MARRIAGE AND ITS DISCONTENTS.

Paul Greenberg


There are good people on both sides of the
current debate over letting homosexual
couples get married -- and good people in
between who aren't sure just where they
stand. And may never be. Lots of them are all
in favor of according homosexuals all the
financial benefits that go with marriage, and
the social and legal standing, too. From
pension and inheritance rights to hospital
visitation privileges. It's only right -- and
about time. And they want to do the decent
thing.
Yet many of these same people, fair-minded
as they are, balk at granting homosexual
couples a marriage license. They may not be
able to say exactly why they draw the line at
the word marriage. Which is why so many of
them have embraced civil unions as a fair
compromise; they envision it as marriage
with all the benefits, just not the name.
Why won't they cross that last line, go that
last step? They may say something about
custom and tradition, or even mention
religious scruples, but it's all very vague. You
get the feeling they're still struggling with the
question, that their opinion on this matter
hasn't matured. They must sound uncertain
and unconvincing even to themselves. They
want to do the right thing by their fellow man
-- and woman -- whatever the sexual
proclivities involved, but they can't bring
themselves to extend marriage to homosexual
unions.
Why is that? Maybe because they realize
somewhere in the back of their minds that a
word is more than just a word, that it can
carry all kinds of connotations and values
with it, a whole history. Certainly a word like
marriage does. Because it's not just a word.
Marriage is an institution hallowed not only
by the church but by time and custom and the
whole culture we're part of and rely on,
whether we realize it or not.
In the words of the old Book of Common
Prayer, marriage is an honorable estate "and
therefore is not by any to be entered into
unadvisedly or lightly; but reverently,
discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear
of God."
Yes, we can change the formal definition of
marriage, and wave it over any personal
arrangement we prefer, whether homosexual
marriage or polygamy or you name it, but
that doesn't mean our new definition will
retain its old meaning and significance.
Those who think we can arbitrarily change
the definition of marriage are making the
same mistake the French revolutionaries did
when they instituted a whole new calendar,
with the months and festivals renamed and
secularized to replace the old ones they saw
as relics of a backward, superstitious age. Just
as the Bolsheviks, in the first flush of their
bloody victory, thought they could change not
just the government and economy but the
whole culture, and create The New Man at
last. It's an old mistake: Change the name of
something and the thing itself will be
changed.
The new revolutionary names didn't last, any
more than the revolutionaries' reign by
terror did. Because the new, artificial
designations did not reflect the wisdom
slowly, arduously developed over time and
experience, for which there are no
substitutes. So it is with deciding that
marriage, too, is just a label we can affix at
will. And the whole culture will fall in line.
Only a culture is more cunning, more subtle,
more resilient, more enduring than that.
The advocates of homosexual marriage in
their innocence wonder why we stubborn
types hold on to its more traditional
definition and limits. What's the big
problem? Let the state be the state and the
church the church. The state is the one that
issues marriage licenses, isn't it? Why the
fuss? Let the state define marriage any way it
wants and the church can do whatever its
conscience or tradition demands. Problem
solved. See how simple that was?
It takes only a moment, or should, to see that
the workings of society, especially American
society, aren't quite as simple as all that. It's
hard enough to keep church and state
separate in this country -- see all those split
Supreme Court decisions -- but to separate
American society from its religious values is
pretty nigh impossible, the two are so closely
intertwined. As even a cursory review of
American history demonstrates -- from the
Puritans to every reform movement since,
from those that were successful (like the
abolition of slavery and the rise of the civil
rights movement) and those that weren't, like
Prohibition. Not to mention the nation's
founding documents like the Declaration of
Independence. ("We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all Men are created equal
and endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights....")
Why are officials of the state from high to low
required to take an oath of office? Presidents
since Washington have been sworn in on the
Bible, and so many have added the words "So
help me God!" that it has become almost part
of the inaugural oath. And what about
chaplains in the armed forces? Who is their
Commanding Officer?
The fabric of American life and government
is not so easily rent into two clearly separated
remnants. When a minister marries a couple,
is he acting only as an official of the state, or
of the church, too? Both, of course. Because
civil and religious values are inextricably
interwoven in our law, culture and lives.
Even the most secular-minded of couples may
want a clergyman present at their wedding if
only as a witness. And not just to please the
old folks, but to satisfy something within
themselves, their -- dare I say it? -- their very
being, their souls. They want to make their
marriage vows more than a civil procedure,
to make their union if not sacred then at least
not mundane. They want it to be more than
just another civil contract, like a mortgage or
housing permit or domestic partnership. They
want to look into each other's eyes and
promise each to the other: "You will be sacred
unto me." Not just a contracting party.
I noted the other day that even one of the
leading advocates of homosexual marriage
here in Arkansas, a local judge and pastor in
Little Rock, wore his religious vestments
when he married a homosexual couple.
All of culture, indeed all of civilization,
strives to maintain that connection between
the holy and the mundane. When it doesn't,
as in the French and Russian revolutions, it
doesn't endure.
At the turn of another century, a British
author who already was being dismissed as
an old fuddy-duddy, Rudyard Kipling, had a
word for these attempts to separate civil and
religious values in a society. "Decivilization,"
he called it.
One literary critic, Evelyn Waugh, understood
what Kipling meant because he shared the old
man's fears. Kipling, he wrote, "was a
conservative in the sense that he believed
civilization to be something laboriously
achieved which was only precariously
defended. He wanted to see the defenses fully
manned and he hated the liberals because he
thought them gullible and feeble, believing in
the easy perfectibility of man and ready to
abandon the work of centuries for
sentimental qualms."
Kipling would live to see Hitler come to
power, Stalin consolidating his terror, and his
worst fears confirmed. All the subtle
interworkings of man and God in a
civilization's culture, the traditions and
constraints that modern, "liberated" man may
see no use for, would be tossed to the winds.
With all too predictable results.
Civilizations do not collapse all at once with a
peal of thunder and some sudden, dramatic
fall. They don't so much fall as crumble, layer
by layer, at first almost imperceptibly and
then eventually their pillars give way and
leave only ruins for tourists to gaze at. In the
case of the decline and fall of the Roman
Empire, the process took centuries. Rot grows
slow.
So, no, despite what all the great simplifiers
say, it isn't all that simple, the separation of
the secular and religious in a civilization, the
maintenance and transmission of a culture
that involves both the temporal and the
eternal. A culture is the work of centuries,
and it would behoove those who would
casually lay hands on it to beware. There is
something holy there.