Posted on 05/28/2009 5:19:11 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
I don’t agree with Douglas Kmiec often, but this may be the exception … maybe. With all of the various legal and legislative challenges to the definition of marriage in states across the nation, Kmiec tells Catholic News Agency that government should restrict itself to enforcing contract law and leave the question of marriage to the churches. Robert George, a highly respected Constitutional scholar and fellow Catholic, vehemently disagrees (via The Corner):
Doug Kmiec, a prominent Catholic who backed Barack Obama’s presidential bid, has endorsed replacing marriage with a neutral “civil license,” a proposal law professor Robert P. George called a “terrible idea” that would make the government neglect a vital social institution.
Speaking to CNSNews.com, Pepperdine University law professor Doug Kmiec said that although his solution to disputes over the definition of marriage might be “awkward,” it would “untie the state from this problem” by creating a new terminology that would apply to everyone, homosexual or not. “Call it a ‘civil license’,” he said.
“The net effect of that, would be to turn over–quite appropriately, it seems to me, the concept of marriage to churches and a church understanding,” he said.
George counters:
“It’s a pre-political institution,” he said. “It exists even apart from religion, even apart from polities. It’s the coming together of a husband and wife, creating the institution of family in which children are nurtured.”
“The family is the original and best Department of Health, Education and Welfare,” he continued, saying that governments, economies and legal systems all rely on the family to produce “basically honest, decent law abiding people of goodwill – citizens – who can take their rightful place in society.”
“Family is built on marriage, and government–the state–has a profound interest in the integrity and well-being of marriage, and to write it off as if it were a purely a religiously significant action and not an institution and action that has a profound public significance, would be a terrible mistake,” George told CNSNews.com.
“I don’t know where Professor Kmiec is getting his idea, but it’s a very, very bad one.”
Normally in any debate between Kmiec and George, I’d rely on the latter, especially on matters of faith. However, in this case, Kmiec has the better argument, mostly because the “state” gave up protecting marriage and children decades ago. The advent of no-fault divorce, in which one party can abrogate the marriage contract without penalty or consideration of the other party, has completely destroyed the notion that the government plays a role in protecting “integrity and well-being of the family.” In fact, I’d argue that serial marriers of the kind seen in Hollywood (or in Washington DC) do more to undermine marriage than single-gender unions would ever do.
The state could get out of the marriage business entirely, and have its citizens enter into partnership contracts instead. That might have the salutary effect of putting mechanisms into place for dissolutions that would keep divorces from dragging on through the courts, but also give the state more ability to enforce the terms of the contract than government is willing to do with marriages that lack pre-nuptial agreements, especially on penalties for abrogation. That would also give the courts an opening to finally get rid of “palimony”, that noxious avenue where the courts have to make determinations whether contractual relations exist between people who neither execute a contract or take wedding vows.
Churches could then recognize marriage along their own precepts. Catholics who want to get married in a Catholic church would still have to be a heterosexual couple above the age of consent, at least one of whom is Catholic, without issues of consanguinuity, but would have to also sign a partnership contract for the civil recognition of the relationship. It would be little different than the current requirement of getting a marriage license now, except that the agreement would have more detail on the partnership than the current marriage license provides, although even that could be more or less boilerplate for many couples.
Would the public accept the withdrawal of government from the blessing of marriages? Not at first, certainly, but the public also won’t back a revocation of no-fault divorce, either, which strongly implies that a government imposed “integrity of marriages” solution won’t be popular at all. I’d expect this to be the eventual solution to the definition-of-marriage argument.
It's just that simple.
Doug Kmiec, a prominent Catholic who backed Barack Obama’s
Idiots flock together or was that birds.
There went his credibility.
George is definitely right and Morrissey’s rebuttal that the state has no interest in marriage because the state and society has handled it badly.
That’s like saying baseball teams have no interest in pitching because they’ve drafted poorly.
Some philosophy whiz kid please give me the name of the logical fallacy employed here by Morrissey. I would call it “throwing out the baby with the bath water.”
“Doug Kmiec, a prominent Catholic who backed Barack Obama’s presidential bid”
OBAMA DERANGEMENT SYNDROME ALERT!
First this guy thought Obama was ‘pro-life’ ... and now his solution to saving marriage is to destroy it in law.
Way to go, you are now officially a lunatic!
Well said.
Rather than get govt out of the marriage defining business ... let's first get the liberals, socialists, cultural marxists, confused post-moderns and others OUT of the marriage defining business.
I'm with George.
Kmiec’s absurd idea is nothing more than a new tactic by the left to LEGITIMIZE homosexual “marriage”.
If the states were to no longer recognize the validity of marriage and leave it to religious groups, there is little doubt what would happen:
Leftist “churches” (and I use that term very lightly as they would probably be nothing more than social clubs where leftists go to talk about “judge not lest ye be judged” and sing “Kumbaya”) would start “marrying” homosexuals and giving them marriage certificates. These certificates, signed by an “ordained” minister/community organizer would be every bit as legitimate in the government’s eyes as a true marriage certificate signed by a Bible-believing minister, priest or rabbi.
I talked to my priest this morning about the possibility of the church making a civil license optional.
Get married in the Church and never file a marriage license. All legal ramifications can be handled as suggested, contractually.
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There; that's better.
One last thought, unless the government is prepared to remove marriage penalties from the tax system this whole notion is pointless.
It's the same logical fallacy used by those who wanted to cut-n-run from Iraq. "We screwed up and things arent perfect, so lets not care about the consequences, lets just go."
It's a reverse slippery slope argument - 'ah, we are halfway to Hell in a bucket, lets go the distance' A form of perfectionism - 'it aint perfect, so lets break it fully.'
Government has mucked things up - BUT - Ed Morrisey forgets that while goodly numbers of marriages break up, 50% stay intact. Children in intact marriage are far less likely to be victims of abuse and have better life outcomes - less juvenile delinquency, more likely to graduate HS and College, etc.
The outcome of this policy is to simply destroy the last vestiges of an institution that is vital to civilization.
Maybe there are people coming up with such horrible, dreadful ideas so the still-bad-but-less-dreadful idea of gay marriage becomes more acceptable. I dunno, but its beyond bad to end the definition of marriage in law.
The gay "useful idiots" are being used to deconstruct What this schmuck does not tell you is that contract law
has always been available to homosexual couples.
society by the Marxists.
Uh, no. Marriage is an institution which is bedrock to the stability of our culture. The commonwealth has a vested interest in maintaining its sanctity and its applicability only to heretosexuals.
The danger (and I hate to agree with Kmiec) is that once gay marriage is the law of the land everywhere, two men can walk into a Catholic or Southern Baptist or Greek Orthodox church and demand to be married there.
Once the church refuses, it’s off to court to get the church’s tax exemption removed, using the Bob Jones decision as precedent. Many believe that this is the real agenda behind the gay marriage movement—to defund all conservative churches.
Separating marriage into religious and civic understandings may be the only way to head off this nightmare.
What contract law? obama and his henchmen killed it.
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