Marriage

So I think this may be the post that surprises some. I have thought long and hard on the topic of marriage and I believe that there is a position to be made that has not been addressed. One side says that a marriage should be between a man and a woman and wants the government to enforce that. The other side wants anybody to marriage and wants the government to enforce that. I believe that both sides are wrong about a key part of their arguments.

The Constitution protects against establishment of a national religion. That has also been interpreted by the Courts as preventing government interference in religious exercises unless there is the belief in the physical or psychological harm to an individual. That is where my argument comes into play.

Marriage is a sacrament. A vast majority of religions believe this. Therefore, the government should not be able to decide who can and can't get married. The fact that a couple obtains a "marriage" license from the government should be unconstitutional. It should, and in reality is, a legal document signifying a civil union between two people. I don't know why nobody has attempted to make this legal argument and if they have, I haven't seen it.

If this argument is put forth then I think it fundamentally changes the debate. It then comes down to who can get a civil union. By removing the religious argument, I believe it will shift the support for or against. I believe if two people want to spend their lives with each other for the rest of their lives then they should be able to. If you look at it from a purely intellectual side, by allowing this, it eliminates government issues dealing with proxies and legal expenses due to homosexual couples having to deal with issues pertaining to things like medical insurance, wills and the like.

By leaving the decision of sanctifying marriage to the churches, it then becomes a matter of personal and community choice. If a church chooses to sanctify a marriage then so be it. If the parishioners of that church disagree with that decision then they are free to find another church that more aligns with their beliefs. This happens with some regularity, most spectacularly with the Reformation and recently with the movement of people from the Episcopalian church.

Yes, there will still be those that will oppose civil unions between homosexual couples, but the majority will not as long as the actual issue of marriage is no longer part of the debate. I look at this as a win-win situation. For those who support gay marriage/ civil unions, they get what they want for the most part. For those that oppose gay marriage, nobody is forcing them to accept it and the government is no longer deciding what is and isn't acceptable form a religious standpoint, which is how the Constitution set it up.