Marriages and Uncivil Unions

The current debate regarding whether or not our government should sanction homosexual marriage is interesting on several levels:

• It calls into question the extent to which government as a secular institution can or should promote an essentially religious “institution”
  
  
• It confronts us with whether the current legal protections and rights generally extended to heterosexual marriage should be extended to all committed “living relationships”
  
  
• It doesn’t really address problems ensuant upon a judiciary interfering with decisions of the majority of the polis, if you will, as observed in the state of Massachusetts

C. S. Lewis essentially argued that outside of a theocracy, which should not, and in fact, cannot, exist within the human framework aside from divine institution (vis a vis Israel in the Old Testament, in which the monarchy existed alongside the priesthood as the direct vehicle of the rule of God over his people), human government should not attempt to usurp the ability to sanctify human relationships. Human government should simply establish a method to recognize the legal aspects of human relationships, and indentify the manner in which those relationships in turn related to the “state”. The sanctification of human relationships, Lewis argued, is simply not the provenance of human government, but rests with God. Certainly on the theological level this is indisputable fact. The instructive words in Genesis, “therefore what God has joined together, let not man put asunder”, establishes the fact that human interference cannot supersede divine intention.

What we are actually debating in the United States is misdefined. We are not, in fact, debating the “definition” of marriage, which, in fact, the state has no business defining. It is already defined by the Sovereign God of the Bible, and as his rule is not subject to referendum or recall, his definition is authoritative and binding. What we are debating is the extent to which certain legal protections and benefits should be applied to living relationships other than the generally accepted and religiously sanctified joining of one man and one woman. This issue is complicated by the fact that our government has, with continually decreasing subtlety, long been in the business manipulating varieties of social behavior through tax incentives. While one might not, in fact, be strictly morally opposed to homosexuals establishing a legal framework for the definition of certain governmentally recognized fiduciary relationships (such as estate planning and property rights), and we would not wish to interfere with hospital visitation rights, Christians are in general morally opposed to such rights existing unreservedly in areas such as adoption. It is also questionable whether certain benefits such as health insurance, or right of survivorship with military or social security benefits, should also be legally required. And it is, in fact, a valid question that if homosexuals are given “equal protection” rights based upon the legal definition of a “class”, to what extent can we persuasively argue that such “class” protection should not be extended to other possible “classes” or human relationships? Recent documentary coverage on 60 Minutes has already detailed the growth of polygamy (which is already legally “restricted”) in the Unites States. What, then, is to follow? Should polyandry (multiple husbands) be protected? What about the relationship between adults and pre-adolescent children? Can we still outlaw pedophilia? How about relationships between humans and animals? If animals should be broadly accorded rights, as is argued by P.E.T.A., should relationships between humans and animals be codified in this manner?

Some may consider such speculation “fear mongering”, as though such questions were not being seriously debated already (remember the priest who was a member and public champion of N.A.M.B.L.A., the North-American Man-Boy Love Association, the dark and little publicized underbelly of the homosexual lobby?). These issues are at the heart of the “marriage amendment” debate, which expresses the very real fear that without formal constitutional restraint, the public will on such questions will not matter when confronted by an increasingly activist judiciary. While I tend to agree with C. S. Lewis, that human government should develop an appropriate policy for the recognition of sanctioned human relationships and leave the religious aspect, the sanctification of such relationships, to the church (or synagogue, mosque or temple—if “sanctification” is used in the generically religious sense), I do not feel it appropriate that our government so recognize and promote every possible relationship. I believe that history minimally recognizes what might be considered conventional “marriage” as the foundational relationship of human society, our current post-modern culture tends to debate such conclusions as simply the product of an archaic religiously-based patriarchy that should be discarded as one might discard out-of-fashion clothing. It is this attempt at radical deconstructionism and willingness to make us all victims of a vast social experiment of the intellectual elite that should indeed give us pause.

These considerations are not new. They are as old as the Roman Empire, the debauched civilizations of Canaan (of which Sodom and Gomorrah were only representative), and of Noah’s era. And we should not allow ourselves to get sidetracked by fancy rhetorical footwork into ignoring the real issues. Do I believe that the government should recognize “civil unions” as opposed to marriage? Absolutely. In a secular system, the state has no power to “sanctify” a marriage. But should any and all definitions of human relationships be recognized by “civil unions”? God forbid!