copyright Bettina Network, inc. 2012
Must tell you about this breakfast. We had a priest and a lawyer at the table and thought this would be kind of boring. However, it turned out to be unbelievable.
I will give you, dear reader, highlights – you dear editor, write too many words when you blog:)
I don’t know how we got onto the subject of marriage because I was in the kitchen – got to cook breakfast, you know. No lounging around talking at the table. I have to catch snippets of conversations.
What was most striking was, it turned around my traditional view of marriage. I thought marriage was a ceremony performed by the Church, Synagogue, Temple, etc. and I don’t know where I put the marriage license which I know is issued by a governmental entity, but I just didn’t think about all of the details until this conversation.
Turns out, marriage is a civil contract dictated by the State. To officiate at someone’s wedding you must be licensed by the State. If a priest is ordained that doesn’t mean he can marry anyone. He/she can only do that if the priest got a license from the State in addition to his/her ordination. Anyone can get a license to marry anyone. You can get a license to perform one marriage ceremony or you can get a continuing license to perform the marriage ceremony for lots of people as an ongoing thing and you don’t have to be ordained to apply for and obtain such a license. Oh – all of my sacred cows are being toppled!!!!!!!!!!!! Maybe I should just stay in the kitchen and cook and stay out of the dining room.
Actually, according to the priest, the two people marry themselves. The person officiating is only there as a witness and doesn’t really do the marrying – it is all between the two people and their community of friends.
The lawyer pointed out that if we had problems believing that then we should recognize that once married, to get divorced that is a State process. If you get ‘divorced’ by your religious institution and re-marry you will be called a bigamist and be subject to the penalties which can generally mean jail time. So, if it were a religious institutions thing to marry you, it would be the religious institutions thing to grant or deny you a divorce.
The priest said his job was to ‘bless’ the marriage. When you go to a wedding and the couple goes off to the sacristy or the small room next to the altar where they are supposedly being ‘married’, that is the point at which they are really married. They sign all the documents and it becomes official. The signing doesn’t have to be done in a side room, but it generally is to take the congregations mind off the fact that this is a State ceremony not a religious ceremony.
Isn’t that something!!! And all the time I thought the religious people were the ones doing the marrying of people. Then why are the religious institutions so upset about this new thing of men marrying men and women marrying women? And – more than that, I now undertand why it was so important for the future of marriage and the shape it will take when Obama came out to give same sex marrying his ‘blessing.’ He can’t marry anyone unless he is licensed by the State in which they are being married, but its nice to have the President of all the States ‘blessing’ marriage. Now I get it!
So what does all this mean? Now that my eyes are open they are taking in all kind of questions. If ‘marriage’ is a state institution, why was marriage as a civil contract so upsetting to the homosexual and lesbian communities? They could have entered into a civil contract just like any businesses or individuals enter into.
When the Church says “what God has joined together let no one put asunder” – does that mean we are equating God to the State? What does a religious institutions ‘divorce’ or ‘annulment’ mean? Since they bless the marriage does that mean their ‘divorce’ means they are taking back that blessing – especially since that is all they do? They can’t break a civil contract so where do we go from here?
How does a civil contract become a sacrement of the Church? Doesn’t this violate the separation of Church and State? Oh my! I could go on and on and on. Would the Homosexual/Lesbian community been better off fighting to redefine the benefits of this State Institution so the rest of us could also benefit? – like – should the benefits of today’s marriage be automatically given to one’s ‘spouse’ – as defined under our current mess of a marriage structure or should the person be able to decide who gets these benfits? – like Who can visit them in the hospital when it is closed to all except close family?, – who gets their Social Security benefits, etc. etc.
The marriage laws in the U. S. were based on the slavery laws which existed before Emancipation of the African slaves – what does that mean for the institution of marriage. All of this fighting for same sex marriage hasn’t addressed any of that. Are the homosexual and lesbian communities fighting for one of their marriage partners to be the ‘slave’ and the other to be the ‘free and superior person’? What for! Or – Is this fight for same sex marriage really a tool being used to change the conversation – from reform of the institution to granting a new group the right to marry and to participate in the same old institution which saw an unbelievably huge number of divorces take place with children, property, etc. all destroyed – and the State Marriage Laws being used as a tool for the redistribution of property to others outside the marriage – like lawyers and their associated helpers in this divorce process? (The lawyer didn’t bring up that one – that’s my question and observation.)
All of these years and I thought the priest was marrying all those people whose weddings I attended and all along that was just not true. He/she was there as a representative of the State – not even there as a representative of their particular religious institution – and the couple were the real ‘ministers’ at their wedding.
What one learns in bed & breakfast is astounding! Wouldn’t give it up for the world.
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