WASHINGTON —- Are
10 little words — “By the power vested in me by the
state of ...” — the most crucial phrase in the culture
war involving gay marriage?
They are some of the most significant powers delegated to a
member of the clergy, when acting for both God and country, he
or she pronounces a couple to be married as husband and wife.
But any couple who has ever filed a joint tax return will tell
you it is the civil marriage license, not the minister or rabbi’s
blessing, that entitles them to the legal benefits of marriage.
So if marriage is essentially a civil contract, shouldn’t
a couple be singing — the Dixie Cups’ 1958 standard
notwithstanding — that they’re going to City Hall,
and not the chapel, if they are “gonna get married?”
“We don’t ask the state’s permission to do
confirmations, baptisms or funerals, so why should we ask the
state’s blessing to do weddings?” asked the Rev. Christopher
Webber, vicar of Christ (Episcopal) Church in Canaan, CT.
Since 1994, when he published Re-inventing Marriage,
Webber has argued for a separation of church and state when it
comes to marriage. There is no good reason, he said, to confuse
civil marriage with holy matrimony.
Proponents of gay marriage agree. Long ago they set aside dreams
of church bells and flower-covered altars to focus instead on
the legal document that conveys the rights and responsibilities
of marriage.
They also point to places like Sweden, France and Japan, where
newlyweds pursue both sacred and secular nupitals as a matter
of routine.
Defenders of traditional marriage, meanwhile, argue that marriage
will be forever harmed if either church or state is granted sole
custody.
“One of the strengths of marriage is that it combines
the two,” said Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, co-director of the
National Marriage Project at Rutgers University. “To have
this kind of splitting off weakens our understanding of what we
have held marriage to be for centuries.”
A small but growing number of clergy — mostly from liberal
mainline Protestant churches — say they feel uncomfortable
granting state approval to marriages, especially if they cannot
also bless gay unions.
“There are many people, myself included, who feel uncomfortable
acting as an agent of the state when we as pastors are asked to
sign marriage licenses,” said the Rev. Lois Powell, a team
leader in the Justice and Witness division of the United Church
of Christ.
“A marriage is a legal, civil agreement between two people.
The role of the church is to offer blessing to relationships.”
Back in 2000, Episcopal Bishop Mary Adelia McLeod of Vermont
said the church should relinquish its role in weddings unless
it was given equal jurisdiction in granting divorces.
“The clergy of our church should be agents of God’s
blessing,” said the now-retired bishop, “and not agents
of the state.”
In San Francisco, Unitarian Universalist the Rev. Margot Campbell
Gross recently signed her first marriage license in seven years
— to a gay couple — after she joined several dozen
UUA ministers in boycotting marriage licenses until gay couples
can legally wed.
Just where did this church-state marriage of convenience come
from? The answer, it turns out, has been after a tumultuous courtship.
Historically, churches did not get into the marriage business
until the Middle Ages. But in the 16th century, Protestant reformer
Martin Luther argued against marriage as a church-approved sacrament,
and threw it back into the civil sphere.
America’s earliest pioneers were church-state purists.
The Rev. Peter Gomes, pastor of Harvard University’s Memorial
Church, noted that the Pilgrims who arrived in 1621 didn’t
authorize religious marriage until 1692.
“The civil law is just that, and the distinction between
it and ecclesiastical law is as important as the necessary distinction
between church and state,” he said in a recent op-ed published
in The Boston Globe.
Even though the Pilgrims imported Luther’s belief in civil
marriage to America, marriage has never been an either/or institution,
said John Witte, director of the Center for the Interdisciplinary
Study of Religion at Emory University and author of From Sacrament
to Contract: Marriage, Religion and Law in the Western Tradition.
“Marriage is a spiritual association, a natural association,
a private contract and a social estate,” he said. “Those
four corners were considered to be four dimensions of an institution
that was multilayered.”
Don Browning, who headed the Religion, Culture and Family Project
at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School, said marriage
is intimately tied to notions of sexuality, intimacy, parenthood
and mutual support that neither side has fully considered.
Browning, who takes a rather dim view of gay marriage, said
gay marriage could boost the importance of marriage by expanding
it, or belittle it by watering it down. It’s a discussion
that he said, until now, has been “abysmal.”
“That’s the underlying discussion that will feed
the legal, religious, political decisions that will have to be
made,” he said. “But so far, I don’t think it’s
happening very well.”
Adelle M. Banks contributed to this story. |
