In a post about the California Supreme Court’s gay marriage decision, Leslie Carbone makes this point:
This is just one more piece of evidence that civil government is incompetent to manage anything of great social importance. It’s time to privatize the institution of matrimony.
There are really two points to this argument.
The first one is that if the state is going to give special benefits (i.e., tax benefits, property laws, inheritance laws and the like) to people by virtue of a status, then there are really only two alternatives — either it has to give that status to everyone, or it gives that status to nobody.
The second one is something I said a year or more ago:
If that’s what you believe a marriage is, the union of a man and woman before God and man, then what does the state have to do with so fundamentally a religious institution ? Why does the state need to recognize it at all and why does it need to grant that religious institution preferntial benefits in the form of tax breaks and a protected legal status that is not available to unmarried persons ?
Kellie and I were married in the Roman Catholic Church, which has requirements for marriage that exceed, and are different from, those of civil marriage. That wedding ceremony is what made the marriage official in the eyes of God, not the little piece of paper we got from Cuyahoga County, Ohio the day before.
Here’s my proposal. Get rid of civil marriage licenses entirely. Let people decide for themselves what they believe about marriage and let them, if they wish solemnize that union in a church of their choice. We are hundreds of years past the day where the state was involved in religious affairs, it doesn’t need to be involved in this matter either.
Someday, I think, that’s where we’ll end up when it comes to this issue, but it’s not going to happen without a lot of kicking and screaming.
May 15th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Limit one per customer (i.e., no polygamy)?
May 15th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Ron,
Here’s what I’m thinking of, more or less
Proposed Constitutional Amendment 28:
Neither Congress nor any state or territory of the United States shall make any law respecting the establishment of marriage, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
If two men and a woman want to call themselves married, what do I care ?
May 15th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Well, I care, because same-sex “marriage” is immoral and dangerous to society and especially to its children. But that doesn’t mean that civil government is either fit or properly empowered to regulate the institution of matrimony; it is neither. Those of us who agree that the institutionalized oxymoron same-sex “marriage” is wrong should rely on moral suasion, not the meddling of the civil state, to oppose it. Thanks for the link, Doug.
May 15th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Leslie,
I respect your morality, but what I don’t understand is why your morality, or mine, should be enshrined in law.
There are some who think it’s immoral to drink alcohol or have sex before marriage.
Are you suggesting we make that illegal and prosecute the same ?
This is why there should be a wall of separation between marriage and the state.
May 16th, 2008 at 1:31 am
Doug,
The good ol’ US of A has a way of deciding morality for all of us. It works pretty well as long as we all realize we should participate and not allow others to intimidate.
To tell decent people they have no right to stick up for what is right, is to simply invite tyranny.
Prohibition would be a good example of where that system goes wrong, if it weren’t for the fact that exact same system repealed it.