Marriage Equality

          June 26, 2015 will go down in history as the day that the Supreme Court of the United States declared that states do not have the right to deny marriage to same-sex couples. There was much celebrating across the country by people who labored, prayed, and waited for this decision. There were also expressions of disappointment, sadness, and even anger from those who do not support marriage equality for all couples, most of these coming from Republicans and the Religious Right.

          Whatever one believes about marriage personally, this occasion will someday be merely a note in a history book, much like Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court case of 1967 which resulted in the abolition of state laws banning interracial marriage. At that time, conservatives and others (mostly Christians probably) expressed the same type of disapproval of the Court’s decision. In fact, the last state to strike anti-miscegenation laws from its books was Alabama, in 2000—more than thirty years after the Court’s ruling. Today, most people take interracial marriage for granted, with even most conservative evangelical Christians hardly batting an eyelash at a marriage between two people of different races. In the same way that most of today’s children and teens find it hard to believe that two people of different races were once prohibited from marrying in the United States, young people in years to come will wonder why two men or two women who loved each other were once prohibited from marrying. What is now the new normal for us will be simply normal for them.

          Even the one man-one woman model of marriage is a relatively new concept in human history. In most cultures around the world throughout time, men have been allowed to have more than one wife, either through formal marriage arrangements or through having concubines. In a few cultures, women were allowed more than one husband. In one traditional culture of China, marriage doesn’t even exist. Women may be with any male they prefer, and if a pregnancy results, she raises the child with the support of her parents and siblings. The father usually visits the child and participates in the childrearing, and may even come to live with the mother and her family, but marriage as we understand it isn’t a part of their tradition.

          The Old Testament of the Bible shows us lots of alternative marriage arrangements. Abraham was married to his half-sister, Sarah, with whom he fathered Isaac, but he also fathered a son, Ishmael, with his concubine, Hagar. It was common practice for men to take a concubine if their wives were unable to conceive a son. Isaac’s son, Jacob, had at least two wives. And Old Testament law provided for marriage arrangements that we today would find appalling: for example, if a woman was raped and her rapist agreed to pay her bride price, she was forced to become his wife; if a woman’s husband died before giving her a son, his surviving brother was to take the woman as his wife and impregnate her. Women were usually given in marriage to the highest bidder as soon as they reached childbearing age (a practice still done in many countries). And Ruth seduced a male relative of her deceased husband (because he had no surviving brothers), got pregnant by him, then gave the child to her mother-in-law to raise. All of this sounds like fodder for modern reality TV, but I suspect the motivation for these laws was the care that sons provided to elderly parents, especially mothers. No son, no retirement plan.

          The point I’m trying to make is that marriage has always been more of a civil contract than a religious sacrament. In fact, the Christian church didn’t institute marriage as a sacrament until around the twelfth century. Up until that time, Christian communities abided by local traditions and laws when it came to marriage. When it comes to marriage as a sacrament, there are as many widely varying opinions as there are religions. In a secular nation, there is separation of church and government, at least to the point that no one church or faith governs the state. If religious freedom is valued, then all religions must have equal protections under the law of that nation. To define marriage from a religious perspective is to inject religion into government, which is actually a threat to religious liberty, the freedom to practice—or not practice—religion as one chooses.

          From a purely secular and civil perspective, the rights and responsibilities of marriage should be extended to all persons in the nation regardless of age, race, gender identification, sex assigned at birth, sexual or affectional orientation, physical ability, or other traits or characteristics which are innate to the individual. If two consenting adults want to enter into a marriage contract, then so be it. Religions that disapprove of same-sex relationships do not have to conduct same-sex marriages in their religious houses. Nor do they have to conduct interracial marriages, or second (or third or fourth or--) marriages, or marriages between infertile couples, or interfaith marriages, or any other marital arrangement their religion forbids.

          No religion, however, can dictate how one treats others outside of one’s religious house of worship in a secular nation. No religion gives anyone the right to be racist, sexist, faithist, heterosexist, or a bigot of any sort. NONE. Period. You don’t believe in same-sex marriage? Fine. Don’t marry someone of the same sex. Disapprove all you want to. But do NOT stand in the way of another citizen of this nation striving for the same rights and responsibilities you have. Religion does not give you that right. If you work for the government or serve the public in some way, neither does your religion grant you the right to discriminate against those with whom you disagree. Can you imagine the outrage that would ensue if I refused to teach a Republican student on the grounds that that student’s conservative lifestyle choices offended my religious sensibilities (which they do, by the way)?

          As a gay follower of Christ, I celebrate yesterday’s decision by the Supreme Court of the United States, but I will not marry simply because I now can. I will marry when it is the right decision for me and my partner. A civil document guarantees certain rights and responsibilities to each other, so marriage is a serious decision to make with much prior thought and (for us) prayer. It represents a union of two lives becoming one, of the creation of a new family—be that a family of two or a family of ten—and a partnership where two are better than one. Sacrament or not, marriage is serious business, not to be entered into lightly.

          It will be interesting to note in the coming years how the same-sex couple divorce rate compares to that of opposite-sex couples. Opposite-sex couples’ current divorce rate is about fifty percent, so they aren’t exactly the standard bearers for traditional marriage values. After so much hard work to gain marriage equality, could it be that same-sex couples will become the new bastion of family values and sticking together through thick and thin, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do they part? Only time will tell.