, Stormy, who came up with the title and everyone else in chat who helped :)
about 1 year ago
This is a great article! I’m very excited about this, and I hope it goes places. I think marriage is the last foothold that churches have in the US government and needs to be shoved out. Once the US runs with this I think a lot more places may follow suit.
about 1 year ago
I never understood why marriage, gov’t, and the church all have to be involved. How do atheists get married?
side note: you know that’s Chloë Sevigny (girl) and Jacob Swell when he was 14/15? just sayin’ ^^
about 1 year ago
Excellent. I’ve long argued that the government ought to get out of the marriage business entirely. The problem is this, as long as “marriage” IS a state sanctioned, legal status then to deny that status to gay people is a denial of the equal protection of the law our Constitution mandates.
Marriage for straight folks and “civil union” for gay folks may confer equal benefits, but it does not constitute equal rights.
about 1 year ago
Marriage was originally a civil ceremony, and even as late as the late middle ages the couple were merely blessed from the porch of the church *after* they were married. Marriage was primarily a family affair, which later came to be recorded by the state once writing was invented and children had reasons to squabble over their deceased parent’s estate. The church took over the recording function in Europe for practical reasons – the main one being that few non-clerics could read or write. The popular idea that religion was a religious rite that has been hijacked by civil power shows a lack of knowledge about history. In many countries the civil service is already the legal part of marriage with the religious blessing being optional. In most countries, including the US, the priest/minister/pastor/rabbi/etc marries people on behalf of the government anyway. Here in Australia the majority of marriages are now performed by civil celebrants, not by religious practitioners.
about 1 year ago
“Marriage for straight folks and “civil union” for gay folks may confer equal benefits, but it does not constitute equal rights.”
I used to argue for the abolition of state involvement too. Ideologically it makes sense.
But in practice, working pragmatically, something very interesting has happened.
State sanctioning of gay civil partnerships in the UK – known universally here as gay marriages because nobody can remember the proper name and they look just the same – has led to an instant universal social acceptance of gay coupledom for us over-30s.
Before the legislation, people would be slightly nervous about treating a gay couple, socially, as equivalent to a straight couple. They would feel self-consciously avant-guard and worry about the responses of their other guests.
Since the legislation, being against gay coupledom is as socially unacceptable as blatant racism, and all decent people in all social classes treat a ‘married’ gay couple in exactly the same way they would treat a straight married couple.
Experiencing this is truly amazing, just awesome. I never thought I’d see anything like it in my lifetime – having lived through the Thatcher era, with its public declarations that gay people are unfit to teach in schools, and Clause 28 which banned all mention of homosexuality in schools, even in science and sex education … this change has to be worth something.
Just thought I’d mention it.
By-passing this stage and going straight to the abolition of all state recognition would be a shame, however “ideologically sound” that might be.
State sanction in Europe has meant a massive social change in Europe. It would be great if America could have that moment too. Come on Obama, do your thing.
about 1 year ago
Well, I must admit I was a bit horrified by Levi’s post – thanks, tkc99au, for a bit of sanity. There are plenty of good reasons why the state is involved in registering the key events of life – birth, marriage and death: the certificates and registers are the basis of our identity.
Nobody likes the state, but it isn’t going to go away; as long as we need passports to travel, or a legal basis for inheriting property from our parents when they die, pension rights, alimony payments, other boring stuff like that, the registers must be maintained, and they must be maintained by a trustworthy authority. I don’t know of any country, democratic or otherwise, where the state doesn’t do this, and I can’t honestly think of a better, more accountable alternative.
The idea that churches and other religious bodies should be involved, and confuse these duties with mumbo-jumbo ceremonies such as blessings, christenings, bar mitzvahs and confirmations, is archaic and scary, and should be resisted wherever possible.
Social Status is 100% right about the fantastic effect Civil Partnerships have had in the UK, it’s worth remembering that this is entirely the work of the bogeyman state. Imagine what would happen if the whole business was handed over to Pope Benedict?
about 1 year ago
Hello everyone. I’m new here.
Philippine definition:Marriage is a special contract of permanent union between a man and a woman entered into in accordance with law for the establishment of conjugal and family life. It is the foundation of the family and an inviolable social institution whose nature, consequences, and incidents are governed by law and not subject to stipulation, except that marriage settlements may fix the property relations during the marriage within the limits provided by this Code (Art. 1. Family Code of the Philippines).
There is no way gay marriage will be allowed here in our country. The Roman Catholic Church and/or Christianity has enough influence over our government. Just think of the middle ages. Our policies on family will not be approve as long as it does not have any approval from this sect. The creation of our family code is rooted in a very conservative concept of a family.
There was an attempt of some gay pride organization to enter in the political arena. One of there aim is the approval of gay marriage.Unfortunately, they were stopped even before they can submit there application in the party-list system. They were even called “phantoms” by some politicians here. Homosexuality here in the Philippines is not just an orientation. It becomes a political and social statement. What’s more interesting is that the first gay marriage in the Philippines was officiated by a communist rebel group. Instantly, a trivial social issue became a political issue.. *sigh
about 1 year ago
While getting the government out of the marriage business makes some logical sense, there are significant and important social and legal considerations that are difficult to abandon (inheritance, responsibility for children, protection of women or the spouse who sacrifices career for family, etc.) and so we replace marriage with civil unions. I’m afraid that taking the position we should abolish marriage and institute civil unions does little more than confirm the religious right’s fear that gays want to destroy marriage. Their proposal is little more than semantics.
about 1 year ago
Thanks tkc99au for putting straight the historical roles of church and state. I think the idea of the state getting out of marriage is the wrong idea. The churches should get out of marriage. Churches, temples, mosques, synagogues are all exclusive groups, and to be a participant in one of their rites or sacraments you must be part of the group. On the other hand all citizens are members of the state. Religious organisations will always find some reason to deny access to the sacrament for anyone they don’t feel belongs. The state cannot fall back on that kind of argument because it would be treating people differently based on their status, which is the definition of discrimination. Religious institutions can have a sacrament of matrimony, but the legal status of marriage can only be conferred by the state.
about 11 months ago
Sme really good things have come from the official civil partnership arrangements now common in the United Kingdom (Britain). The status of gay people generally has been boosted, especially couples of course. Marriage, though a word the Dutch have embraced in this context, has been avoided, but the legal status of the gay couple matches very closely that of the straight one, including matters relating to adoption.
It seems the term civil partnership has pleased the gay community and not radicalized the straights. This is precisely because it *is* the state that has sanctioned it, with its power over health, property and pension laws and so on. The churches can do their own thing if they will, and gay couples can go through a religious ‘marriage ceremony’ in the UK and the US, but the legal status is what really matters to most, and that is where the UK marriage-by-another-name policy has secured the future of gay couples legally. Like many in gay partnerships, a good number of straight couples actually avoid marriage. This could be about long term commitment, but the problems of getting out of one property-wise may be the cause. Civil partnerships, against the living together status, seem a bit retro, but sor those who want the public recognition, they fill a need and have been well accepted with amazingly little sturm und drang in the UK.
about 11 months ago
I think that it is a very interesting and amusing article. Practically all its main points are true.
about 1 month ago
Absolutely.