It's Not Broken, so leave it alone

A 13th century French representation of
the tripartite social order
of the middle ages –
Oratores: "those who pray",
Bellatores: "those who fight",
and Laboratores: "those who work".

I see where once again we have the religious right trying to justify their exclusionary and punitive tendencies when it comes to marriage, this time in Missouri.  This seems well-intentioned, but it is misguided.  Among the problems with the proposal outlined below is the factually inaccurate notion that marriage has ever been primarily a religious institution.  That is false.

Recognizing that same-sex marriage is a real thing, a commitment that has existed with or without the role of religion OR government  has not 'broken' the concept of marriage.  It's not broken, so our legislators should stop trying to 'fix' it.

Increasingly I am seeing the role of conservatives as one of trying to turn back time, to a time that never was, in their misguided desire to coerce and control their fellow human beings.  Sometimes that is an attempt to restore the worst of the mid-20th century, and sometimes it goes back further to something more approaching the middle ages.

Marriage has NEVER been primarily a religious institution. Period. Full stop. That is crappy religious right revisionist history.  Marriage has always been primarily about property, and inheritance, with wives and children usually being considered property under a large portion of European Christian history, not much different than livestock, aka 'chattels'.  To again review the history of our terminology, to better define and understand the concepts:

[the] meaning of chattel can excite considerable emotion, as it refers to humans as property, i.e., slaves. Chattel, slave and the less common bondman and thrall are all synonyms for a person held in servitude by another. Chattel and cattle both come to English from the same source: each is descended from the Medieval Latin word capitale, which itself traces to the Latin caput meaning “head.”

Rather Christianity intruded itself into the religion biz as the primary recorders of property contracts that existed as part of alliances through what were largely political and economic based marriages.

Anyone who is skeptical of this factoid should investigate the role of plural marriage and legal, official, government sanctioned concubinage in European history that continued almost to the era of our own American Revolution.  It's fascinating stuff, but doesn't get a lot of coverage in most American history classes; rather the entire absence of this area of study leaves a vacuum that is filled by the assumptions that the religious right would like to see that perpetuates their intrusion into the freedom of American citizens and residents. Ignorance is simply ignorance, and frequently the foundation for intolerance, not bliss.

God only is involved as the Christian church sought to control more aspects of human existence, as a sort of power tripping monopoly.  That this put it in recurrent historic conflict with civil laws and government is sadly something that too few Americans know and understand. 

That is a failure of our educational system that should be addressed, but that is a tangential discussion here.

Americans, and particularly those in Missouri who suffer under the misconceptions of red state schools, should acquaint themselves better with the historic lessons of conflict between civil government and religious establishment efforts to extend their control and influence, such as that between Thomas a Becket and Henry the II, or the role of the so-called "estates of the realm" like that of the French 'ancien regime' where the first estate in society, government and the economy was the clergy, which controlled large sections of property with equally large revenues culminated in the French Revolution.  In England, from the middle ages onward, there was a simplified two-tier system: the first estate - clergy - was combined with the second estate - nobility -  in the house of Lords, with the remainder all lumped into the "commons" (what we are now sometimes referring to as the 99% who are not obscenely wealthy and privileged.)

Write this off to my esoteric interests which have in the past included an interest in heraldry for a brief outline of the UK background to American government.  In the UK, in the parliamentary House of Lords, there is something called the Lords Spiritual, aka the Spiritual Peers, a holdover from the middle ages.  Those are the 26 bishops of the Church of England; the regular nobility are termed the Lords Temporal, (temporal: 1. relating to worldly as opposed to spiritual affairs; secular. 2.of or relating to time.); not to be confused with the wonderful UK fantasy fiction of the Time Lords and Dr. Who.  I've always wondered if the concept of the Lords Temporal suggested the notion of the old television series in the UK which one could argue has taken on a life of it's own.

Nobility and the religious hierarchy were co-equal in government for a very long time in English history.  After Henry the VIII invented the C of E (Church of England, aka the Anglicans in the US) during the Brit version of the reformation, that role of the clergy was institutionalized in parliament, in the House of Lords.  And it continues to the present, although a topic of some controversy, and one we in the US should consider as we contemplate the very good concept of separation of church and state.

That institution of religion in government is something we in the US heartily reject -- and in the UK that role of the religious "Lords" is still having an active involvement in the course of government, as seen here.

"There are no restrictions placed on bishops in terms of how they participate, no bar on them getting involved in process."
He added: "If you look back through history, they haven't had a self-denying ordinance on important issues."
The Lords Spiritual - not affiliated to any political party - date back to the 14th Century and, apart from a few years after the English Civil War, have been ever-present in the chamber.
In 1847 their number was restricted to 26.

And so endeth today's history lesson.

This is a misguided notion that is predicated on a Christian-centric and European-centric view of human history.  It ignores what the rest of the world has done, and it ignores all of the pre-Christian European experience of humans.

From Ozarks First.com:

Missouri Bill Could Diffuse Controversy in Gay Weddings

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- State Representative T.J. Berry (R-Kearney) has pre-filed a measure that would replace marriage licenses with contracts of domestic union.
Berry tells Missourinet a controversial Senate resolution that died this year in a state House committee prompted him to file the legislation. The resolution would have protected churches and businesses from penalties for denying goods and services for gay weddings.
Berry calls his proposal a compromise that would diffuse some of the controversy in that resolution.
“There are many, many, many churches out there right now that will perform any kind of marriage and that’s great. That’s fine but when you take and define it and argue it as a government when it was originally religious, then you start having this other discussion that isn’t appropriate to begin with,” says Berry.
He says he is indifferent about the Senate resolution, which is commonly referred to as SJR39. The measure was sponsored this year by Senator Bob Onder (R-Lake St. Louis).
“We’ve gotten confused between government benefits and religious ceremonies and marriage has gotten caught up in that and it’s created tremendous controversy for lots of different groups,” says Berry.
He says his legislation would still allow the government benefits that apply to all married couples.
“I think what you would see is we would get back to government being in its role and religion being in its role,” says Berry. “Marriage has been, through history going back thousands of years, a religious ceremony not a governmental ceremony. So, that’s what this does and it applies to straight people, gay people, everyone exactly the same way.”
Whether or not SJR39 returns in 2017 is unknown but lawmakers expect it to come up eventually. Some conservatives are not expected to embrace Berry’s proposal, likely saying it doesn’t go far enough.

Marriage is a concept of a foundational commitment that is contractual and governmental, which MAY OR MAY NOT be spiritual as well -- as chosen by those entering into a specific marriage.  I don't see it as likely that any state, Missouri or other, will succeed in removing religious institutions from their involvement in sanctioning marriage.  Marriage, like government is of, by, and for people.

But that is not the same thing as bending over backwards to extend the control of religion into that institution.  We have ALWAYS had civil / non-religious marriage; marriage is no in any way dependent for existence on religion. It is first and last a decision made by two people to commit to each other.  That swearing to that commitment, that CONTRACT, might be taken more seriously for some people if it involved God as the implied enforcer of that contract is no reason to amend modern law to oblige the bigoted and narrow minded.  Frankly, given the high divorce rates in the so-called Bible Belt, it should be pretty obvious that God is NOT a successful guarantor of marriage, but the opposite, but neither should we interfere with the religious choice of those who still want a religious ceremony of marriage to be happy.

Marriage, whatever kind of legal marriage between two people -- just LEAVE IT ALONE.

Conservatives Make up Stuff, Lie about it being in the Bible

On June 3, 2015 the Charlotte Observer reported on this law suit where the state attempted to deny freedom of the exercise of religion by Christians and Jews:

The Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) and the Alliance of Baptists have made it official that they are joining as plaintiffs in a Federal District Court lawsuit opposing North Carolina’s same-sex marriage ban.
The United Church of Christ filed the lawsuit in April, challenging North Carolina’s state ban on same sex marriage. The suit is said to be the nation’s first faith-based challenge to same-sex marriage bans.
As it stands, North Carolina law makes it illegal for rabbis, priests, ministers and other religious officials to solemnize the marriage of same-sex couples on an equal basis with opposite sex couples without fear of criminal prosecution and civil penalty.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article9127277.html#storylink=cpy

North Carolina and other states, and many conservatives across the nation (including those who want to be president after the 2016 election), support denying this exercise of the freedom of religion involved in this suit.  And now North Carolina is attempting to bring back a ban of sorts on interracial marriage as well.

June 12, 2015 marked the 48th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia.  When the Lovings were refused marriage licenses in Virginia, the justification for doing so -- not once, but twice, was that it was prohibited in the Bible.  The Lovings were lectured by the bureaucrats in Virginia, actual BIBLES IN HAND, on how they believed God intended the races to be separate.

Chief Justice Warren wrote (my bold emphasis added):

“Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law.”

There were more other states in the US that DID allow interracial marriage, and there were other branches of Christianity that allowed it also, then, just as religious groups and  other states permit same sex marriage, now. 

That did not matter to the conservative racist bigots of the Virginia state bureaucracy.  They instead chose to impose THEIR religious beliefs on all other citizens.

This is part of the wording of the unanimous decision, authored by Chief Justice Earl Warren:

“Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law.”

Recently we have ol' racist bigot and notorious homophobe Pat Robertson claiming that we shouldn't interfere with the racist policies of institutions like Bob Jones University when they try to ban inter-racial dating, as an exercise of freedom (or, in this case free-dumb) of religion.

And recently we have the state of North Carolina passing legislation that permits their bureaucrats to refuse to issue marriage licenses or to refuse to perform marriages as exercising freedom of religion.  Like Bob Jones University, that encompasses both freedom of the bureaucrats to refuse interracial marriage, which was found to be illegal and unconstitutional in the SCOTUS decision, Loving v. Virginia or same sex marriage.  But North Carolina doesn't give a tinker's damn about legality or the Constitution or freedom for 'other' people.

Not of course, YOUR freedom of religion -- no, the only thing they want to exercise is THEIR limited and narrow freedom of religion.  They have NO problem whatsoever curtailing YOUR freedom or MY freedom of religion. 

The proffered reasoning of candidates like Ben Carson represent what is faulty and unethical about the conservative position - so far held by every declared or thinking-about-declaring conservative candidate for president, and by most conservative candidates for other office, and by every conservative policy platform.  The right wants to define and coerce how everyone else lives, based on their narrow religious beliefs.  Like the beliefs of many conservatives about race, which is not a real 'thing', but rather a factually false artificial construct, sexuality is not as conservatives believe EITHER.

Facts matter in setting public policy and our laws.  Factually erroneous beliefs should not matter, in that specific context.

Conservatives do not care one whit if they insult, degrade, or defame anyone who disagrees with them in the process, or how dishonest they are in doing so.  But no one else gets to disagree with them, because to do so is to bully good conservatives and make them victims and to attack religion --- up to and including false claims that those seeking civil equality will criminalize Christianity (or maybe Judaism).

We have presidential candidate wannabe Ben Carson wailing and moaning about how anyone who supports gay marriage equality is curtailing HIS freedom of religion.

“Well, a lot of people say ‘Ben Carson’s a homophobe because he believes that marriage is between a man and a woman.’ That’s ridiculous.”

“Yes, I do believe that it’s between a man and a woman, but I don’t believe that anybody gets to change the definition of something that is a societal pillar.”

This is the same argument used to prohibit the marriage of Richard and Mildred Loving.  Richard and Mildred Loving were sentenced to prison for daring to oppose this narrow racist religious view of their freedom of choice that conservatives attempted to impose on them.

You see, Ben Carson wants people to be civil and to follow a double standard, one standard for HIM, and another standard for those terrible 'others'. 

We have had Ben Carson claiming that homosexual orientation is the result of a choice.  It is clearly not, and while he is free to believe the moon is made of green cheese if he so desires, or any other factually inaccurate thing, his believing it does not make it so, and is not a basis for other people's civil rights to control and order their lives, especially their family decisions.

In the past, notably at a NOM meeting, Carson called the efforts for equality for LGBT people an attempt to destroy America and to impose a "New World Order".  In the past he has equated any sexual orientation or gender identity that differs from heterosexual normative to bestiality, pedophilia, and necrophilia.  We have Carson claiming:

“When we talk about liberty and justice for all, doesn’t that mean that people can be left alone, that no-one else gets to change definitions on them and change life for them?” he asked. “They have no right to say to me that I must change the way I think in order to accommodate what they believe,” he said. “That’s where the injustice comes from, and we have to understand that.”

No one is saying Ben Carson must change the way he thinks.  He - like the racist people of Virginia back in the days of miscegenation laws - can BELIEVE anything he likes.  What he, and other conservatives, may NOT do is force others to conform to those beliefs, and he and other conservatives may not unreasonably restrict the freedom of individuals to marry whom they choose on that religious basis. 

Monogamy is not in fact the definition of marriage in the Bible, and the Bible is not the law of the land. 

Monogamy is not in fact the pillar of society, either, as it has not been the norm for humans across the course of history around the globe.  For that matter, neither is the so-called nuclear family.  Rather polygamy, concubinage and sex slavery, and tribal or clan organizations of extended family raising children has in fact been far more frequent and common.

Carson and the other conservatives are wrong.  We can and do change the definition of marriage so as to recognize the rights and freedom of individuals, and conservatives are NOT supporting freedom of religion or civil equality.  Conservatives are doing the OPPOSITE of what they claim they want.  Freedom of religion is the freedom for same sex marriage, just as it is for interracial marriage.

More American Liberty! This time in Kentucky -- baby steps, but getting there.

Kentucky is in the process of legal challenges to their ban on recognizing same sex marriages performed in their own state, but as of yesterday a court has ruled there that Kentucky MUST accept the legitimacy of same sex marriages performed elsewhere.

The AG is contemplating an appeal, and the judge who issued the ruling is deliberating on staying the decision or not, to allow such an appeal.  (The appeal can take place with or without the stay.)

It's a race - a RACE TO FULL HUMAN DIGNITY, LIBERTY AND EQUALITY -- all the things that the conservatives claim to support, but work tirelessly to obstruct.