THE MEANINGS OF MARRIAGE
by Forrest Church
Feb. 22, 2004
“ All Men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness.”John Adams wrote these words in the 1780 “Declaration of Rights” that opens the Massachusetts Constitution, the oldest constitution in the world still in active use. I came across them last month while putting together a new book, The Separation of Church and State: Writings on Religious Freedom by America’s Founders. We are bringing it out quickly in hopes that the founders’ words may temper and help define what promises to be the wedge issue in this year’s presidential campaign—not church-state separation alone, but the larger struggle over how we best can protect and extend our nation’s essential values.
Here are a few of the questions people today are wrestling with. Should a judge be permitted to exercise his freedom of religion by posting the Ten Commandments in his courtroom? Are “faith-based” initiatives appropriate when generated out of the White House? Under the Constitution, can state or federal prisoners be organized according to faith and given special privileges for spiritual achievement? Should we restore the Pledge of Allegiance to its original language by removing the phrase, “under God?” Is there a place for any kind of prayer in the public schools? Does church-state separation discriminate against religion, or, to the contrary, is organized religion increasingly trespassing on secular ground? Finally, and perhaps the most divisive and explosive question of all: should homosexual Americans receive the same legal rights as their heterosexual neighbors, including the right to marry?
With this morning’s worship service falling half-way between Valentine’s Day and the All Souls Interweave Convocation that will take place next weekend—with the backdrop of hundreds of Gay weddings taking place in San Francisco and a pitched battle over marriage rights for all in the Massachusetts legislature— it seems right to address the marriage question. Before beginning, let me say this. I am personally proud to be associated with a denomination that for years has taken the lead among all religious communions in celebrating, affirming, and promoting “the inherent worth and dignity of every person; justice, equity, and compassion in human relations; and, mutual acceptance.” Our very name, Unitarian Universalist, twice emphasizes the preeminence of unity over all distinctions that divide us. As is this nation, our religious union too is predicated on the principle of e pluribus unum, out of many, one.
Lets begin right there, with the founders, since their vision for America is, or should be, one touchstone for our aspirations as a people. Clearly, the founders had other things than same sex unions in mind when they founded the nation. Nonetheless, they pledged themselves and our new country to a set of overarching ideals. These ideals, in turn, challenge subsequent generations, including our own, to elevate our deeds to the level of what I call the American Creed. In fact, America’s moral history is the gradual approximation of deed to creed. And how far we have traveled? Quite a distance. Among other things, over the years our march of moral progress has led from legally sanctioned racism and sexism toward ever more color-blind Civil Rights and the gradual establishment of equal rights for women.
Not that it’s been easy. Each new chapter we write to conform American practice with American ideals is rife with contention. The founders’ memory is invoked and the Bible quoted. Invoked and quoted in favor of slavery. Invoked and quoted in opposition to giving women the right to vote. So are they again invoked today. Arguments raised today by advocates for a so-called return to the values upon which the United States of America was founded are perhaps the clearest reminder that we must revisit our early history to recover—and thereby keep from betraying—the founders’ original script.
You will find the heart of this script in the preamble to Declaration of Independence. It emphatically proclaims, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.” Citing as his authority “nature and nature’s God,” Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration’s principal draftsman, established for liberty and equality an unquestioned metaphysic, grounded in nature itself as part of the Creator’s plan. The founders’ admittedly idealistic goal was to establish a nation true to the spirit of divine law, a spirit some understood in Christian terms and others according to the canons of Enlightenment philosophy. These two streams met to affirm the dual imperatives of equality and liberty.
To protect the latter and enhance the former, the Constitution has been amended several times. The First Amendment provides for separation of church and state and freedom of speech. The Fourteenth Amendment establishes equal protection under law. The Nineteenth Amendment extends the voting franchise to all citizens, regardless of sex. You will note that each of these amendments expands the letter of the law to reflect the spirit of the founders’ ideals—the spirit of liberty for all and equality under the law. Over the years, groups have proposed amendments to abridge that spirit—to impose Christian language on the Constitution, for instance, or, with respect to abortion, to eliminate a woman’s freedom to choose. Such amendments—amendments restricting or withdrawing as opposed to those expanding our liberties—have always, always failed. And so will they continue to fail, as long as we remain true to the founders’ vision.
I don’t mean to suggest that everyone should feel as I do about marriage between members of the same sex. Not even in this church. This is as much an emotional issue for many people as it is an intellectual one. Marriage is as vivid a Rorshach as any I can think of. And expanding the marriage franchise does mark a clear break from past practice, to us as dramatic a break as the abolition of slavery was to earlier generations of Americans, or, the extension of equal rights to women. There is even a sharp divide on the political right with respect to this issue. All Souls member David Blankenhorn, Executive Director of the Institute for American Values, is leading a 70-member coalition of marriage advocates endorsing President Bush’s pro-marriage proposals. Earlier this week USA Today quotes him as saying, “How do you speak about same-sex marriage in a way that respects the diversity of opinion in our ranks? Some of us are for gay marriage, some are against it, and some are morally anguished fence-sitters.” From a Family Values standpoint, one could eloquently argue in favor of marriage—all types of marriage—as providing a more stable social and cultural alternative to more promiscuous relationships.
My goal this morning, however, is to focus the question of gay marriage more sharply in terms of America’s dedication to the principle of church-state separation. In the church, marriage is a sacrament; in the state, it is a contract. The rules for one do not necessarily obtain for the other.
Historically marriage has been solemnized in two very different kinds of ceremony, civil and religious. Ironically, the American Puritans, who were allergic to sacraments, were the ones who imported the tradition of civil marriage to this country from Holland, where the Pilgrims (among other religious dissidents) first encountered it. Though civil marriage continued to be established by law in this nation, the distinction between civil and religious ceremonies quickly became blurred, with either clergy or justices of the peace vested by the state with authority to celebrate a wedding. This leaves the impression of the government embracing not only sanctioning the religious sacrament of marriage. By way of contrast, in France, where the old European practice survives, all marriages must be contracted first in a civil ceremony at a town or city hall. Not until more than forty days later can a religious, and completely separate, wedding take place. The former civil ceremony is required, the latter religious one is optional.
Our distinguishing between civil and religious marriage may be helpful in sorting out the legal issues bearing on same-sex marriage today. Religious marriage is a sacrament. Think back on what happened to King Henry VIII. Because the Pope, under Catholic law, would not sanction the marriage of divorced Catholics and Henry had long since used up his allotment of sanctioned annulments, Henry had a choice. He could either remarry or remain in the church. Being King he chose a third option. He formed a new church that would operate with slightly less stiff rules. But his story still has relevance. Divorced Catholics who remarry are forbidden from receiving the sacrament at Mass. Some of them leave the church. Some become Unitarian. But no one questions the right of the Catholic teaching authority to set its own rules for the sacrament of marriage or to require its members to abide by them.
The same holds true for any church. That marriage contracts should be made available by the state to all couples regardless of gender does not mean that churches must solemnize them. On the other hand, the state, which has procedures for divorce, doesn’t recognize Catholic or Jewish Orthodox religious annulments. Nor should it. The latter are a religious matter purely; they have no bearing in civil law.
To the government, marriage is not a sacrament; it is a contract. As others before us have fought government sponsored contracts that favored some citizens over others, some people today are beginning to question the features restricting civil marriage. Laws that forbid members of the same sex to establish partnerships equal in status to those long solemnized by the government between men and women are increasingly being questioned—rightly I believe. New York City, for instance, has a rather liberal domestic partnership law that grants to same-sex partners some, but certainly not all, the rights heterosexual couples enjoy. Nonetheless, Gay couples here and elsewhere continue to be denied such things as federal Social Security and survivor pension benefits. Some of the various civil union proposals passed or pending do permit joint filing of tax returns, adoption privileges, and giving partners a say in medical decisions, but almost all fall short of providing the full rights under law granted to married couples. That is what the court that ruled in Massachusetts has argued: under the Massachusetts constitution, such discrimination is illegal. The same argument would prevail, I believe, if it were to be tested in the courts of New York City. Nowhere in Article 3 of the New York City Code (the article that defines the requirements and procedures for entering into marriage) is there any reference to the gender of the respective partners in a pending marriage. Even in those states where gender requirements are made specific, however, the nation’s over-arching principles of liberty and equality would seem to argue against continuing exclusion of same-sex couples from enjoying equal rights to marriage.The nation understandably is split on this question. Some support Civil Unions but not Gay Marriage, which I can understand as a transitional position, but doubt that the courts should or will finally accept. In a semantically correct world, all civil marriages would be defined as civil unions, with the sacrament of marriage solemnized by each religion as it saw fit. This is not, however, a semantically correct world. As it is, one of two things is most likely to happen. Either one state after another will slowly expand the marriage franchise to all citizens regardless of their partners’ gender or a proposed constitutional amendment will preclude the states from so doing and reverse such laws as have earlier been established.
My guess is this. We will remain true to the progressive arc of the founders’ vision and not, for the first time, mandate new constitutional strictures that would lead to greater inequality. I believe this because the American people are a conservative people. We don’t change the Constitution lightly. And we are also—using this word as the founders themselves did—a liberal people: dedicated to the overarching principles of liberty and justice for all.
The question remains, will Gays being married undermine the institution of marriage itself? I can’t exactly see how. No one is going to force you to marry another person of the same sex if you don’t want to. No one is going to force a priest perform the sacrament of marriage for any couple who don’t qualify under the rules of his faith. As for the state of marriage in the nation today—a subject worthy of social concern— until we allow them to get married in the first place, it seems a bit of a stretch to blame Gays for a rise in the divorce rate. Actually, if marriage is a good, stabilizing, nurturing thing for straight people I can’t imagine that it won’t be good, stabilizing and nurturing for Gays.
Let me close with a theological point. Two hundred years ago, when the Universalist gospel began to spread like wildfire across this country, its success was above all do to the saving logic of a single doctrine. It goes like this. “God is love. God loves all God’s Children. And all children are God’s children. Which means that everyone, when the last trump sounds, will be saved.” For a time the Universalist Church was the fastest growing church in America. But then something happened. The Mainline Christian bodies struck Hell from their liturgical and theological menus and an entire generation of backsliders returned. That is to say, the Universalists lost because the Universalists won.
Today, our Unitarian Universalist faith has long since taken the lead among all other denominations with respect to Gay rights. We have hundreds of openly Gay ordained clergy. We have solemnized thousands of Gay union services. It is right that we should once again take the lead with regard to extending the full rights and privileges of marriage to all our citizens. Maybe, as we express our solidarity ever more openly, our churches will even grow. But we shall know that we have won, when gay weddings are being celebrated not only in Unitarian and Metropolitan Churches but across many denominations, a day, given the speed with which the Gay rights movement has progressed in this nation, that cannot be far off. Yet, in this instance, that is not the highest goal. Whom other faiths choose to include in the sacrament of marriage is entirely their business. Their freedom of religion no less than our own, we are committed, as Unitarians and as Americans, to honor.
The highest goal relates not to the marriage sacrament, but to the marriage contract. With respect to civil marriage, with respect to equal protection under law and the liberty and equality enshrined in our nation’s founding ideals, we should not rest until the rights of all our citizens are honored and respected.
I expect that our children and grandchildren will look back on this debate with the same puzzlement that we bring to the resistance some of our ancestors met when they campaigned for emancipation or women’s suffrage. But I would pray for this. I would pray that they, seeing us in the vanguard of those fighting for human rights in our own time, might be inspired to do the same in their time too. I would pray that they would rise up to fight the scourge of some prejudice that we don’t even recognize, so blinded are we by our participation in it. And I would pray that they would bring to this struggle the same spirit that the nation’s founders and our Unitarian Universalist forbears and we ourselves did—in order that that they too might have the privilege of perfecting the noble experiment of growing freedom and equality that we know as the United States of America.
Amen. I love you. May God Bless us All.