(no subject)

[kayre]

A friend commented on my recent post, where I linked to a story about a politician proposing that civil marriage be eliminated, in favor of civil unions for all, gay or straight. You can read the full comment there; here’s a quote from the heart of it:

So marriage is the universal basis, and then people can add whatever ceremony, celebration, spiritual implications they consider necessary or desirable.....

But this proposal is negative image of this, saying that the civil legal union is something less than, more limited than marriage. And as one of your commenters implies, having nothing to do with the social aspect of the union/partnership. Really this makes me goggle: surely the social implications of family relationships is precisely the aspect which is why marriage is in the public arena at all...
In any case I can't see how marriage is to be defended by limiting {condemning?} anyone unable or unwilling to have a religious ceremony to some second class contract. In my view one of the forces most destructive of marriage has been the tendency to view it and use it in a reductionis, minimalist way, as a legal contract like any other- the notorious "bit of paper". Making this officially explicit for huge numbers of families is going to help family life how?
It seems most likely to devalue it in society at large, even if it "preserves" a particular understanding of the *word* marriage for the comfort of some.
I think that excluding gays from marriage altogether actually undermines marriage, including heterosexual marriage, rather than the reverse.

I wrote a really long-winded response to this, and then realized that it boils down to two main points.

First, I think that gay couples should be absolutely equal with heterosexual couples on a legal basis. Whatever form of civil relationship the government administers must legally and ethically be available to all (with the usual reasonable limits like age and competence).

Second, I think that the civil/legal and sacred/religious aspects of committed relationships should be separate, and I’m not sure that’s possible as long as the same word and same personnel are used. The government shouldn’t be regulating a sacred ordinance, and religious leaders certainly shouldn’t be cooperating with a government that tells them to whom they may or may not administer that ordinance!

Pure speculation here: I don’t think the result would be a devaluation of commitment (by whatever name) at all. If anything, I think a lot of cohabiting couples might choose to make the commitment to a permanent relationship, once they’d be able to do so without any religious implications at all; and I think there would be a lot of creative celebrations of such commitment, bearing public witness to the depth of those commitments. If society has an interest in "the family" or "marriage", surely that interest is in encouraging households made of people who pledge to mutually care for each other and their children, whether or not that pledge is couched in religious terms?

Commitment doesn’t have to be called “marriage” to be real; and it doesn’t have to be understood in religious terms to be deep.