Marriage: Religious Rite or Civil Right?
In her book Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation, Nancy F. Cott explains at great length how deeply intertwined marriage and public government have been in American history. Since the very beginning, marriage seems to have been treated as a private contract with public implications and not as a religious institution:
Although the details of marital practice varied widely among Revolutionary-era Americans, there was a broadly shared understanding of the essentials of the institution. The most important was the unity of husband and wife. The "sublime and refined ... principle of union" joining the two was the "most important consequence of marriage," according to James Wilson, a preeminent statesman and legal philosopher.
The consent of both was also essential. "The agreement of both parties, the essence of every rational contract, is indispensably required," Wilson said in lectures delivered in 1792. He saw mutual consent as the hallmark of marriage — more basic than cohabitation.
Everyone spoke of the marriage contract. Yet as a contract it was unique, for the parties did not set their own terms. The man and woman consented to marry, but public authorities set the terms of the marriage, so that it brought predictable rewards and duties. Once the union was formed, its obligations were fixed in common law. Husband and wife each assumed a new legal status as well as a new status in their community. That means neither could break the terms set without offending the larger community, the law, and the state, as much as offending the partner.
The public character of marriage continues even today. Jonathan Rauch, in his book Gay Marriage, explains why, arguing that marriage is much more than just a contract:
To understand how to preserve the health of marriage as a social institution, and also to understand why there is no substitute for same-sex marriage, it is necessary to understand where marriage gets its special power: how it works. And this depends crucially on understanding that marriage is not merely a contract between two people. It is a contract between two people and their community.
When two people approach the alter or the bench to marry, they approach not only the presiding official but all of society. They enter into a compact not just with each other but with the world, and that compact says: "We, the two of us, pledge to make a home together, care for one another, and, perhaps, raise children together. In exchange for the caregiving commitment we are making, you, our community, will recognize us not only as individuals but as a bonded pair, a family, granting us a special autonomy and a special status which only marriage conveys. We, the couple, will support one another. You, society, will support us. You expect us to be there for each other and will help us meet those expectations. We will do our best, until death do us part."
In debates over gay marriage, there is a lot of focus on the various legal rights which same-sex couples miss out on because of their inability to marry. If we take a closer look at those "rights," however, we find that they are primarily about helping couples care for each other. Individually, the rights help spouses support each other; taken together, they help society express the importance of being a spouse and the fact that marrying changes who you are and your status in the community.
Marriage in America is indeed a contract — a contract that comes with more obligations than rights. Marriage in America is a civil right that is not now and has never been in the past dependent upon any one religion or even religion in general for its justification, existence, or perpetuation. Marriage exists because people desire it and the community, working through the government, helps ensure that married couples are able to do what they need to in order to survive. At no point is religion needed or even necessarily relevant.
Read More:
Comments
This is a well-thought-out argument that recognizes that marriage has significant secular implications. It’s also missing the point. The union represented by marriage necessarily emerged from the Church, since the vast majority of Americans belonged to some version of a Christian organization. The word came from the religion, and the civil rights naturally were given the same name as the sacred ones. Better to give to Christ what is Christ’s and render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. Marriage should be entirely a religious rite with no legal significance, and unions by another name should be the only ones recognized in the courts of the United States of America.
The union represented by marriage necessarily emerged from the Church, since the vast majority of Americans belonged to some version of a Christian organization. The word came from the religion…
No, that’s incorrect. Marriage existed long before Christianity did and in many cultures long before Christianity touched them. Every known culture has had some sort of marriage institution, though the nature has varied widely. There is absolutely nothing whatsoever about “marriage” which is or should be limited to Christians.
YAY FOR GAY MARRIAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
No matter how you spin it, marriage exists primarily so that children can be raised in the best circumstances possible. The best circumstances are one man and one woman. No matter how hard I try I cannot be to my children what my wife is to them nor can she take my place. It is not always possible to have a loving mother and father in the home but that doesn’t mean we should go out of our way to find less than ideal circumstances for our children. We need to get past the I want this and I want that part of society and look out at what is best for everyone. Sometimes that means you miss out on things.
If that were true, then infertile couples would be allowed to marry.
Prove it.
It really doesn’t matter if you think someone else’s marriage is good or bad for you because you aren’t involved. It also doesn’t matter if you think that another couple are more or less optimal for raising children — you can no more deny marriage to gays than you can deny marriage to atheists.
When other people “miss out on things” because Christians have faith-based objections to what those people are doing, this is called religious bigotry and discrimination. And it’s illegal.
My wedding(performed in Quebec) was performed in the church of my wife’s step-mother, by her religious preacher, under instructions from my wife and I that there would be no religious verses or mentions of any gods. We were true to ourselves, yet also
made her step mother feel important as she and her husband (my wife’s father) effectively said goodbye to their daughter, who moved 3000 miles to live with me in B.C.
My marriage is registered by the Province of Quebec, and has no religious significance at all. The power it holds is purely civil.
The weddings of other people, whether gay, polygamist, or otherwise, do not alter in any way what my marriage is to me and my wife. Gay people can and should get married if they want to. Any theist who is offended by a gay marriage should also be outraged by my non-religious one, because it is different too than their religious wedding.
When I married I was married by the civil registrar who just happened to be the leading Catholic in the State. My wife swore an oath on the Bible . I threw a spanner into the works by declining and opted for the affirmation.
(1952). They had to search for the forms. From what I could gather it had never happened before. Well we were together for forty six years which was a lot longer than could be said of all our witnesses (both of them)
tomedgar@halenet.com.au
The only purpose for marriage is to convince the male that he and only he is the father and thus responsible for raising the offspring. That is why in most societies polygamy is also allowed. The identity and responsibility of mother is never in doubt. There was no other method to hold a man responsible for his act.
All the other consequences are just incidental and marriage should only be defined as union between one man and any number of women.
So, marriage without children shouldn’t be allowed?
Most societies today?
What about polyandry?
Why?
Scott: we are not “going out of our way” to deny children a home with a mommy and a daddy. We are recognizing that no child has an ideal home life, and many have no home life at all.
What you’re proposing would cause the ranks of orphans to swell, since same-sex couples or individuals could not adopt–on the pretense that they wouldn’t be ideal.
Tell me, do you propose removing children from homes where the father is underinvolved or where the mother nags occasionally? Those are also less than perfect, don’t you agree?
When the USA gets as enlightened about child care as, say, Cameroon, we won’t need these discussions any more. But in present conditions, what you are saying is intolerant, it presumes to define my marriage for me (BTW, I’m a happily monogamous heterosexual), and it would make things worse, not better.
Re-think, please.
Lucknow, you may or may not be correct about the original purposes of marriage but I think it is a mistake to call all other consequences of marriage incidental. The fact that your story is news to most of us only goes to show that even if it you are correct about the original function of marriage, it isn’t the sole, main function anymore. I personally believe that marriage means very different things to different people. That’s not to say that our ideas about marriage aren’t generally rooted in underlying cultural traditions, but I think that there are common themes such as religious convention, cultural convention, wish to publicly declare love/commitment, legal incentives, etc that each matter more and less to different people. Marriage is not definable as any one of these things, not anymore anyway.
Truddick.
My daughter says there is no such thing as a nagging wife.just husbands who won’t listen.
Lucknow’
More than one wife? That is not a polygamist that is a masochist.
Austin
More than one husband. Not polyandry. Stupidity.
OK enough of the fun lighten up
tomedgar@haenet.com.au