By Alte
[Editor's note: a number of readers are interested in religious matters, so submissions on religious topics of interest to men will be considered for publication each Sunday]
How marriage is like liquor
In 1919, the 18th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America was passed, enacting the complete prohibition of the sale, manufacture, or transportation of alcohol, but not the drinking of it. The legislative change was promoted by the Protestants, with the catholic immigrants (particularly the Germans) largely against it. Prohibition was primarily an anti-male, anti-immigrant, and racist movement that was lead by feminists (including the lesbian Frances Willard) who said:
Alien illiterates … rule our cities today; the saloon is their palace, and the toddy stick their scepter…. The colored race multiplies like the locusts of Egypt. The grog-shop is their center of power. The safety of women, of childhood, of the home is menaced in a thousand localities at this moment.
Prohibition resulted in widespread criminality and was therefore repealed in 1933, to be immediately replaced in most parts of the country with liquor license laws. These laws reinstated prohibition at the state or local level, but also instituted a system of licensing. These liquor licenses grant an exception to the general prohibition. The owner of such a license is then permitted to make and/or sell alcohol according to the content of the license.
In the same way that we didn’t need liquor licenses to brew beer, we don’t need marriage licenses to marry. Marriage is a covenant between two people, and is an aspect of Natural Law. Neither the state nor the Church is a primary actor in a marriage. It is only in recent history that the US government has forbidden couples to marry and required that they purchase a license in order to be granted an exception to this rule. In other words, marriage licenses are a protection racket, run by the state.
Originally, marriage licenses were issued to allow interracial marriages, which were often legally prohibited, to take place. The states began to earn quite a bit of money selling these licenses and they grew fond of their newfound power over the lives of their citizens, so they decided to expand the concept to everyone in the country through the Uniform Marriage and Marriage License Act of 1923.
Prior to the passing of that act, the situation varied greatly from state to state. In Scribner’s Magazine from 1919, it states:
If it will astonish some to be told that in the early days of New England, magistrates not clergymen had power to bind people in matrimony, and that prior to 1686 no marriage with “prayer-book and ring” was legal in Massachusetts, it will seem more surprising to others that though marriage by civil authorities is sanctioned universally elsewhere in the country, the laws of three States (Maryland, West Virginia, and Delaware) inhibit lay celebration. On the other hand, in Pennsylvania, for instance (affirmed by express statute in 1885), a bride and groom may solemnize their own marriage by taking each other by the hand and plighting their vows in the presence of twelve witnesses, one of whom should be but need not be a justice of the peace. In certain States no witnesses at all are essential, nor is the taking out of a license invariably a prerequisite, while with respect to record of the evidences of marriage, there has existed not only wide divergence as to practice, but in many jurisdictions, especially in the South and Southwest, much slovenliness and unconcern in the tabulation of these social statistics.
The act, however, did not solve these issues because it was not ratified by all states. That is the reason that some states still have common-law marriage rules, for instance. In such states, avoiding civil marriage carries little benefit, as marriage can be extended to all couples who marry privately, through the common-law statutes.
What is the Christian view of marriage?
Throughout Christian history, the Church followed the Roman practice of viewing marriage as a covenant between two persons. Beginning in the 13th century, the marriage act began to be conducted as a sacrament, and led by an ordained minister of the Church. Even though the minister leads the rite and blesses the union, it is the bride and groom who convey the sacrament upon each other, through the exchange of vows.
In defiant answer to the Reformation’s calls to see marriage as something purely contractual and private, the Roman Catholic Church reaffirmed (in the 24th session of the Council of Trent in 1563) that marriage would be honored in the Holy Sacrament of Matrimony. The Council went on to explicitly forbid bigamy and divorce, allow annulments and separations, and claimed Church primacy in the administration of the sacrament, among other things.
After this change, the Church recognized all marriage covenants (both those exchanged verbally and those exchanged through written correspondence) as valid, but only those blessed by a minister as sacramental. It is also possible for a valid marriage to become a sacramental one afterward, through a separate rite called convalidation.
Why are Church and State not separated?
In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis proposed that Christian and civil marriages be split:
Before leaving the question of divorce, I should like to distinguish two things which are very often confused. The Christian conception of marriage is one: the other is the quite different question — how far Christians, if they are voters or Members of Parliament, ought to try to force their views of marriage on the rest of the community by embodying them in the divorce laws. A great many people seem to think that if you are a Christian yourself you should try to make divorce difficult for every one. I do not think that. At least I know I should be very angry if the Mahommedans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine. My own view is that the Churches should frankly recognize that the majority of the British people are not Christians and, therefore, cannot be expected to live Christian lives. There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, the other governed by the Church with rules enforced by her on her own members. The distinction ought to be quite sharp, so that a man knows which couples are married in a Christian sense and which are not.
In Germany, my wedding was split as he described. On Friday we married civilly, and on Saturday we married in a chapel. This worked quite well, but there was one sticking point: we originally wished to have the religious rite take place before the civil rite, for practical reasons, but were informed that this was not allowed by the Roman Catholic Church. In other words, the Church waits to receive permission from the government before performing the sacrament!
Does the Church ask the government for permission to perform baptisms or ordinations? No it doesn’t. So why make an exception for marriage? I have spoken with numerous priests (including the one that eventually blessed our union) and it seems to be a matter of expedience. It was just this arrangement that resulted in the Catholic Church pushing to end the ban on interracial marriage, particularly in California. They generally refused to perform interracial marriages until the state said it was alright, so they had to beg the state to change the rules. Many of the couples were already in valid marriages at the time, and were denied the sacrament by the Catholic Church until the state settled the matter.
Does the Church answer to the State, or to God?
Unfortunately, this creates a severe burden for many members of the Catholic Church. My own sister has been in a valid marriage for 12 years, but cannot receive the sacrament without a civil marriage license. Obtaining such a license would require her to drop her medical coverage, a potentially life-threatening move. There are many couples that would undergo financial or legal hardship if they were to register their marriages with the state. There are also couples who wish to avoid civil divorce; the only assured method of doing this is to avoid civil marriage. These are just a few examples of the sort of difficulties that can arise when civil marriage becomes a prerequisite for a religious rite.
The homosexual community has spread the myth that civil marriage is an absolute good, but that is not true. There are many cases where civil marriage results in additional difficulties that far outweigh any potential legal or financial benefits. Furthermore, many couples do not wish to associate themselves with the corrupted and perverse institution of civil marriage, and would prefer to handle the legal and financial aspects of marriage privately, through contract law.
The Church should not be waiting for government permission to perform the sacraments, and should move to repeal such rules immediately. We do not need a license to marry.
