Christians for Gay Marriage
Given yesterday's California's Supreme Court ruling, I was asked to comment and clarify a previous post of mine, in which I discussed civil unions. Here is the main point:
The language in the California law sated: “Marriage is a personal relation arising out of a civil contract between a man and a woman...” (the "between a man and a woman" phrase was added later, and was the clause in question).
Here is where I disagree: A "civil uinon" or "domestic partnership" is the personal relation arising out of a contract among citizens, whatever their sex. "Marriage" is the contract between those humans and God. The phrase "marriage is between one man and one woman" blasphemously writes God out of the equation.
Since the State does not presume (not even in the plaintiff's arguments) to tell God whom to join in the rites of holy matrimony, the State may not regulate marriage. It only has jurisdiction over the civil portion of the contract. As such, to treat those civil contracts between heterosexual couples differently from those entered into by homosexual couples, even if only in name[1], is unjust. It happens to be so unjust as to be illegal under the State's own constitution.
Finding this to be so, the Court told the State that it has two choices: either start calling heterosexual marriages "civil unions" in all legal documents (including licenses)[2], or subsume same-sex unions under the term "marriage". The Court has decreed the latter to be the status quo, until some point that the State chooses to do the complete nomenclature overhaul.
We need not decide in this case whether the name “marriage” is invariably a core element of the state constitutional right to marry so that the state would violate a couple’s constitutional right even if - perhaps in order to emphasize and clarify that this civil institution is distinct from the religious institution of marriage - the state were to assign a name other than marriage as the official designation of the formal family relationship for all couples.
Under the current statutes, the state has not revised the name of the official family relationship for all couples, but rather has drawn a distinction between the name for the official family relationship of opposite-sex couples (marriage) and that for same-sex couples (domestic partnership). One of the core elements of the right to establish an officially recognized family that is embodied in the California constitutional right to marry is a couple’s right to have their family relationship accorded dignity and respect equal to that accorded other officially recognized families, and assigning a different designation for the family relationship of same-sex couples while reserving the historic designation of “marriage” exclusively for opposite-sex couples poses at least a serious risk of denying the family relationship of same-sex couples such equal dignity and respect. We therefore conclude that although the provisions of the current domestic partnership legislation afford same-sex couples most of the substantive elements embodied in the constitutional right to marry, the current California statutes nonetheless must be viewed as potentially impinging upon a same-sex couple’s constitutional right to marry under the California Constitution.
--- Chief Justice George C. J. writing for the Majority Opinion of the Supreme Court of California, pages 8 & 9.
[1] The two legal conditions differ in more than name. As the Court cites heavily in their Majority Opinion.
[2] The Court recognizes that there are good reasons to have two separate states-of-being - one for the legal designation of a family unit, and one for a temporary arrangement for co-habitants. But NOT good reasons to privelage one such definition solely to heterosexual couples.
The language in the California law sated: “Marriage is a personal relation arising out of a civil contract between a man and a woman...” (the "between a man and a woman" phrase was added later, and was the clause in question).
Here is where I disagree: A "civil uinon" or "domestic partnership" is the personal relation arising out of a contract among citizens, whatever their sex. "Marriage" is the contract between those humans and God. The phrase "marriage is between one man and one woman" blasphemously writes God out of the equation.
Since the State does not presume (not even in the plaintiff's arguments) to tell God whom to join in the rites of holy matrimony, the State may not regulate marriage. It only has jurisdiction over the civil portion of the contract. As such, to treat those civil contracts between heterosexual couples differently from those entered into by homosexual couples, even if only in name[1], is unjust. It happens to be so unjust as to be illegal under the State's own constitution.
Finding this to be so, the Court told the State that it has two choices: either start calling heterosexual marriages "civil unions" in all legal documents (including licenses)[2], or subsume same-sex unions under the term "marriage". The Court has decreed the latter to be the status quo, until some point that the State chooses to do the complete nomenclature overhaul.
We need not decide in this case whether the name “marriage” is invariably a core element of the state constitutional right to marry so that the state would violate a couple’s constitutional right even if - perhaps in order to emphasize and clarify that this civil institution is distinct from the religious institution of marriage - the state were to assign a name other than marriage as the official designation of the formal family relationship for all couples.
Under the current statutes, the state has not revised the name of the official family relationship for all couples, but rather has drawn a distinction between the name for the official family relationship of opposite-sex couples (marriage) and that for same-sex couples (domestic partnership). One of the core elements of the right to establish an officially recognized family that is embodied in the California constitutional right to marry is a couple’s right to have their family relationship accorded dignity and respect equal to that accorded other officially recognized families, and assigning a different designation for the family relationship of same-sex couples while reserving the historic designation of “marriage” exclusively for opposite-sex couples poses at least a serious risk of denying the family relationship of same-sex couples such equal dignity and respect. We therefore conclude that although the provisions of the current domestic partnership legislation afford same-sex couples most of the substantive elements embodied in the constitutional right to marry, the current California statutes nonetheless must be viewed as potentially impinging upon a same-sex couple’s constitutional right to marry under the California Constitution.
--- Chief Justice George C. J. writing for the Majority Opinion of the Supreme Court of California, pages 8 & 9.
[1] The two legal conditions differ in more than name. As the Court cites heavily in their Majority Opinion.
[2] The Court recognizes that there are good reasons to have two separate states-of-being - one for the legal designation of a family unit, and one for a temporary arrangement for co-habitants. But NOT good reasons to privelage one such definition solely to heterosexual couples.