The Health Care Reform Debate

The debate over health care reform is drawing to a close. Therefore, now seems a good time to review the debate and to ask the questions that were overlooked while the debate was happening.

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.

Same Sex Marriage

Same Sex Marriage

An Open Letter to Every Politician in the United States

The issue of same sex marriage is a simple issue. Same sex marriage is about; fairness, justice, human dignity and respect for that dignity. It is about standing before friends, family and loved ones and publicly stating your commitment to: love, honor, care for another human being. It is about having that person, who you love with all your heart; make that same commitment to you.

It is also about civil rights and legal rights, such as the right to inherit property, the right to make funeral arrangements for a loved one. It is about the right to visit someone in a hospital. It is about the right to help make medical decisions about the only person in the world whose life matters more than your own life.

We have a word for that commitment, the word is marriage, not civil union, not domestic partnership; only one word means all this and that word is marriage. We have only one word for that one special person in our lives and that word is spouse. No other word comes close, not domestic partner, not significant other, not any other term.

Our laws are written using the terms marriage and spouse. The many contracts we enter into during our lives, including but not limited to employment contracts, are written using the terms marriage and spouse. Our relationships are defined using the terms marriage and spouse.

Civil union is not the same as marriage. Civil union is well intentioned, but despite its intentions, it is an insult. Civil union and domestic partnership say that the state does not recognize our same sex loving relations as being equal to those of heterosexuals. Because our relationships are not equal, we are not equal. This is an insult to every gay man and lesbian.

For you the issue is moral courage, the challenge to do the right thing in the face of uncertain consequences. Organized religion cannot help guide you. The Unitarian Church, the United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church, the Reform and Reconstructist branches of Judaism, and many other religions and religious leaders support same sex marriage. On the other side, there are vocal religions leaders who oppose same sex civil marriage. Therefore, religion does not have an unequivocal viewpoint that can guide you.

The proposed law allowing all loving adult couples to marry does not require any religion, and does not require any religious leader, to act against his or her or their understanding of G-d’s will. It merely grants the option of marrying to all those adult couples who wish to do so. Nobody is being forced to do anything.

Furthermore, one’s marriage is diminished if another loving couple is granted the right to marry. There is no limit to the number of marriages that can be performed, so that and if a same sex couple gets one then a heterosexual couple cannot. Mr. And Mrs. Smith’s marriage is not threatened, nor is it diminished, if Mr. and Mrs. Jones get married, so how can their marriage be hurt if Mr. and Mr. Jones get married?

I call upon you to show moral courage, to stand for fairness and justice, to stand for equality under the law. I call upon you to live up to the idea this country is founded upon, the idea “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”