Marriage: Civil vs. Religious

By Gary Konecky

In the United States, we have two forms of marriage.

The first is civil marriage. Civil marriage is a legal contract between the people getting married and it is governed by the laws of the various jurisdictions that make-up the United States. This is the reason that even if you are being married in a house of worship you must first get a marriage license. This is also the reason that in the unfortunate event of divorce (regardless of your religion) you must go to court to be issued a divorce decree.

The second is religious marriage, which is governed by the laws, rules, and traditions of the various faiths. As the Untied States has a separation of church and state, the government allows clergy of all faith traditions to marry people. When a member of the clergy performs a wedding, that couple is wedded in the religious sense and the legal sense.

If a couple decides they want to be civilly married legally only, they have the option of a marriage at city hall or before a justice of the peace. The beauty of this is that those who want a religious marriage can have what they want. Those who want a civil marriage can have what they want. Best of all, no one is forced to do anything that they do not want to do. If a Roman Catholic priest does not want to marry a gay male couple, there is no law that says he has to. If a Unitarian Church minister wants to marry a lesbian couple, she should be allowed to.

Some people have messed with this system. They have acted on their religious, moral, or political beliefs to seek to impose their point of view on all Americans. By doing this, they actively interfere with other people's ability to practice their faith. A similar issue had come up previously, when people of different races where not allowed to marry in certain jurisdictions. Ultimately, the US Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia (1967) ruled this was unconstitutional. Sadly, the issue of whom the government will allow to be married is back again. This time the issue is back in the debate, political campaigns, legislation, constitutional amendments and court battles over same sex marriages.

The argument made by religious people is it is against the bible or that marriage has always been this way. Such an argument is in error. One need only look at Abraham who had a concubine and a wife. In the case of Jacob, he had two wives and two concubines. In the case of Solomon, he had 700 wives and 300 concubines.

Then there are the compromises such as civil union and domestic partners. This brings us back to the segregation of the South, where colored people were treated as separate but equal. Separate but equal turned out to be anything but equal and it took a long, painful and sometimes bloody civil rights movement to fix that. Just as separate but equal did not work then, there is no reason to expect it to work now. Proof of this can be found in the state of New Jersey, which has civil unions. New Jersey had a state commission review the Legal, Medical, Economic and Social Consequences of New Jersey’s Civil Union Law. The commission’s report catalogs an impressive series of failures of the law to provide the equal benefits of marriage that legislators claimed the law would provide. New Hampshire, which had civil unions for approximately two years, has changed its civil union law into a same sex marriage law and will automatically convert all civil unions to marriages in 2011. Those who wish to convert their civil unions into marriages can do so now without waiting to 2011.

Every faith tradition should be allowed to marry or not marry any couple they choose. Every clergy person should have the right to marry or not marry any couple they choose. For politicians and religious leaders to impose their view and their faith tradition on those not of that belief or faith tradition is just plan un-American.