How to Resolve The Same-Sex Marriage Issue

The United States is a country founded on a principle of freedom by people who came here to escape religious persecution, and I firmly believe in defending that freedom.  The US founding fathers wanted to maintain a clear distinction between Church and State, and didn’t want to play favorites to any one religion, as doing so would be a slight to other religions.  You certainly wouldn’t want some other religion telling you what to do or some government doing it for them by proxy for lack of such a separation.  The Constitution guarantees you that freedom.

Freedom is a double-edged sword, though.  You want the freedom to mow your lawn on weekends, but your neighbors may want the freedom to sleep in without having to listen to your lawnmower.  In extreme cases, defending freedom sometimes means that you have to do things that you find personally abhorrent.  It’s part of our responsibility as mature, responsible, enlightened, forward-thinking citizens of the world.  After the Boston Massacre, John Adams felt so strongly in the rule of law that he defended in court the British soldiers involved, despite his personal feelings towards them, to ensure that they received a fair and impartial trial.  It’s comparatively easy to write a Constitution that assures people of various rights, but it requires a different degree of conviction to personally get involved as he did, alienating himself from the other patriots for quite some time.  They may not have seen his sacrifice as “patriotic,” but at that moment, they may have been having trouble seeing the forest for the trees.  (He was later elected president, so I guess they came around.)

So, here’s the rub with taking government out of the marriage business: different religions will come up with different rules pertaining to marriage.  While traditional heterosexual couples should continue to have no trouble finding priests to marry them, non-traditional couples will find priests to do the same for them.  I know I’m going to scare some people with this, but some threesomes and polygamists will also find priests to marry them, and if we redefine marriage as I’m suggesting, they, too, will be “married” in the eyes of their churches and their social circles.  If anyone thinks of themselves as married, or if their peers think of them as married should be of no consequence to you – you can take it or leave it, and it would be of no consequence to your government, so they wouldn’t get some special treatment that you feel should be reserved for people in your category.  If your Church only recognizes single-partner, heterosexual marriages, you can take solace in knowing that there will be no same-sex or polygamist marriages in your Church.  Pay no attention to how any other Church approaches the matter, in much the same way as you disregard all the other teachings, customs, and practices of Churches other than your own.  Their priests are not your priests, their holy days are not your holy days, and their bible is not your bible – why would your Church need to recognize their married congregants?

Anyone married or not would be able to enter into legal contracts to cover any or all of the arrangements that formerly were covered by default by marriage, and it would be those contracts (instead of a signed marriage license) that would grant the associated legal recognition.  The social recognition of marriage is already beyond the reach of government; this idea just acknowledges that preexisting condition.

If you have a better idea, I’ll listen, but if you agree that getting the government out of the marriage business is the fairest way to resolve this, share this idea with your friends and write to your elected officials.  Maybe we can get the government to stop wasting our tax dollars debating something that shouldn’t have fallen within their purview in the first place.