Rod Dreher thinks the fight to stop same-sex marriage is lost. I think he is wrong about that but Rod is annoyed that Glenn Beck—who has thrown in the towel on marriage, maybe he never had the towel in the first place—gets things so wrong about marriage and the law and the consequences of homosexual marriage to religious communities.
His idea that churches (and Orthodox synagogues, and mosques) are going to be untouched by SSM is fantasy. Marriage law affects a myriad of other laws, and there is an unavoidable encroachment on religious liberty. This will be sorted out in the courts, but the real and serious and consequential conflicts do not disappear because one declares them non-existent.
And this . . .
This idea that the government should not be involved in marriage is wholly unrealistic; our entire society, including much of our legal framework, is built around the concept of marriage. For example, if the government did not recognize marriage (in whatever form), the constitutional protection spouses have against being compelled to testify in court against their spouses would be meaningless.
December 12th, 2012 | 4:51 pm
This really isn’t “going wobbly.” The deregulation position is standard libertarian fare, and even though the result is equality under the law, it’s not “pro gay marriage” necessarily, it’s just anti-government marriage.
December 13th, 2012 | 4:10 am
Marriage serves a vital state interest. The state has a clear interest in the filiation of children being clear, certain and incontestable. It is central to its concern for the upbringing and welfare of the child, for protecting rights and enforcing obligations between family members and to the orderly succession to property. To date, no better, simpler, less intrusive means than marriage have been found for ensuring, as far as possible, that the legal, biological and social realities of paternity coincide.
It is, perhaps, worth recalling that it was during the French Revolution that the same Assembly that had just turned ten million landless peasants into heritable proprietors first introduced mandatory civil marriage, on 9 November 1791. The saw in the two rules, “the child conceived or born in marriage has the husband for father” and “the investigation of paternity is forbidden” a vital security to inheritance and property rights.
December 13th, 2012 | 11:47 am
Does Beck think people should be allowed to have sex with his wife? To marry a sibling or child?
And Dreher is worse than useless. He seems to think the Constitution CALLS for Congress to make laws respecting the free exercize of religion.
December 13th, 2012 | 1:24 pm
John Howard
“He seems to think the Constitution CALLS for Congress to make laws respecting the free exercize of religion.”
I fancy what he has in mind is that Congress and State legislatures should include exemptions in laws of “general applicability” (vide Employment Division v Smith) such as anti-discrimination and public accommodation laws.
December 13th, 2012 | 2:35 pm
Perhaps part of a solution/approach is offered by the following:
http://vlogicusinsight.wordpress.com/2012/12/13/same-sex-marriage-and-true-sacramental-marriage/
December 13th, 2012 | 4:13 pm
DB, I only skimmed that, but it seems to be saying let civil marriage be given to same-sex couples, and let churches use a new term “sacremental marriage” – no that won’t do at all. The rights of civil legal state marriage should always approve and allow the conception of offspring and sexual intercourse. That’s what it has always meant. We should not give that approval to same-sex couples, who do not have a right to conceive offspring with each other, and should be prohibited from conceiving offspring together. Churches and everyone else would not need to change their terms. What we could do is have state Civil Unions that are defined as “marriage minus conception rights” which would be available to couples that don’t have the right to conceive offspring and are prohibited from attempting it (or who just don’t want that approval).
December 13th, 2012 | 4:15 pm
Micheal PS, but if he wants Congress to say that establishments of religion are exempt from some law, that’s prohibited by the first amendment.
December 13th, 2012 | 6:22 pm
John Howard:
Please review the article more carefully, and you will see that a new definition is not recommended. Instead, a greater emphasis on what constitutes a true marriage is the key, and a true marriage is a sacramental marriage.
Secularists can play games with the lone term “marriage,” but they cannot do so with the explicitly defined and emphasized sacramental marriage.
God Bless!
DB
December 13th, 2012 | 11:50 pm
DB, I’m a secularist and I don’t want anyone playing games with the lone term “marriage.” I want the lone term marriage to be reserved for a man and a woman with a right to have sex and conceive offspring together. Anyone can use “sacramental marriage” to refer to something, I don’t care.
December 14th, 2012 | 3:50 am
John Howard wrote, “but if he wants Congress to say that establishments of religion are exempt from some law, that’s prohibited by the first amendment.”
In Employment Division v Smith, the Supreme court thought otherwise: “It is therefore not surprising that a number of States have made an exception to their drug laws for sacramental peyote use. See, e. g., Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. 13-3402(B)(1)-(3) (1989); Colo. Rev. Stat. 12-22-317(3) (1985); N. M. Stat. Ann. 30-31-6(D) (Supp. 1989). But to say that a nondiscriminatory religious-practice exemption is permitted, or even that it is desirable, is not to say that it is constitutionally required, and that the appropriate occasions for its creation can be discerned by the courts. It may fairly be said that leaving accommodation to the political process will place at a relative disadvantage those religious practices that are not widely engaged in; but that unavoidable consequence of democratic government must be preferred to a system in which each conscience is a law unto itself or in which judges weigh the social importance of all laws against the centrality of all religious beliefs.”
December 14th, 2012 | 12:21 pm
I don’t think that peyote case would apply here, religious peyote use is such a marginal issue. Besides no state is saying that religions can’t have their own ceremonies surrounding marriage with their own qualifications for the ceremony, such as both people being in the church or something.
And more importantly, that is a terrible response to the issue. We should not let the legal meaning of marriage lose the right to have sex and conceive offspring together, and we should not give that right to same-sex couples. Religions won’t have to worry about same-sex marriages if there aren’t any.
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