Finally. Someone else has spoken up about this in a rational manner. I said this awhile back, only not quite as succinctly (that, and no one reads this blog who gives a rat’s patoot).

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.

One of the arguments against this idea of a contract based union is from Robert George, a Constitutional scholar:

“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 think that Mr. George may be falling prey to the very problem we seem to have with this whole marriage thing. He has a religious based idea in mind of marriage – it doesn’t seem to me that he is countering this in a purely legal and logical manner. By defining it in this way, he is essentially saying that gays can’t possibly nurture children or be “honest, decent law abiding people of goodwill.” The argument that children need both a mother and a father has some merit, yes. Quite a bit, in my opinion. That said, I can’t say that I don’t  know any gay couples who aren’t perfectly capable of raising a child to be a good, productive citizen and decent human being – just as I know several hetero couples who should never, ever have been raising children.

UPDATE:

Gabriel Malor over at Ace’s puts in his 2 cents. He is for civil unions and against dropping the term marriage for a state recognized union.

Look, you can’t have it both ways. Either marriage is important enough for society–most clearly represented by its laws–to encourage. Or it’s not. Taking away government recognition of marriage as it has been understood to operate for some time now can only ever be recognized as a retreat, a diminution in the status of marriage in the United States.

I agree with that point. Either it is important enough to save as “marriage” or it isn’t. Personally, I don’t think that we as a society are placing the same importance on it that we used to. Right or wrong, I think as a society we are now at the point where marriage is something that is done for 1) legal reasons and 2) sentimental and/or religious reasons. We have had stable family structures for years now that don’t involve marriage. And unstable ones that do. (Again, not saying that mom & dad isn’t the best way for kids to grow up.  The best way for kids to grow up is in a loving home where they are taught to be responsible adults. Period. )

But if you are doing it only for legal reasons why insult a religion by pretending to adhere to it long enough to tie the knot? And if you are doing it for religious reasons do it according to the doctrines of that faith. Don’t make the faith change to accomodate you.

Committed couples deserve equal legal rights whether they are religious or not. Churches shouldn’t be forced to accomodate people who don’t adhere to the tenets of their faith.

The argument is about the word and yes, words matter. But in this debate this word seems to matter most to those who want to force acceptance and approval and to those who see an assault on their faith.

Maybe I’m wrong, and I may be seeing this only though a narrow view but this is how I see it based on what I know as of now.

Tags: civil union, marriage

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 28th, 2009 at 9:20 pm and is filed under Current Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.