Marriage In Our Time

Today, the United States Supreme Court heard arguments regarding California's notorious Prop 8 law. Tomorrow they will hear arguments over the Defense of Marriage Act. This issue has been sharply divisive since it was raised in 1993 in Hawaii. Today, one of my very good friends exercised his right to free speech on Facebook, stating he felt that marriage was originally a religious institution. The implication was that marriage should be left up to religious bodies to administer, not entrusted to the courts. I would like to outwardly reflect on why that is not currently possible.

The United States of America proclaims itself to be a republic. Over the years we've shifted more to being a democratic republic, but in any case, neither of those forms of government are theocracies. No church is recognized as the head of state. No specific religious body is entrusted with the governance of the people of the United States.

The government of the United States on both the federal and state levels has taken upon itself the legal administration of the institution of marriage. In so doing, the government has made marriage a civil institution. The word civil comes from the Latin root civis meaning citizen. One definition of the word civil refers to an ordinary citizen in a context set apart from their military or ecclesiastical identity. It is this differentiation between the ordinary and the ecclesiastical that makes my friend's desire literally impractical in the United States.

The 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was adopted on July 9, 1868 in the wake of the Civil War. Previous to that, the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court (1857) had held that persons of African descent could not be citizens of the United States. The Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment overturned the Court's decision, making all people eligible for citizenship with all the rights, privileges and responsibilities it entails, regardless of their skin color or genitalia.

Given its responsibility to treat all citizens equally under the law, the United States government either needs to completely divest itself of all legal authority regarding marriage or it needs to uphold its promise and allow any consenting citizens of legal age to enter into the civil institution of marriage. Either scenario will create more questions regarding employment, benefits, and other ordinary details of life even in the context of churches, but it cannot continue to stand as it is. We are either one nation or we are merely a geographic mass of neighboring states. The last time we tried to divide our nation, it was bloody and ultimately we decided to remain one nation. (That's what losing a war means for anyone who would like to challenge me on that. It means you have to go with what the winners want, and the winners wanted one nation, not two.)

As for marriage as a religious institution, ideas about what it means and what is acceptable or not have changed through the centuries. At one time, it was perfectly acceptable before God, according to the Bible, for His chosen servant, Jacob, to have two wives. Civil and ecclesiastical marriages are two different things. We should leave religions to define marriage for themselves, but as citizens of the United States, we need to recognize that all people are created equal and should be treated that way.