I’ve never been to Idaho, and have no plans to move there, or even visit, any time soon. What they do in their state makes virtually no difference in my life. Except…
Last month, the Idaho House of Representatives passed a resolution demanding that the Supreme Court overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 decision that established the right of two adults to enter into a civil contract of marriage. It’s a meaningless document, of course, empty posturing by the newly empowered “anti-woke” crowd trying to impose its opinions on others. It is, however, a harbinger of the attack on marriage freedom that is surely to come. Before that day arrives, it’s worth a look at the argument that will be used in support of this foolish, anti-American, anti-freedom effort.
In spite of all the bluster, there really is only one argument against Obergefell — that “marriage” is between one man and one woman, that it’s an offense against God to use that word for a civil contract between two adults, and that the Supreme Court erred in extending that basic freedom to anyone other than those approved by various religions. Yes, that is all one argument, the religious one, and it should fail immediately simply because we are a nation of laws, not religions.
Since it won’t, and since there are those who will try to make a religious argument for a civil matter, here are the simple rebuttals to everyone who will spout the anti-freedom case for overturning Obergefell.
The first is simple: If I am not a member of your religion, and don’t agree to abide by its rules, your argument is meaningless to me. Whether or not the Bible, or the Koran, or the Torah, or any other religious tract suggests that I should not be free to marry the person of my choice has no bearing on this issue whatsoever. Your religion can decide who gets married under its rules, but it can’t decide that for me, and it can’t decide that for anyone except its own members.
The second is to explain, for those who don’t seem to understand it, that a word can have more than one meaning. A slightly inebriated couple in Las Vegas can impulsively stop into an Elvis-themed chapel and get married on a whim; devout Christians or Jews or Muslims can spend months or years thinking and praying and making the momentous decision to wed. In the eyes of the law, they are all just married. Whether it’s at City Hall, a Gothic cathedral, or a synagogue, these couples have entered into a civil contract, with rights and responsibilities. That is not the same thing as a sacrament, a ketubah, a nikah, Sanskara, or any of the other religious rituals and agreements available to those who belong to different denominations or sects. It’s a contract.
Once we establish that marriage in the way Obergefell decided it is a civil matter, completely separate from religion, all the arguments about one man and one woman fall by the wayside. This is, at its core, simply a matter of two adults entering into a civil contract.
Our laws and our society have chosen to reward married couples and their families as a way to encourage stability and responsibility. By marrying we take on each other’s debts, which is pretty good business case for the contract even if none of the other arguments were to prevail.
Many others before me have created the long lists of the rights and benefits of marriage, and I would hope we mostly agree that marriage is a good thing for society. And many people these days are making solid cases for individual freedom, for keeping the government out of our personal lives. There may be no better case for civil marriage than this: Adults are free to enter into contracts on an equal basis, and the parties to those contracts are free to choose their business partners. When two adults choose to enter freely into a contract that binds them for life, bestowing privileges and responsibilities and codifying the terms of dissolution in well-established law, there should be no religion allowed to interfere in that.
As for the states’ rights argument, I would ask Clarence Thomas to consider the constitutionality of Loving v. Virginia before he makes that one. I’m sure there are states that would prohibit inter-racial or inter-denominational marriages, or religions that would ban them as being unnatural or taboo under their own rules (which they are well within their rights to do). Given the number of “mixed marriages” in the United States these days, including his, would anyone really make the argument that an individual state could deny such a couple the right to a civil marriage contract? One in five U.S. marriages are between people of different races or ethnicities, and fully 94 percent of Americans approve of that.
Resolve what you will, Idaho, but Americans have the freedom from religion as well as the freedom of religion. Please keep your religious beliefs out of my individual, free, American life.