Matt Mantica | The divorce of church and state

Inflam-Matt-ory | How we can further redefine marriage in light of SCOTUS’ decision on DOMA

By Matt Mantica 07/02/13 7:14pm

On June 26, the Supreme Court struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, declaring it unconstitutional for the federal government to deny federal benefits to same-sex couples in a huge victory for gay rights advocates.

Despite the civil rights advances made last week, gays and lesbians have a long road forward toward being viewed as totally and completely equal with their heterosexual counterparts — and the very idea of marriage might be standing in the way of that.

Currently, marriage is wrapped up in two entities: the government and organized religion.

Laws vary by state, but typically one must file for a marriage license, wait for a period of time before having a marriage ceremony, sign the license and then file for a marriage certificate.

For the religious, ceremonies typically occur in a place of worship. Most religions view marriage as a highly religious event — Catholics, for example, include matrimony among their sacraments.

Today, a thoroughly bureaucratic process only necessary for the public record, and a religious ceremony are described by the same word: marriage.

Just as we have moved past a time where marriage was an exchange of property between two families, perhaps society is coming to a point where we can once again redefine what this one word really means.

The Constitution explicitly separates church and state because religion is detrimental to the proceedings of government. Therefore, the government could keep control of tracking who commits to whom for the public record. As a result, whoever wishes to be officially recognized as committed to another person — regardless of the sexes involved — can say so to the government and obtain all the rights and benefits given to married couples today.

Instead of giving these committed couples marriage certificates, however, the government could begin to only involve itself in recognizing civil unions or civil partnerships — or whatever name they might come up with for this institution.

Meanwhile, religious groups can keep their respective ideas of marriage. “Marriage” could become an entirely spiritual event — the blessing of a partnership in the eyes of a God (or Gods).

This might — and probably would — mean that some religious groups would deny their gay and lesbian congregants the right to be married in the eyes of their God.

However, the state does not have the right to intervene in the affairs of these groups. The government must keep to itself in ensuring that it does all it can do to extend equality to all of its citizens — for isn’t that one of the main purposes of government in the first place?

Religions must be allowed to continue to function outside of the reach of the United States government, or else a whole host of other problems will arise. That would leave gay rights advocates hoping and fighting for the day that public opinion would influence religious organizations to accept gay marriage — much in the same way society influenced religious groups to recognize interracial marriages in the past.

Before same-sex couples can be viewed as equals in the eyes of their respective Gods, their government must do its duty to all of its citizens by ensuring full rights for each and every one of them.

By separating the government from the term “marriage,” perhaps we can discard some of the stigma against same-sex marriage — separating the church and the state in such a way could decrease the fear some religions have of same-sex marriages.

All couples should be able to declare their love and commitment — and should receive the legal benefits of having the courage to make such a lasting promise to another person. Although all may not be able to do so religiously, in the end our Constitution makes our government responsible for the well-being and equality of all citizens.

Even if equality comes under a word different than marriage — even if the cost of that new word is a messy divorce between the church and state — when the people convince their government to treat all fairly and equally, good things happen in this country.

Matt Mantica is a rising College sophomore from Okemos, Mich. His email address is mantica@sas.upenn.edu. “Inflam-Matt-ory” runs biweekly during the summer.

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