The State should do away with marriage. Huh? I think it's time.
We have a tradition in this nation of conferring certain rights, benefits, and obligations on two people who have decided to be "officially" committed to each other. That is the tradition we call "marriage" today. That tradition exists within the realm of one male and one female, but the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment makes that tradition problematic in my view.
When my wife and I got married, we stood before a priest and our closest friends and relatives and promised to "love, honor, and cherish" each other as "long as we both shall live". At the end of the ceremony, we went up to the front of the church and signed our marriage certificate, as did the officiant, and our witnesses. The certificate was then filed with the state. The question I want to ask, in the light of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) case, is why? Why did this religious ceremony in which two people promised to be faithful to each other before God, get muddled up with the State? Where is that separation of Church and State when we really need it, anyway?
I think our government needs to abolish marriage and do it at the Federal level, because, as we know, the rights, benefits, and obligations currently afforded married people stem from the Federal Government. After all, isn't that what plaintiff Edie Windsor, is actually suing about? It's the rights, benefits, and obligations that typically accrue to married people from the laws of the State that she is concerned with, isn't it? So, instead, "marriage" in the eyes of the State will be replaced by a "commitment contract" between two people. You show up at your local post office, fill out a form, both parties provide government issued identification, sign the document, pay a small fee, and they are officially "committed" to one another. No "love, honor, and cherish", no "'til death do us part". A witness signs the document which states that both parties entered into the contract of their own free will. "What the State has joined together, let no man put asunder", without a second document dissolving the contract along with the payment of a small fee, and an appearance of the parties before a judge to adjudicate cases involving children, division of possessions, "partner" (formerly "spousal") support, etc. Two men, two women, a man and a woman, it doesn't matter. It satisfies the requirements of the government's interest in protecting the contract between two individuals, the religious, the irreligious, everyone and anyone. And by doing this at the Federal level, it solves the problem of the differences in the recognition of traditional marriage from state to state.
So in the case of my wife and me, when our ceremony was over, we would have left and gone to our reception and the State would have been none the wiser and, in fact, wouldn't care one whit. Either before the ceremony or after, we would have gone to the post office and signed our commitment contract. It would be at that moment that those rights, benefits, and obligations would kick in, the same as they would for Edie Windsor and Thea Spyer. Every couple who wants to then, forms a "civil union", even one man and one woman, and those that choose to pledge their troth before God, and have a church that will perform the ceremony, may do so as well. We render to Caesar those things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's. Isn't that the way it's supposed to be?
Now, what happens when three or four or five people want to make their own commitment contract? Well, that is a subject for another day ....
