Is marriage a right?

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I’m not looking for a huge debate but just simple answers. I’m prompted to ask because of this article and the following excerpt from it:

“We should not be telling one couple you can be married and another couple you can be civil unionized,” Baroni said. “We are better than that. History is watching us now. She is asking us whether we’ll side with equality and right – or for discrimination.”

chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-us-gaymarriage-nj,0,3759800.story

The way I see it is that marriage is not a right and to prevent some from attaining it is not discrimination. To me the use of the term “discrimination” is merely an attempt (maybe or maybe not intentional) to pull on the heartstrings of Americans who are very sensitive to any perceived “discrimination”.

What does the Church think?
 
Sadly over the past 20+ years, marriage has been viewed as a contract between two people that is recognized and reward by the government.

The fact is, marriage is a religious event.

If people want to talk about separation of church and state, it should be about this. Namely, that the government should not be able to redefine marriage.
 
If you are referring to same sex marriages, then NO, it is not a right, it is an abomination.

Marriage was instituted by God for a man and a woman. No one has a right to sin. It is an extremely sinful choice to pervert marriage as God created it.
 
no marriage is not an absolute right, or civil governments would have no laws at all to regulate and register marriages.
 
Marriage is a natural right of human beings, according to the Church.

There are not any rights which are not bound to be exercised within the law, however. There is a right to free speech in this country: this does not give one the right to say or print whatever one pleases. There is no right to speak falsehood.

Likewise, it should be obvious that there is no right to a “marriage” which violates the most basic definition of what marriage is. Canon law may protect other legitimate interests, such as prohibiting the marriage of Catholics and non-Catholics, in order to protect the faith of the Catholic party. This is a legitimate limitation on the right to marry, and within the right of the Church to be faithful to her pastoral responsibilities.

Having said that, the Church may not unilaterally decide not to allow couples to marry whose union does not violate the law, because marriage is a right, not a privelege:
Canon 1058 All can contract marriage who are not prohibited by law.

Holy Orders, by contrast, is not a right. The Church may rightfully choose not to ordain those who request it, even if there is no canonical impediment to their ordination.
 
\The fact is, marriage is a religious event.\

**Even if the two parties subscribe to NO religion?

ALL of our rights have some limitations. For example, in Western societies, a person cannot marry someone who is already married to someone else. And people below a certain age are not free to marry without parental or judicial consent.**
 
LotusCarsLtd said:
I’m not looking for a huge debate but just simple answers. I’m prompted to ask because of this article and the following excerpt from it:

“We should not be telling one couple you can be married and another couple you can be civil unionized,” Baroni said. “We are better than that. History is watching us now. She is asking us whether we’ll side with equality and right – or for discrimination.”

chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-us-gaymarriage-nj,0,3759800.story

The way I see it is that marriage is not a right and to prevent some from attaining it is not discrimination. To me the use of the term “discrimination” is merely an attempt (maybe or maybe not intentional) to pull on the heartstrings of Americans who are very sensitive to any perceived “discrimination”.

What does the Church think?
Click to expand...
Marriage is not a right. There are some who cannot validly enter into Mariage.
 
bpbasilphx said:
\The fact is, marriage is a religious event.\

Even if the two parties subscribe to NO religion?

ALL of our rights have some limitations. For example, in Western societies, a person cannot marry someone who is already married to someone else. And people below a certain age are not free to marry without parental or judicial consent.
Click to expand...
A persons beliefs (or non-beliefs) do not create reality.

God does not cease to exist because someone does not believe in Him!
 
The problem we’ve come across in our society is that while marriage was always a religious event, the government (once it began to regulate marriage) has over time transformed it into something that can be entered into on a purely civil level with no religion at all. As I understand it, it’s a recent phenomenon.

Of course we can argue our beliefs based upon what the Church believes, but that will do no good when a government bases its laws on no religion but on its own ideals. That’s the problem.

If you have to argue from that standpoint alone, it’s quite difficult. Some points that can be made are that if marriage is a right, it’s at least a restricted one and always has been, i.e., I can only have one spouse, they must be the opposite sex, above a certain age, not a relative, etc. They like to use the argument that one of those restrictions used to be race, and now we all understand that that is discriminatory, so to take any of the other restrictions away is okay once we can say that they are discriminatory as well. For us, the opposite sex restriction is a no-brainer because of our faith, but if you don’t have a religious leg to stand on that goes out the window. It’s a very slippery slope, because if you can change one you can eventually change them all.

I think in the end it comes down to this: if you change any of the remaining restrictions, you change the very essence of what marriage is. That brings us to who has the right to define what marriage is? My argument has always been that the state did not create marriage, it has always only regulated it; therefore, they cannot change its definition.
 
sarahraegraham said:
The problem we’ve come across in our society is that while marriage was always a religious event, the government (once it began to regulate marriage) has over time transformed it into something that can be entered into on a purely civil level with no religion at all. As I understand it, it’s a recent phenomenon.

Of course we can argue our beliefs based upon what the Church believes, but that will do no good when a government bases its laws on no religion but on its own ideals. That’s the problem.

If you have to argue from that standpoint alone, it’s quite difficult. Some points that can be made are that if marriage is a right, it’s at least a restricted one and always has been, i.e., I can only have one spouse, they must be the opposite sex, above a certain age, not a relative, etc. They like to use the argument that one of those restrictions used to be race, and now we all understand that that is discriminatory, so to take any of the other restrictions away is okay once we can say that they are discriminatory as well. For us, the opposite sex restriction is a no-brainer because of our faith, but if you don’t have a religious leg to stand on that goes out the window. It’s a very slippery slope, because if you can change one you can eventually change them all.

I think in the end it comes down to this: if you change any of the remaining restrictions, you change the very essence of what marriage is. That brings us to who has the right to define what marriage is? My argument has always been that the state did not create marriage, it has always only regulated it; therefore, they cannot change its definition.
Click to expand...
Civil law has always been built on a Judao-Christian basis. Only reciently have we been trying to build laws on nothing, which is like trying to build a house in the air. One wonders why the bricks keep falling to the ground?

My question has always been when speaking of Morality is “On what basis?”
 
“We should not be telling one couple you can be married and another couple you can be civil unionized,” Baroni said. “We are better than that. History is watching us now. She is asking us whether we’ll side with equality and right – or for discrimination.”

This, by the way, is the silliest argument I have ever heard. ‘History is watching us now’? Who does this guy think “History” is? If one does not fear or believe in God, one should fear the opinion of the people of the future, because they have a more advanced morality than we have? Why would anybody without a personal sense of morality care about them? Let them establish their own relativistic morality for their own time. Why would anybody who has a personal sense of morality care about them? What kind of morality is only moral when it is being watched?

As for civil unions, the Church holds that these are only morally legitimate when they are a recognition that adults may legitimately be in relationships of mutual care for the purposes of property ownership, health care, and care of each other’s children, relationships which can serve the public good, even though the adults are not free to marry each other. When these unions are restricted to homosexual couples, or when a sexual relationship forbidden by natural laws concerning marriage is inherent to the unions, however, the Church opposes them as being contrary to the public good, for in that case the unions would have been established in law to encourage and support immoral sexual relationships.

What I think is ironic is that this is where the discrimination comes in! Those who complain they are being excluded have, in our state, stridently oppose allowing adults without a homosexual relationship to enter into civil unions! Two non-homosexual adults who wanted a civil union in order to share each other’s health benefits couldn’t do it! Who is being discriminatory, here?

Unlike the injustice in holding that marriages between blacks and whites are different than marriages restricted to one race, there is no unfair discrimination involved in holding that homosexual and heterosexual unions are inherently different. Differentiating between these two kinds of “couples”, then, is not only legitimate, but proper.
 
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