Stop Asking Uncle Sam to Officiate Your Wedding

Ryan Anderson rightly focuses on the role of language when it comes to defining marriage. Unfortunately, he himself is speaking a religious language of marriage—as a monogamous relationship between one male and one female—that has rapidly lost modern meaning—and is likely offensive to same sex couples who also prize monogamy.

What if conservatives, in the spirit of Anderson’s emphasis on language, changed the terms of debate and took marriage out of the hands of secular government? Same-sex marriage advocates have been enormously successful in staging a legal fight. And, by and large, they have been persuasive in arguing that our ostensibly neutral, liberal republic should not discriminate against certain unions when granting marriage licenses. Of course, this has been anathema to many social conservatives, who believe our government cannot and should not be neutral on what is, fundamentally, a moral question. But perhaps it’s the fault of conservatives for ever having ceded marriage to state legislatures, rather than the private, sanctified realm of churches. I’d argue that trends like no-fault divorce and children born outside of marriage are the logical outcomes when marriage is viewed as a legalistic hurdle rather than a sacred bond.

We should never have assumed that Uncle Sam could adequately officiate weddings to begin with.

I concur with John Zmirak at the American Conservative that Christians should stop pretending that legal marriage is the equivalent of a sacred covenant. I propose that, for bureaucratic purposes, state governments grant all interested couples–traditional or same sex–a civil union. Meanwhile, marriage ought to be the purview of churches. Certainly some more progressive congregations will marry same-sex couples. And it seems likely that the Catholic Church, Muslims, Orthodox Jews, and more conservative Protestant faiths will continue to uphold a traditional definition. Regardless, couples will understand that in order to be truly “married”, they must engage with serious theology and decide upon a church. This will likely prove messy for congregations who have tried to sidestep the marriage controversy, but so be it. I’d rather this debate occur on theological rather than legalistic grounds.  Too many people assume that marriage is a matter of phoning the local justice of the peace. This solution might encourage more people to call up their pastor and return to the pews.