DOMA vs. the divine

I read yesterday in the New York Times that the U.S. Justice Dept. will no longer defend the indefensible Defense of Marriage Act. I'm glad for this (small) step, and hope that it will lead to larger ones, like the federal government's  fully recognizing all legal marriages.

Marriage has been a civil institution for probably longer than it's been a religious institution, because the purposes of marriage as an institution are primarily civil -- keeping the property in the family and knowing who was entitled to inherit it. There is no actual religious purpose (i.e., nothing that makes one a better practitioner of any faith) served by marriage. Of course the church's  (especially the Roman Catholic church's) purpose of making more members is served by having people married in the church, but that's really a secular purpose -- power and self-perpetuation -- not a religious one per se.

For perhaps a couple of centuries in the West the idea of marriage for love has gained widespread currency, though in many cases marriage was more about power and position for the well-to-do and about survival for the poor, especially in rural areas.

It is true that the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament have some things to say about marriage, but they are more prescriptions about how people who enter into the civil contract of marriage should behave than rules for a religious rite. Some people say God established marriage, but anyone who thinks Adam and Eve were married in any but the common-law sense is just a ninny. They were the only two people on earth, for heaven's sake -- of course they got together!

I do see a value in the church's solemnizing the intimate relationships of its members. It helps support those relationships and encourages a sense of commitment between the partners. It also raises up the role of God in such relationships, which I think is important for the long-term health of any partnership.

But we must not confuse the church's role of blessing and celebrating a marriage with the state's role of authorizing and regulating it. Only the state grants a marriage license, and only the state grants benefits to its citizens on the basis of their marital status. These are not prerogatives of the church, nor should they be, any more than the state should tell churches which marriages to recognize.

At heart, I think people who oppose marriage for gays and lesbians are afraid that a group of people they despise will become as good as them in the eyes of society -- one less group to kick around. It's also about taking away the "thou shalt nots" of old fashioned, conservative belief and replacing them with a more reflective, relativistic code based on Jesus' two great commandments: love God with everything in you and love others as yourself. You can't love others and enforce a doctrinaire set of rules.

You can't love others and deny them equal rights.

And you can't love God and demand that God fit into your tiny little pigeonholes.