My apologies for the stupid headline; the copy editors didn't like the one I submitted so cooked up something so vague it doesn't even convey the topic of the article, much less my position. it's generated 111 comments so far though, so I guess some people read it. If you're interested in the online discussion it can be found on the Times web page for seven days after publication before it goes away.
-Derek
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There's a solution to this problem
St. Cloud (MN) Times
June 3, 2009
When the Iowa Supreme Court upheld a lower-court ruling throwing out that state’s ban on same-sex marriage in April folks from Maine to Oregon suddenly took notice of our sister state.
The California state Supreme Court’s decision not to overturn a similar ban last week only served to fan the flames over this divisive issue. Nearly fifty bills or constitutional amendments involving same-sex marriage are being debated around the country this year.
But, the solution to the entire problem is actually fairly simple: get government out of the marriage business and bar churches from any role in determining people’s status outside their faith communities.
There is no compelling reason for government to be involved with the institution of marriage. It should not be regulated, taxed, recorded, or in any other way intertwined with any public agency. Faith communities must be allowed to define marriage in keeping with their own traditions and the needs of their congregants. If a particular church proclaims it will only sanctify marriages between a woman and a man, so be it. Whatever standards are set by a particular group of believers will apply only to them and have no bearing on anyone who is not a member of their church. Thus faith and marriage remain personal choices, “the sanctity of marriage” can be protected by and for those who feel it is somehow threatened, and the rights of one group to define marriage as they see fit will not impede the rights of others who view the institution differently.
Rather than playing a role in marriage, local, state, and federal governments should simply be in the business of recording domestic partnerships. Registered domestic partners would hold a common tax status, own property jointly, enjoy shared custody of their children, be covered under one another’s health insurance policies, have hospital visitation rights, be liable under alimony laws if the partnership is dissolved, and generally be treated as legally married couples are today. Everyone in a registered partnership would be treated equally under the law and domestic partnership would apply to everyone; currently married couples would have to register their partnerships just as the newly “partnered” would in the future. There would be no restrictions on who could enter into a domestic partnership other than basic standards for a minimum age and a reasonable degree of familial separation. The gender, race, religion, and even state of residence of the partners would be Social change is hard to predict and harder to legislate.
By separating marriage — a religious issue — from domestic partnership — a civil issue — we would short-circuit much of the heated rhetoric in the debates over same-sex marriage. Most importantly though, we would ensure equal treatment to all our citizens because the outcomes of the religious debates would no longer dictate whose relationships held legal status, whose rights ended at the hospital door, which couples were able to adopt, or who in the household was eligible for medical coverage. Religious marriage would continue to be an option for those who wanted it and whose faith communities offered it, but everyone who wanted to join their lives together could engage in a domestic partnership.
Laws prohibiting same-sex marriage are likely to fall in the coming years regardless of what we do today, quite possibly in one fell swoop at the hand of the U.S. Supreme Court. Citing the equal protection clause in striking down existing bans on interracial marriage in 1967, the court noted that “Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.” It is not much of a leap to see the same logic applied to gender. The question is really how long it will take. Rather than draw the issue out over many years, creating a confusing and uneven patchwork of discriminatory state laws, wouldn’t it be wiser to simply settle it now in a way that reflects our country’s highest traditions of freedom of choice, individual responsibility, and equality for all?
And after all, as any Californian can tell you, once something’s been decided in Iowa it’s probably well past time we moved on to the next big concern anyway.
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Dr.DRL
