I am against all marriage!

[markomalley]

As a matter of practicality, I would agree with the idea of legally obsoleting marriage, rather than perverting it with allowing so-called “gay marriage.”

Here’s my rationale:

1. Marriage is first and foremost a sacrament of the Church. The Church has the right and obligation to restrict the celebration of that sacrament to the standards set forth in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition.
2. So-called “gay marriage” is legal in MA. (Perhaps elsewhere, I don’t track it all that closely). The courts (both federal and state) seem to have this tendency to assign rights where they aren’t written. Sooner rather than later, the courts will imagine the 14th Amendment to include an “implicit” protection for sexual preference. Once that happens, they will be obliged, based on that precedent, to require all states to remove “one man and one woman” restrictions on legal marriages.
3. Even if #2, above, doesn’t happen, the courts will oblige the states that hold to traditional marriage to start recognizing “gay marriages” that happen in other states. Even I can see that DOMA is unconstitutional. It’s just a matter of time.
4. More and more employers are “de facto” recognizing “gay marriage” by allowing benefits to “same sex partners.” (As an aside, that is blatantly discriminatory against heterosexual couples who choose to live together, but that’s another issue altogether)
5. At some point in time, the Church is going to be required by the courts to perform a “same sex marriage” ceremony. You scream “but what about the first amendment!” My retort is to look at the Church being required to pay for contraception and abortions for employees through the health insurance coverage. Look at Catholic hospitals being required to do the same in some places. The Church’s “first amendment rights” are what the courts say they are. No more and no less.

The point is that rather than seeing that happen, I would rather the State obsolete the concept of marriage and replace the concept with a domestic partnership contract as a subset of the uniform contract law.

That allows legal recognition to whatever arrangement the people involved choose (which should be pleasing to some folk) while allowing the Church (or whatever ecclesial community wishing to emulate the Church’s function) to administer her sacraments in the fashion permitted by the Magesterium without regard for the State’s rules.

Please note: I don’t like the above solution. But I’d rather see that than having the State pervert a sacrament.

 

[Drlit]

Well, That1dude, you have more faith in human honesty than I do and that is a virtue. I really mean that.

As someone who is a bit more pessimistic about the ability of ALL people to enter into contracts and play fair, I have to imagine that if (and this is never gonna happen) the government DID bow out of marriage and leave it to Churches alone to validate and monitor, the churches would be overwhelmed with icky, sticky issues of property settlements, parental rights, child support, alimony, etc.

In a way, the government RELIEVES the Church of having to deal with such issues. But to the church, our Church, dissolving the civil contract of marriage is not the same thing as “dissolving” the sacramental marital bond.

There ARE civil and legal issues in dealing with economics, property, children and maintenance and support. There NEEDS to be a government (eg judicial) solution to these aspects of marriage and hence, a legal CONTRACT when a marriage begins.

But that’s just my perspective.

 

[that1dude]

Well, Drlit, it is not faith in human honesty that informs my stance that government should not define the “marriage” contract. I have no problem with people entering into explicit contracts with each other involving a third party (including governments). I just think that the government should not define the terms of these contracts. The third party can make suggestions, but the terms should be dictated by the couple or group that is forming the partnership. It smacks of soviet-style social engineering for a government to create a one-size-fits-all license, contract, and privelege package that is only available to certain citizens.

For most of Western history, marriage was a private contract between two families. For 16 centuries, Christianity also defined the validity of a marriage on the basis of a couple’s wishes. If two people claimed they had exchanged marital vows — even without witnesses — the Catholic Church accepted that they were validly married. State supreme courts routinely ruled that public cohabitation was sufficient evidence of a valid marriage. The concept of a Marriage License was introduced in the 1920s, when 38 states prohibited whites from marrying blacks, mulattos, Japanese, Chinese, Indians, Mongolians, Malays or Filipinos without a state approved license. Thus the institution of marriage was fundamentally changed. The private contract was exchanged for a public contract and the State entered as a new third party in the marriage contract.