For those of you who are even the least bit interested in
the issue of marriage, gay or straight, ought to read the article entitled
“Chicago priest protests same sex marriage, won’t sign civil marriage
licenses,” on page 4 today’s (i.e., Sunday, 7/5/15’s) Chicago Tribune:
Father Reardon (which strikes one as an odd name for an
Antiochian Orthodox priest, but the article explains that) has a terrific
idea. But the article points out that the
Reverend Tony Jones, who supports same sex marriage, has had about the same
idea since 2010.
However…
Long time readers of mine are completely familiar with Father
Reardon’s, and Reverend Jones’, brilliant solution to this controversy. Back in 2012, I wrote the following Insightful Pontificator piece, which
referred my readers to a letter I wrote to Steve Chapman, who is surely one of
the best columnists in the opinion business, back in 2006:
“…AND IF THERE’S NO OTHER
BUSINESS TO DISCUSS, I’D LIKE TO ATTEND MY DAUGHTER’S WEDDING.”
The lead story on many news outlets yesterday was news that
the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down California ’s
Proposition 8, which banned gay marriages in the nation’s largest state. The Ninth Circuit’s decision thus set the
stage for the Supreme Court to rule on the legality of gay marriage, or at
least on the right of states to ban gay marriage, perhaps as early as next
year.
Why this story should have been the lead story anywhere, on
a day when Syria was almost literally on fire, Americans were effectively being
held hostage in Egypt, the Congress continued to wrangle over the payroll tax
break, which directly affects every American who works and which will expire in
three weeks, and the Catholic Church and the Obama administration were duking
it out over a mandate for contraceptives, is beyond me. Gay marriage is a very important issue for
gays, and especially for gays who would like to marry, and for those who
consider gay marriage an abomination before God and man. Both groups feel very passionately about
this issue, and understandably so. But,
for most of us, this is not a non-issue but not a burning issue, either. While all of us care, or at least should
care, about the rights of others and all of us have moral and/or religious
sensitivities and sensibilities, most of us are not gay and don’t really care
all that much about the sexual orientations of other people. Whom people choose to sleep with is none of
our business and we prefer to keep it that way…please. So why the brouhaha over this story? One supposes the media think anything even
remotely connected with sex (and it’s hard to imagine many things more remotely
connected with sex) sells. And, in our
increasingly strange and superficial society, they may be right. But I digress.
Gay marriage has been an issue for a number of years. Back in November, 2006 (and the issue was
not new then), I sent a letter to Steve Chapman, who writes for the Chicago
Tribune, is one of my favorite columnists,
and shares my libertarian tendencies.
In it, I proposed a solution to this controversy. Here is a reproduction of that missive:
11//5/06
Hi Steve,
I enjoyed your
observations on gay marriage in your 11/5 column and have a hard time
disagreeing with any of your arguments.
However, I have another take on the gay marriage issue.
Why should the
government be involved in the institution of marriage? Shouldn’t marriage, which many, if not most,
Americans consider a sacrament, be the exclusive province of churches, leaving
civil unions and the legal rights that would attend thereto, to the
government? The government would then
decide legal rights and obligations and the churches would decide sacramental rights
and obligations. Why should the
government have the right to decide who conforms to religious rules and
parameters? Why should churches decide
who conforms to legal rules and parameters?
Those who belong to a religion and wish to proclaim their fidelity
before their church could opt for both civil unions and marriages. Those gays and heterosexuals who have no
religion, and who don’t care to abide by the current hypocrisy exhibited by
many who are completely unfamiliar with the interior of a house of worship but
go through a church marriage strictly
for appearance’s sake, could opt only for civil unions.
With the government’s
having lost its role in dabbling with religious definitions, at least in this
application, gays who wish to have all the legal rights currently reserved
for married people in most jurisdictions
would encounter less, albeit still considerable, opposition to achieving those
rights. Those gays who wish to marry,
in addition to being granted civil unions, would surely be able to find a
church who will marry them, and it will be strictly their business and the
business of that church and its congregants.
More importantly,
however, the government will have been removed from an area in which it should
never have had any business: deciding
who is married before God and the church.
Mark Quinn
To clarify this proposal, under such a system, everyone who
wishes to enjoy the legal rights and privileges that now attach to marriage
would apply for a civil union, which would confer such rights and
privileges. Those who, in addition to
obtaining a civil union, wish to marry inside their church, synagogue, mosque,
temple, etc., would get married according to the rules and guidelines of that
institution. The marriage would confer no legal rights and
the civil union would not have to conform to any religious rites.
I suppose, by the way, that one could have a religious
marriage without a civil union if one wished to proclaim his or her marriage
before God but cared nothing for the legal rights of a spouse, but one suspects
that such circumstances would be rare.
Who knows, though?
The solution I proposed in 2006 has withstood the test of
time on at least three fronts. First,
it preserves the sacramental nature of the institution of marriage and a
faith’s right to determine who is, and can be, married before God. Second, it respects and furthers the rights
of gay people to access all of the legal and familial rights that society
formerly, and, in many cases, still, reserves for heterosexuals. Third, it keeps government out of the
business of telling faiths on whom they must confer the rites of matrimony (Think
it can’t happen? See today’s other
post, “IT’S THE BISHOP!”) and faiths out of the business of telling government
on whom they must confer legal rights.
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