When a Jewish boy turns 13, he heads to a temple for a deeply meaningful rite of passage, his bar mitzvah. When a Catholic girl reaches about the same age, she stands in front of the local bishop, who touches her forehead with holy oil as she is confirmed into a 2,000-year-old faith tradition. But missing in each of those cases — and in countless others of equal religious importance — is any role for government. There is no baptism certificate issued by the local courthouse and no federal tax benefit attached to the confessional booth, the into-the-water-and-out born-again ceremony or any of the other sacraments that believers hold sacred.
Only marriage gets that treatment, and it's a tradition that some legal scholars have been arguing should be abandoned. In a paper published March 2 in the San Francisco Chronicle, two law professors from Pepperdine University issued a call to re-examine the role the government plays in marriage. The authors — one of whom voted for and one against Proposition 8, which ended gay marriage in California — say the best way out of the intractable legal wars over gay marriage is to take marriage out of the hands of the government altogether.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
marriage and government
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I've posted about this a couple of times over at my place on Wordpress... most recently, here. Cool, to see an article at Time that covering the idea of eliminating marriage.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it will happen in my lifetime, however long that may still be but I personally think it's the right thing to do.
I don't get too riled up in any cause d'juer like most our UU brethren except the separation of church and state. I think this falls squarely in that category.
Just stumbled onto your place. Thanks for adding me to your blog roll. good stuff you have here. Keep up the good work.