I believe that the focus of the SSM discussion really should be on the institution of marriage itself - what is it?  What is it for?  Most importantly:  who owns it?

Some people would say that everyone owns it, in a sense.  Like all social institutions, marriage is constantly re-created by the millions and millions of people participating in it, by the millions of people not directly part of it but still part of the social matrix in which it is embedded, and even by the people who reject it (or are rejected by it). 

Some people would say that marriage is owned by the state - the state passes the laws that control it, the state certifies and administers the paperwork, the state maintains the legal apparatus that marriage falls under.

Some people would say that marriage is owned by the churches - the churches pass on the cultural and spiritual traditions under which we abide, and as mediators of those traditions it is they who control the institution.

I believe that the institution of marriage was created by God as a gift to humanity, and also as a partial check on our baser appetites.  The churches thus have considerable insight and a major role to play in setting the terms of the institution.  However, marriage is an individual sacrament, and so individual conscience and individual preference also comes into play.  The state's role is entirely based on convenience, not stewardship; we let the state handle the civil aspects of marriage in the United States because it is the easiest way of doing it.

Accordingly, I come to the conclusion (admittedly based on my own preference and my own beliefs, not any empirical data) that it is divine, natural, and church law that should control the institution of marriage.  The state should have little, if anything, to say about the matter, other than continuing to play its subservient role of doing the record-keeping and administering the law.

I believe that the religious institutions in our country need to take marriage back from the state.  The state didn't invent marriage, and we've gotten to the point in our national history where we don't want the state making moral decisions on its own.  It should instead follow the democratic process, and leave the moral questions to the population, where they aren't clearly delineated in our founding documents.  Marriage is sacramental; it has spiritual components that are far outside the competence of any government to presume to administer or manage.  It must be controlled by the religious institutions, subject to the consciences of the members of those institutions.

So what does this mean for the question of SSM?  If the churches control marriage, does that mean that homosexual marriage is out of the question?  Tune in to the next post for the answer.

Robert @ 16:48 | | | . | E-Mail This Post