It's Time To End Government Sanctioned Marriage For Everyone

Today, President Bush came out and announced his support for a constitutional amendment to define marriage as being between one man and one woman. In this instance, I think that the President is dead wrong.

A constitutional amendment defining marriage is one that limits the rights of the people. It may only be a select set of people, but it does not change the fact that it is enshrining a form of discrimination in the Constitution. And that is absolutely wrong, even if the very institution of marriage is under threat of imminent collapse.

A compromise solution of civil unions was offered and rejected as being another version of "separate, but equal," a not wholly unsubstantiated charge.

So if the compromise doesn't go far enough, and the traditionalists don't want to lose the sanctity of marriage, what is left as a course of action?

The institution of marriage must be abolished as a government recognized institution. All legal, existing marriages should be converted to civil unions and marriage itself should become strictly a religious institution.

There should no longer be a box to check for "married," but rather one for "joined by civil union." There should no longer be a marriage penalty, but rather a civil union penalty. The government should no longer have any say in, or any recognition of the institution of marriage.

Once marriage is no longer a matter of public concern, then the church can defend it as a sacred institution.

See part of the problem that we currently have is our fascination with achieving an absolute separation of church and state - regardless of the consequence. So long as the government recognizes marriage, it is almost forced by powerful special interests to try to devalue the religious underpinnings of marriage in favor of free-for-all secularism. The one man/one woman definition of marriage is unacceptable because it offends the PC crowd, so if we wish to preserve that definition, we must remove it from the scope of government.

Now we should allow clergy to sign off on civil union certificates, so that a couple married in the church can also be concurrently joined in a government recognized civil union.

The net effect would be that folks married in the church would have two certificates: a civil union certificate from the government and a marriage certificate from the church. So far as the government was concerned, there would be no difference between a civil union certificate issued at city hall to a same sex couple and a civil union certificate issued by a church to recognize a couple that was married in a traditional religious ceremony.

Now it may be argued that this is merely a matter of semantics, and to a degree it is. The basis of what I'm promoting is a change in terminology from "marriage" to "civil union" for everyone so joined in a governmentally recognized institution. I think that ultimately, short of a constitutional amendment, the battle against gay marriage (or civil unions or whatever you wish to call them) has been lost. Marriage as it is currently defined does in fact run counter to the Declaration of Independence’s assertation that all men are created equal. Just as that phrase applies in racial terms, it must also apply in sexual as well. All men are not equal if those who are gay are denied the same ease of establishing legal recognition and frameworks as heterosexuals.

Which means that the best way that I see to protect the sanctity of the traditional institution of marriage is to take it out of the purview of the government. It is unfortunate that it has come to this, but we must confront the issue before us.