“It’s ridiculous! Forty-five dollars for a marriage license?”
I laughed off the complaint (even though I probably should have asked him “But I’m worth it, right?”) when my husband and I went to get our marriage license shortly before our wedding, but now that I’ve had time to give it a little more thought, I can definitely understand his annoyance. Admittedly, I’m usually the one complaining about the state ignoring the wall between itself and church, so hearing it from him was a little odd. He’s far more conservative than I am, but I think he might actually be getting my point about Christianity and the state today.
There’s plenty of heated debates going around about who may (or may not) get married these days, but one thing hasn’t been mentioned. Should the government be in the marriage business in the first place?
Amidst the cries about the sanctity of marriage, something inside me constantly screams back “What is so sacred about a check box on our tax returns?” Like so many hot button issues brought up by the religious right (and others), there really aren’t any purely secular arguments that justify the government having a blasted thing to do with marriage.
Last month, my husband and I stood on the altar of our church and took our vows. The only governmental representatives there were the various police officers in our wedding party and amongst our guests. Before our minister introduced us to our guests as husband and wife she didn’t say “Wait a minute folks. I’ve got to sign the Marriage License first to make this legal.” She also didn’t call us “the soon to be married couple since we have to wait for the county to receive the paperwork.” Also, the minister didn’t say the marriage was “consecrated by God, and by the way, the State, too.”
What people fail to realize is that the whole debate centers around verbal expediency. The State adopted the term “marriage” from religion. At the time, it probably seemed like a logical choice, and in spite of any ambivalent feelings that the Founders may have had about Christianity in general, they didn’t foresee what we are faced with today. (For that matter, I suspect that they hoped that future generations would have at least a modicum of common sense!)
We live in Pennsylvania, the Quaker State, and the Quakers were probably the only ones who really got it right. Marriage is a covenant between two people. It is between them, and their God (if they so choose to believe in one) – not the couple and the government. A compromise of sorts was struck in our Commonwealth for the sake of the Quakers, and to this day, couples may choose to either have an officiant perform their ceremony, or they may take their vows with just two witnesses.
Back to the issue with the marriage license fees, I asked my husband if he was still so adamant in his belief that the government should forbid same sex marriages. He still balks at the concept of gays in general, but I think that he’s started to see the point that the state really has no business butting into the relationships between the people and their churches. That is precisely what such legislation would do. It would remove the ability of any church in this country to choose whether or not to recognize same sex marriages. It would in essence force the belief systems of those who oppose such unions on everyone. How anyone can call that something other than infringement on freedom of religion, I don’t know what is.
Tags: Civil Unions, Freedom of Religion, Marriage, Marriage Equality
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