Many liberals and progressives are up in arms that North Carolina voted to have a Constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage. After mulling over it for the past day or so, I decided I would have a different take on it. This isn't the critical piece or impassioned plea that you think: this is about religion, the neutrality of law, and marriage as a legal, and not religious, institution.
A couple of my friends, whom are both libertarians, made a compelling point -- why is government involved in marriage, which is generally seen as a religious event as it is?
They have a point, and even I began to argue that if the government can't even legalize it for everybody, then the government should get out of the business of establishing jurisprudence when it comes to marriage law -- granted, it would probably put a whole hell of a lot of divorce attorneys out of work. I also argued that marriage is now a legal, not a religious institution. A few have disagreed with me and that's understandable.
However, I'm going to stick with my core belief that I've developed over the years -- if there's going to be laws made in regards to marriage in terns of additional benefits and privileges that would not be made available to persons that are simply cohabitating in a committed, long-term relationship -- hetero- or homosexual -- of no real, legal status, then marriage is no longer a religious institution, its a legal one. Why do you ask?
It goes back to the Establishment Clause and the actual purpose of it: to not only promote religious freedom and establish the federal government as a religiously neutral institution (yes, secular), but to prevent laws from being passed that pander to religious beliefs while at the same time restricting the rights of others. Others have made it a statement about the United States not being a "Christian nation" (for while the United States is a predominantly Christian nation for the number of adherents to the Christian religion, the Christian religion has never been and its prevented from being made a state religion), its less about that, and more about the prevention of having a single religion to be a de facto state religion. And before I get the usual Christian retort -- there's not even a universal agreement amongst theologians about what the Bible actually said about homosexuality as it is. Hell, there's not even a universal agreement amongst Christians about what's the proper interpretation of the central scripture and the core belief system for what it's worth with all the denominations that exist that reject, contradict, and counter at least one aspect of another.
Before I digress any further, civil rights is not a religious issue, it is a human issue and it is a legal issue. Furthermore, another way to look at it is laws in regards to murder and theft: both are rejected in the Abrahamic religions, but is the criminal prosecution of a murderer or a thief a religious proceeding or a legal proceeding? (It's a rhetorical question, for fuck sake.) You're probably arguing what does that have to do with what I'm arguing, and I'm telling you it has everything to do with what I'm arguing.
As such, with government functioning with religious neutrality (at least, it's supposed to be), the instance of creating a legal structure around the marriage institution moves out of the religious sphere and into the legal sphere. I completely understand marriage as religious symbolism, however, the laws that get passed are really supposed to stand on their own -- whether through a theistic or non-theistic lens. Obviously, there's no legitimate, secular, religiously neutral argument in favor of restricting gays, lesbians, and bisexuals from legal status in same sex marriages, unless it's just straight up bigotry.
As a corollary, if Christians are looking to protect the "hallowed institution of marriage", then they should do so by reclaiming marriage as a religious institution, which they keep doing: actually which means by the way, advocating for all levels of government, federal and state, to end all legal recognition of marriage. Why? Because the Christian Right is claiming a technically legal institution as a religious institution.
Now, as the reader, you should be catching on.
The rhetoric you hear often when "faith" is evoked by American politicians is that its "faith", "the Bible", "Christ" -- you name it -- guides their philosophy and decisions in regards to politics. There's nothing wrong with guidance and at times, it can prove benevolent. Yet, these same Christian politicians (the conservative ones, at least), often act in total discord to what the nation's early leaders and the Constitution itself aimed for -- to prevent restrictions and abuses in civil rights and liberties in the name of religion. So here it is in a nutshell: The Christian Right using Christianity as a vehicle to restrict gays, lesbians, and bisexuals from a legal, and civil, institution, blatantly contradicting the timeless "American values" that they so fiercely believe that they're defending.
I made a comment about government getting out of the business of defining what marriage is, and a friend of mine who is conservative expanded on a few extremes in regards to marriage and pedophilia. There's already laws in place in regards to protection of minors that would invalidate any marriage as it is in terms of marriage taking part between two people with somebody that is not of legal age to consent and in a position of abuse.
In the end though, if you're going to have marriage laws, then it has to be recognized that marriage laws are to be religiously neutral, especially in regards to the legally recognized, administered, and protected additional benefits and privileges being given to couples recognized by government jurisdiction as married. Whether you're Christian, Muslim, or Jewish, you still have to show legal, valid proof of marriage to even take advantage of these said benefits and privileges, and while all three faiths worship the same deity, all three of them can't be any further apart than what they are already in terms of what they believe in; as such, it reinforces marriage as a religiously neutral, legal, civil institution that no state or federal government can legally ban certain members of the population from participating in without any religiously neutral, secular justification, of which none exists. If government, especially the state governments that already demonstrated this, is unable to remain religiously neutral when it comes to the legal institution of marriage, then the conversation should begin as to ending the jurisprudence of -- and subsequent government involvement in -- marriage period.
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