Marriage Equality – A Simple Solution – Part 1

For anyone who has not been living in a cave in the last few weeks, the ‘debate,’ if it can be called that, over the legalization of same sex “marriage” has been a very hot item in the news. The culmination of this uproar is the Supreme Court arguments concerning both Proposition 8 and the Federal Defense of Marriage Act. At the heart of these discussions is whether or not our government should ‘redefine’ the meaning of marriage to include homosexual couples. This is an issue with the potential to divide our nation even further along political and religious lines, and that is tragic. However, this discussion suffers from two fatal flaws which are being generally ignored by the majority of people involved.

The first flaw is the idea that marriage can even be redefined. The reason most often given for extending the definition to include same sex couples is that they want validation in society as people joined together in love. If that is true, why limit that validation to just two people? Once the meaning of marriage includes anything other than a man and a woman, there is no logical reason marriage should not include multiple numbers of people of all relationships, including adults with children. In fact, there are already activist groups clamoring for just such an inclusion. When the definition of marriage becomes so broad as to include almost any combination of people, it ceases to become meaningful at all and marriage no longer exists. In other words, when something means everything it ceases to mean anything. The second flaw is related to the first. If homosexual couples desire legal validation they already have a viable mechanism with which to do so in civil unions. But, some will argue, it is not simply legal validation which is sought. It is the validation of society in the legal and sacred arena as well. And there’s the rub, for the government can only grant legal validation for any union, marriage or otherwise. For the union to be sacred, God must grant validation. After all, the word “sacred” itself means set apart by God.

The worst part of all of this division is how unnecessary it is! There is a workable, and simple solution to the problem. It has begun to be advocated by an increasing number of voices in society, most recently by Fox News contributor Dr. Keith Ablow. The solution is to get the government out of the marriage business period. I truly believe this is the only solution to this situation which will preserve any manifestation of the institution of marriage in our society.

As strange as such a thing may seem to us, we must remember that throughout the entire of civilization, marriage itself has always been viewed as a natural state of affairs validated by being sanctified of God. So much so that marriage in our land has not required legal validation until recently. It was not until 1923 that the Uniform Marriage and Marriage License Act came to be established by the Federal Government. By 1929, every state had established marriage license laws. According to macquirelatory.com, “It is a known fact that, there was no requirement to obtain a marriage license in colonial America, nor in the bible. When you read the laws of the colonies, and then the states, you see only two requirements for marriage. …the first being that you had to obtain your parent’s permission to marry, and second, you had to post public notice of the marriage 5-15 days before the ceremony.” Marriage is thus prior to the state and was without the validation of the state for quite a long stretch of our history, let alone the history of human civilization.

If the federal and state governments gave up the licensing requirement, it would do no damage to the rights of homosexual couples, for there are already a multitude of various churches and denominations which sanction same-sex marriages. There is, of course the Metropolitan Community Church, which was created for the purpose of enabling homosexuals to worship in the company of other homosexuals. Beyond that there are the Unitarian Universalists, the Episcopal Church USA, the Alliance of Baptists, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church USA, the Unity School of Christianity, the Swedenborgian Church of North America, and the United Church of Christ, among other institutions. So, I propose we take Jesus’ advice and render unto Caesar (the State) what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s, the institution of marriage.

However, the fact is even this simple solution will not be easy to accomplish. In the next article, we will explore the obstacles to re-privatizing marriage, and why this institution should have never come under the aegis of the state in the first place.