2/23/2004

KUFM/KGPR

T. M. Power

Distinguishing between the “Sanctity of Marriage” and “Equality before the Law”

The growing debate over gay marriage is very confusing to me. I happen to both believe in the “sanctity of marriage” and in the obligation of the government to treat all of its citizens equally. My problem is that I firmly believe that the government should not be officially involved in anything where “sanctity” or “sacraments” are involved. Those are the realms of our individual consciences and our religions, places where governments ought not to be meddling.

Our problem as Americans is that although our constitution calls for a separation of church and state, many Americans simply never have believed in that separation. After all, religious dissidents fleeing what they found to be the oppressive state religions of Europe established many of the original American colonies. But those religious dissidents were also religious zealots who did not oppose the blending of church and state. They just wanted to make sure that the state enforced their religion rather than someone else’s. Our constitutional bar against the state supporting religion was designed to keep the federal government from siding with any one of the growing number of religious sects that proliferated in the new American nation.

As a result of this history, some of the more proselytizing religions still expect the government to use its police powers to make people follow those groups’ particular religious beliefs.

That, really, is what is going on when it comes to gay marriage: People are confusing private religious functions with public government functions.

Marriage as a sacred union or a sacrament that joins a committed couple in a lifetime commitment to intimacy, mutual support, and, often, the raising of children, is a religious act. Each religion has always had its own rules and rituals governing who can and cannot be married. Catholics still ban the remarriage of divorced individuals. In the past, Catholics and other religions banned the marriage of partners of different faiths. Each religion set its own requirements for marriage. The government had no say in the character of those religious restrictions on marriage.

The government did have an interest in keeping track of such unions and in facilitating such unions for those who did not want to submit themselves to any particular religion’s rules. The public interest was in identifying the parents of children, in protecting the property and financial rights of the individuals, and in encouraging stable households that could support families and communities.

The religious and secular interests are quite different. Religions, in general, can discriminate all they want. In some ways the purpose of religions is to discriminate, to determine those who have a special connection to their god and those who do not. The saved and the damned if you want.

A democratic government, on the other hand, is focused on making sure that the law does not discriminate against citizens; that all citizens are equal before the law. The police powers of the state are too powerful and dangerous to be used to support some citizens at the expense of others, especially if it is sectarian beliefs that are fueling that discrimination.

This should allow us to make a clear distinction when it comes to gay marriage. Religious organization can set any rules they want about who can get married to whom. They can, as some do, ban inter-racial marriages. They can, and do, ban marriages across ethnic lines. They can, and do, establish any number of rituals, which, to outside observers, may seem strange, if not weird. That largely is entirely up to the religious organization. They can protect the “sanctity” of their marriages in any way they see fit.

Meanwhile, the government should stay focused on making sure that all citizens have the opportunity to make permanent commitments to each other, to share property, to establish supportive homes in which children can be raised, etc. The government has no right to limit which adults can enter into such unions. In fact, one would assume that the government has a public interest in encouraging and supporting all such stable relationships. This aspect of marriage has nothing to do with “sanctity” or “sacraments.” As the existing New Mexico statute correctly describes it: “civil marriages are civil contracts between [private] contracting parties.”

European countries have made this distinction for a long time. The state records a couple’s intention to be married. Those couples that wish to “sanctify” their union can then proceed to participate in a religious service, if that religion will have them.

Some of the hyperbole floating around the issue of gay marriage is astonishing. Some religious leaders tell us that if gay marriages are allowed, the very foundation of our nation, the family, will be destroyed. I just don’t get it. These folks suggest that were it not for the threat of legal sanctions, all of us would choose promiscuous gay sex as our preference. Apparently these religious zealots believe that no one who was not forced by the state to do so would choose a heterosexual union. The sexual insecurity and confusion implicit in such assertions is astonishing.

Just as divorce and remarriage were once considered evil, birth control even within marriage was considered immoral, inter-racial or inter-religious marriage was considered perverse, and sex outside of marriage was seen as damming people for the rest of their lives, we will soon look back at the current flap over gay marriage with puzzled smiles on our faces.