A LOT OF HOT AIR      

The debate in the Senate has ended for now. But that (purportedly) hot debate over a constitutional amendment concerning marriage was, in the final analysis, simply a lot of hot air mixed, of course, with the usual sanctimoniousness and political grandstanding of the debaters involved – on both sides of the debate. The truth is that the government doesn’t care about marriage. If it did, this debate would not have been needed.

     For what the government now sanctions may be called “marriage”, in reality it is a legal contract between two people who are of lawful age and with the freedom to enter into such a contract. That means they are not already under contract with someone else. And, of course, this legal contract dubbed “marriage” is between one male and one female, except in Massachusetts, which has given the impetus for this debate in the first place.

     That said, some explanation is needed. I am authorized representative of the State government, for it is the State that regulates this type of contract. All I am required to do, once the two people who wish to enter into this contract present it to me, is witness their and their two witnesses’ signing of that piece of paper. I then sign it and send it to the courthouse where it is then entered into the records as a legal contract. In the future were the two who entered this contract to decide they want out, they need to hire a lawyer to break the legal bonds and a judge to decide who gets what possessions attained and who is responsible for any child or children produced and how so.

     The State does not require any pre-marital instructions. It does not require any verbal exchange of consent. It does not demand that the couple knows and understands the commitment they are about to make. It does not want to know if they love each other. All the State wants to know is if the couple is of age and free to “marry.” The Church demands all of the above.

     For the State, let alone the federal government, to elevate what happens when a couple signs that legal document to the realm of marriage is, in many ways, a travesty, even sacrilegious. It is simply a civil union, no more and no less. Remember Brittany Spears and her “24-Hour Marriage” to an old high school friend? As brief as it was, it was still and only a civil union that needed a lawyer to annul or invalidate. But it was no marriage even if the State of Nevada named it as such, as it certainly did.

     Given the difference between what the State requires and the Church requires, to name what happens in the eyes of the State as a “marriage” is simply wrong and to constitutionalize it won’t change that reality. As a representative of the Church I don’t marry anyone. (That would be bigamy given the fact that I am already married.) I bless and all of us in attendance give witness to and pray for the two who are performing the marriage, for it is the couple who, because of their love for each other, does the marrying.

     If Congress or the State does not want to allow those of the same sex to enter into a civil union, they have that power. But to deny that opportunity or perhaps that right on the pretext that it will somehow destroy the sanctity of marriage is simply a lot of hot air.

                                                                                                                  WJP