Tom Kawczynski - Off the Record

If there was a handbook for issues that you don't want to address, the questions involving the role between marriage and the state would definitely be near the front, maybe a page behind abortion.  Fully aware of how murky the politics can be in this area, I have spent much time thinking about this and offer my own analysis.

How you define marriage means absolutely everything in this context.  Is it simply the partnership between two individuals, recognized by the state, as the legal guardians of a family and in contractual union with one another?  If you believe marriage is simply an act of the state, and you believe in liberty, it seems you would have to define it as gender neutral.  That would be the basis for a civil union, but perhaps marriage is more.

I note that many people do not see it that way.  They see marriage as not only an act between a man and a woman, but also a commitment before God and according to some divine law.  In this definition, the mandate for marriage is not rooted in the state or in benefits conferred therein, but instead in the vows made between the parties and before God.  To those who believe marriage is sacred in that way, this strikes me as something different, and that is where I begin.

I don't think the state has any business being involved in marriage and in what that means.  Moral questions are difficult and contentious, and for us to make a judgment that limits the choices of others because of prejudices, even if they are rooted in tradition and have a logical basis for society and biology, seems beyond the scope of what government should be able to demand for any two people.  Thus, in liberty, I believe that supporting civil unions as a corporate arrangement should be beyond dispute.

That the state is not involved does not make marriage insignificant..  Maybe my residual Catholic roots are showing, but perhaps we would do best to consider marriage as a sacrament.  Just as the state would have no business in regulating baptisms, communions, or any other practices of faith, I think we would do well to leave marriage to the individual churches and other houses of worship, letting those who have strong beliefs decide within their own communities what they will recognize according to their own mandates.  If that is strictly between a man and a woman before God, clergy can make that decision and define their members thusly.

Ultimately, the vast majority of those who argue against allowing same sex relationships to have the same recognition do so on this basis; that it runs contrary to most of the Christian traditions.  I agree with that assessment (if not the justice of the opinion), and I would say if there is a divine law, then surely that it would be more important what is recognized before God than whatever a state decides.

But as people, living together, we cannot build our state upon the dictates of religion if we are to embrace liberty, no matter how moral it may be.  We can build ourselves, our beliefs, and our hopes upon those precepts.  We can apply them in our lives.  But how moral can any of us be if our society requires us to force what we think upon others?

That is why I support legal unions for everyone, believe that marriage is not a matter of the state, and find myself feeling that this is a view that is both fair and logical.  Reasonable people, of course, may disagree.