16 June 2008
Monday
Beloved in God and Thomas:
Two people meet. They find they are drawn to each other wanting to spend time together. The relationship deepens. At some point they come to the belief that they wish to share the rest of their lives with each other. They want to marry…to enter into a civil contract which will bind them together in the eyes of the State…and eyes all the other States and Nations of the earth. To marry they may proceed in a couple of ways. They must go to the Court House and buy a Marriage License. There, they may, if they wish, have a Justice of the Peace hear their vows or they may trundle off to their parish church, license in hand (where they will have already spent 4 or 5 hours in pre-marital counseling) and a priest will hear their vows acting as an agent of the State as well as being a priest of the Church. The priest and the assembly will hear their vows, pronounce them married and pronounce God’s blessing on their union…..the only thing the Church does that is not done by a JP.Marriage is a civil contract between two individuals. While historically marriage has been reserved for men and women, this long-lived understanding has come under significant debate. Whether one approves or not, same-sex couples are standing up and asking for the same civil protections which marriage provides opposite sex couples. The civil contract has nothing to do with any religion…in particular; the civil contract has nothing to do with the Christian religion. Neither Christianity nor any other religion should have veto power over the right of any two people to enter into the civil contract we know as marriage. Two people who wish to share their lives with each other in a contractual manner must not be denied that right merely because they happen to be of the same sex. Religion has nothing to do with it.
Simply put, people pair up as they will…clearly not as some in this society think they should. The over-reaching arms of the conservative parts of several religions tell us that two people of the same sex may not marry. While that is sad and absurd at the same time, it is also funny. What does it take to create a marriage? Two people who state that they love one another and wish to share their lives. Are the only people in this society or any other society who make that claim always heterosexual? Certainly not! People marry one another. The State and the Church may make it legal and may bless it, but it is the two individuals who do the marrying…in church language: they are the ministers of the marriage. More simply put, they do not need us, brothers and sisters, to do it. They marry one another. They may make it legal in the Court House. They may have it blessed the Church. But their decision and action does the deed. We are lagniappe. The Church must go back to the drawing table and revisit the entire matter of marriage and what part it rightly plays in any marriage. In the opinion of this priest, the Church needs to stop making me function as an agent of the State when I hear vows. All faithful members of this parish who wish to marry should first go to the Justice of the Peace to obtain a license and “be married.” If, because the faith of Christ matters to them which one would hope it does, they would at some point after appearing before the JP show up at Church for the one thing the Church does best: A Blessing upon their marriage.
The Church needs to get out of civil marriage since we do not seek to control the State as some religions do in some other nations. We are a nation where religion does not dictate to the State. Call me naïve. Maybe I should have said, should not dictate to the State. The question of who may marry whom is a civil question, not a religious one. Yes, believers in this religion or that may disagree and have the right to refuse to allow two people to seek God’s blessing under that faith’s roof. But, if all the Church gives is God’s blessing, and even if the Episcopal Church were to everywhere refuse to do that, people would still be married who wanted to be in the best of all possible worlds.Call this all a bunch of “California Dreaming” if you wish. While I am passionate about the right of any two people to marry, I am more passionate about religion staying out of the business of the State. Unfortunately, the separation which is supposed to exist between our State and Church has become too permeable…making the State beholden to the Church and allowing Church to dictate to the State. The State is not religious. It is not Christian, Jewish, Islamic or Buddhist, etc. Its job is to support and protect every one of us, offering us all equal opportunity, defending all our rights and giving us marriage licenses if we want them.
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