Howdy Chairboy,
Sorry about the delay in getting back to you...
Originally posted by Chairboy
Implicit in your post seems to be that marriage is necessarily religious. Marriage existed before Judaism/Christianity, and can be completely secular. Mine is, for example.
Well, I'll admit that I believe that marriage is what is called in theology "a creation ordinance" i.e. that it traces its roots all the way back to the very beginning, and indeed we don't find any historical records of any ancient civilization that do not record male/female marriages. Marriage as the union for life between one female and one male goes back as far as recorded history, so even if one doesn't believe the biblical record of history, you are still stuck with the fact that marriage as outlined in the bible has always been the norm. True, some civilizations have allowed for polygamy, but they are far less numerous and polygamy tends to be the exception, rather than the rule, even in the civilizations that practice it. It also tends to inevitably produce far more friction and problems (due to human nature) than it potentially solves.
Regarding your point that secular marriages exist. Yes, secular marriages can exist, I was raised in the midst of an almost entirely secular family myself and that was the norm amongst my friends (some nominal Jews and Catholics, but almost universally non-observant and atheistic at heart). But if I can make an analogy, I can live in a kingdom, declare my independence, and deny that the king is my ruler or that his laws have any sway over me, but my views do not change the fact that he is the king and that his laws exist. Secular marriage is a fact of modern life, but "is" does not prove or even imply "ought."
With that established, it seems pretty clear that using biblical interpretation to determine what should be recognized as the law of the US (which must not respect the establishment of state recognized religious institution) is counter indicated.
The problem is that our system of laws and customs and mores still devolves and in a sense depends upon Christian ethics. In fact the entire Constitution rests upon the idea of "natural laws" and "rights" that are "God given." The founders assumed that men had rights not because they were ceded by the state, but because they had inalienable prerogatives granted by God and that the state existed to safeguard these rights. In fact, they believed (with the English whigs) that a state became tyrannical precisely when it exceeded the powers and duties delegated by the Created. This idea can even be found in the writings of pagan writers like Cato and was certainly explicit in the writings of the political writers of the 17th century (Rutherford in his
Lex Rex for instance) who so influenced the founders. As Adams himself put it:
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."So no matter how we view it there is a connection in our legislative and juridical history between God's laws and our own. In fact, the idea that our laws would directly contravene those of God or "natural laws" was considered repugnant for hundreds of years. We might, for instance, err in our understanding of God's law - for instance in prohibiting mixed race marriages when no such biblical prohibition exists - and then correct that later, but to overturn thousands of years of history and jurisprudence and expect everything to go well, as would be the case if we legalized gay marriage, is overly optomistic to say the least.
- SEAGOON
