Posted on 06/04/2014 10:19:50 AM PDT by Iced Tea Party
Cultural civil war can be avoided by getting government out of marriage
There is no question that the media, political, and cultural push for gay marriage has made impressive gains. As recently as 1989, voters in avant-garde San Francisco repealed a law that had established only domestic partnerships.
But judging by the questions posed by Supreme Court justices this week in oral arguments for two gay-marriage cases, most observers do not expect sweeping rulings that would settle the issue and avoid protracted political combat. A total of 41 states currently do not allow gay marriage, and most of those laws are likely to remain in place for some time. Even should the Court declare unconstitutional the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman for federal purposes, we can expect many pitched battles in Congress. The word “spouse” appears in federal laws and regulations a total of 1,138 times, and many of those references would have to be untangled by Congress absent DOMA.
No wonder Wisconsin’s GOP governor Scott Walker sees public desire for a Third Way. On Meet the Press this month he remarked on how many young people have asked him why the debate is over whether the definition of marriage should be expanded. They think the question is rather “why the government is sanctioning it in the first place.” The alterative would be to “not have the government sanction marriage period, and leave that up to the churches and the synagogues and others to define that.”
Governor Walker made clear these thoughts weren’t “anything I’m advocating for,” but he gave voice to many people who don’t think the gay-marriage debate should tear the country apart in a battle over who controls the culture and wins the government’s seal of approval. Gay-marriage proponents argue that their struggle is the civil-rights issue of our time, although many gays privately question that idea. Opponents who bear no animus toward gays lament that ancient traditions are being swept aside before the evidence is in on how gay marriage would affect the culture.
Both sides operate from the shaky premise that government must be the arbiter of this dispute. Columnist Andrew Sullivan, a crusader for gay marriage, has written that “marriage is a formal, public institution that only the government can grant.” But that’s not so. Marriage predates government. Marriage scholar Lawrence Stone has noted that in the Middle Ages it was “treated as a private contract between two families . . . For those without property, it was a private contract between two individuals enforced by the community sense of what was right.” Indeed, marriage wasn’t even regulated by law in Britain until the Marriage Acts of 1754 and 1835. Common-law unions in early America were long recognized before each state imposed a one-size-fits-all set of marriage laws.
The Founding Fathers avoided creating government-approved religions so as to avoid Europe’s history of church-based wars. Depoliticizing religion has mostly proven to be a good template for defusing conflict by keeping it largely in the private sphere.
Turning marriage into fundamentally a private right wouldn’t be an easy task. Courts and government would still be called on to recognize and enforce contracts that a couple would enter into, and clearly some contracts — such as in a slave-master relationship — would be invalid. But instead of fighting over which marriages gain its approval, government would end the business of making distinctions for the purpose of social engineering based on whether someone was married. A flatter tax code would go a long way toward ending marriage penalties or bonuses. We would need a more sensible system of legal immigration so that fewer people would enter the country solely on the basis of spousal rights.
The current debate pits those demanding “marriage equality” against supporters of “traditional marriage.” But many Americans believe it would be better if we left matters to individuals and religious bodies. The cherished principle of separating church and state should be extended as much as possible into separating marriage and state. Ron Paul won many cheers during his 2012 presidential campaign when he declared, “I’d like to see all governments out of the marriage question. I don’t think it’s a state decision. I think it’s a religious function. I am supportive of all voluntary associations and people can call it whatever they want.”
Supporters of traditional marriage know the political winds are blowing against them. A new Fox News poll finds 49 percent of voters favoring gay marriage, up from just 32 percent a decade ago. And among self-described conservatives under 35, Fox found support for gay marriage is now at 44 percent. Even if the Supreme Court leaves the battle for gay marriage to trench warfare in the states, the balance of power is shifting. Rush Limbaugh, a powerful social conservative, told his listeners this week: “I don’t care what this court does with this particular ruling. . . . I think the inertia is clearly moving in the direction that there is going to be gay marriage at some point nationwide.”
But a majority of Americans still believe the issue of gay marriage should be settled by the states and not with Roe v. Wade–style central planning. It might still be possible to assemble a coalition of people who want to avoid a civil war over the culture and who favor getting government out of the business of marriage.
— John Fund is national-affairs columnist for NRO.
When did the state not define legal marriage in America?
If it had been only private, then we would would not have had to wait until today to get gay marriage and polygamy.
When I was in my early-to mid-teens, my family used LBJ to scare us into learning not to be liberal, like he was satan or something-don’t let anyone tell you intelligent people of latino ancestry admired that SOB...
Besides, this is America, all religions and non-religions are equal, and so "religious marriage" would mean that ANYTHING GOES, gay, goats, polygamy, house pets, two brothers, anything and everything.
The "religion" argument is something created by the anti-religion libertarians, to fool naive Christians into thinking that there is a political movement to make the Catholic church, or some Evangelical movement, the deciders of whether a marriage is legal or not.
What a useless and irrelevant thing to bring up all the time, he sure didn’t help the GOP in it’s fight against polygamy in the mid 1800s when a religion started practicing it.
LBJ was a son of a bitch-you are absolutely right on-he was a controller with delusions of grandeur, an abuser of women with mob connections who was likely involved in murder a time or two...
YES! Especially since I haven't been very active plus I can't hold a candle to wagglebee in debate anyway.
The contracts with the state; the ceremony is with the clergy of your choice. The divorce is a matter of insuring a fair property distribution and care for the kids; that seems like a state matter to me.
Fine, hire a celebrant, clergy or otherwise to officiate at a non-religious marriage just don’t ask the state (by extension, you and me) to officiate or concur.
That means that anything goes, since all religions are go, including the new ones that would crop up, that is worst than the political challenge that we face now.
More importantly, you know very well that America is not going to change the laws to turn marriage into what you want, so why did libertarians create this artificial diversion in the first place?
Perhaps you have noticed what I have noticed, freerepublic never gets to discuss the conservative politics of how to fight gay marriage, instead all the threads for many months, get diverted into a useless and bizarre religious discussion started by????? libertarians.
Check the sign-up date of the person who posted this: 5/27/2014. Agenda?
I see the political aspect as a symptom, and as powerless to reverse deeper social ills. I was impressed (in a negative way) by the attitude and arrogance of law school professors and students to view "the law" as capable of holding society together. The law lacks that capability, but generally thinks it has that capability.
-- pretending that marriage will suddenly be voted on by Americans to be disappeared from our society and law, and become a totally private practice by those who belong to religions and cults and Mosques, is beyond silly. --
Those who are hell bent on destroying Western civ (although they see themselves as making it "better" "more tolerant" or some other such pap) are adept as using the institutions of law to further their goal. It is "the law" that is imposing homo marriage on the people.
I think you know the history of courts enough to be aware that marriage used to be (Olde England) enforced, etc. in ecclesiastical courts, essentially "church courts." The society operated with both civil and church courts, each with certain areas of competence and jurisdiction. I think it's obvious that this sort of split will inevitably have some "rough spots" where there is a question about which court is supposed to handle the issue; and so, the courts were combined. Well, the flip side of that is that the secular courts began to view themselves as sufficient glue to hold all of society together, and that "church" is not required. Anyway, agreeing with you, some court, be it secular court or church court, is always going to claim power over marriage.
-- In the meantime, the democrats and rinos/libertarians will be allowing gay marriage, with polygamy next if we don't get our political campaigns in order. --
The political campaigns are irrelevant. The judges are imposing this against the will of the majority. The politicians are NEVER going to remove those judges. Western Civ is a lost cause. Pass on what remnant you want to your kids. They will likely appreciate it.
They could call it that; but it wouldn't be a church of Christ.
The left's ultimate goal is to DESTROY marriage, not "marriage equality."
In the 1960s they started with the "free love" movement and over the next decade or so they succeeded in making divorce commonplace and "normalizing" cohabitation, premarital sex, out-of-wedlock babies, abortion, etc.
However, they eventually realized that orthodox Christians and Jews continued to get married and stay married. Then they realized that homosexuals could be used to destroy the sanctity of marriage by pushing same-sex marriage.
Just because the state has defined it doesn't mean it should be the one defining it. (i.e. just because some government agent claims the authority to do something does not mean that he has such authority.)
If it had been only private, then we would would not have had to wait until today to get gay marriage and polygamy.
You're argument is flawed, of course: the perfectly righteous has no need of a law, for the law is for the unrighteous.
If the general society is generally righteous then there is little need for [much] law, but increasing the number of laws does nothing to increase the general righteousness of the people, and in fact is counterproductive (See Jesus on traditions of the elders
).
If you really want to address the issue of homosexuality then the place to start is the heart, not the law.
(Fortunately, God is in the business of making clean the unclean, of making righteous the unrighteous — Isaiah 1:18)
“When did the state not define legal marriage in America?”
It always has and American law has roots in Christendom. American law derives from British common law. British common law goes back at least to the Doom Book of Alfred the Great circa AD 893. The Doom Book itself was compiled from the legal codes of the three Christian Saxon kingdoms of Wessex, Kent and Mercia.
You want to make it against the law for someone to be married by a Justice of the Peace, or for a Navy SEAL’s marriage to be recognized by the military?
That's because the libertarians realize that they can't just come out in favor of their liberal agenda, so they try to sidetrack the issue with innumerable red herrings.
Same sort of thing in Turkey. The "legal" marriage is done at the city building. Big ceremony, flowers and all that. Then, if the couple is so moved, they can have an imam come to the house and bless the marriage. The difference, of course, is that for many Christians marriage is a sacrament. Islam doesn't have any sacraments.
Oh yeah. I’ve been watching him for several hours now. Upthread I called him “new stuff”.
He posts very well. Very proficient for a newbie. Course they all say they’ve been lurking for years or that they lost their old password or whatever.
But usually they’re retread trolls.
lolol
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