Grace & Peace!
I understand all that you’ve been saying re the government as an impersonal entity. However, I question the fact that the government can legally bind two people who are engaging in perverted sex. If so, could the government, using your argument, not enjoin the same contract to the union between a man & an animal, an adult & a child?? If not, why not??
Hi Cradle!
Thanks for the question. Let me clarify re: the government as an impersonal entity first–I’m afraid in my zeal to get a point across, I may have gone a bit too far.
Rather than an impersonal entity, I think government is a neutral instrument, designed for a particular purpose to get a particular thing done. On the most basic level, the purpose of a government is to protect private property. Other uses and functions flow from this fundamental purpose. Here’s an analogy–it’s like a dinner fork. A dinner fork is designed to fit in my hand in order to make moving things from plate to plate on a table (as well as from plate to my mouth) easier. I can stab someone in the eye with it, the fork doesn’t care and remains undamaged. I can pick things off the floor and put them in my mouth with it, the fork doesn’t care and remains undamaged. If I attempt to jab a stone with it in order to put it in my mouth or move it from one place to another, I’ll probably wreck it.
Similarly, a government or a state, let’s say, is an instrument by which private property may be protected. It can support an army. It can raise taxes to help it accomplish its job. It can even be made to do some pretty horrible things in the name of its primary purpose. But ultimately, it is an instrument designed for an economic, material goal. The moment it attempts to have prophetic communion with God, the moment it becomes a higher moral authority or attempts to become an instrument of morality, that’s when it starts to break. Prophetic communion, moral authority, and being moral instruments are all human occupations, not state ones. Trying to form a fork into a human just makes the fork into a useless idol–you can do nothing with it but stare at it and/or pointlessly worship it.
Now that that’s out of the way, what is and is not perversion is not the job of the state to decide. If it were, chances are pant suits on women would have been outlawed long ago by some unchangeable 19th century ordinance against cross dressing. What is perverse is a moral concept, not a state concept.
As such, marriage between an adult and an animal or an adult and a child have to be evaluated (from the state perspective) not according to a moral standpoint, but according to an economic one. Is it in the economic interests of the state for an adult and an animal to marry? Not really. Nor is it in the interest of the state for an adult and a child to marry, for similar reasons.
This is all rather simplistic. We could get slightly more specific. The U.S. instrument of government is designed with the concepts of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in mind. Fundamentally, these are understood in a material context and hence relate-able to our economic model. But you’ll notice that the U.S. instrument of government does not guarantee the right to be free of perversion. But it does suggest that depriving others of life, liberty, or their ability to pursue happiness could be considered offensive. In this way, marriage of an adult and a child is also questionable. However, marriage of an adult and animal is not as questionable in the same way, unless the animal one weds is the property of another person. But again, applying the economic standard, there’s no compelling reason for the state to allow such a marriage.
The bottom line is this–no matter what rhetoric may say, the state is a godless instrument of material governance. It is a necessary evil, but an evil it remains. It has been said that democracy is the best form of bad government–true, but it’s still bad government. It’s authority is not God-given, but God permitted (unless you believe in the divine right of kings, but in a democracy, such a concept is useless). It has no authority over morality, determining it or defining it, and whatever authority it claims in order to do so is illegitimate. Denying homosexuals the ability to enter into a contract with the state like the current “marriage” contract on moral grounds, sentimental grounds, or metaphysical grounds is pointless. Denying it on economic or material grounds is worth more in this context–but the compelling argument against gay “marriage” from these quarters just doesn’t seem to exist.
If we believe that the government is best which governs least, we have to ask ourselves why this is the case. Why? Because the more that individuals are able to govern themselves, the less government is required. The more morality, self-control, etc. are taught in the home and in the church, the synagogue, the mosque, the temple, the more individuals are empowered to govern themselves. Moreover, the more such individuals grow in self-governance, self-control, the more they are empowered to cooperate with each other, not coerce each other using the power of the state. The more there is such cooperation, the more there is the requirement that residual instruments of bad government be forced to justify their needfulness–and those things which fail to do so are dismantled. Legislation of morality is a dead end–it can only lead to more bad government, not less. Restoring the moral authority of families and religious institutions is a much better principle, I think.
Again, just my 2 cents.
Under the Mercy,
Mark
All is grace and mercy–Deo gratias!
Also, I could be wrong about this, but it’s my understanding that the US Supreme Court sees marriage as a state issue. I’ve been looking through the Constitution again, and I haven’t seen anything yet explicitly regarding marriage.
thanks for your contribution though 
People discount that each society starts in the home, we can’t rely on the government to be our crutch to enforce what parents already should be doing. Then again, with the growing amout of same-sex couple-led households…