I propose a new law for states to consider: The government would cease issuing marriage licenses. ...My proposal treats all sexual orientations equally, and it has historical and legal basis because marriage was once considered a purely religious matter.
Actually, I'm pretty sure marriage pre-dates religion, at least in any formal sense. Adam & Eve may have enjoyed unprecedented intimacy with God, but there weren't no preacher 'round to marry 'em.
But this kind of thing is why it's impossible to defend traditional marriage. The religious folk like this nice man and nice Prof. Kmiec are conceding without a fight the precise aim of the militant gay and militant feminist movements: to destroy marriage as such.
No one any longer understands marriage (it's all gay: we all conceive it as no more than an agreement between lovers), and no one understands the state, either, or the fact the state has an interest in stabilizing sexual unions that generate children. (Strictly speaking, only the union of male and female is sexual --capable of engendering new life; there are many varieties of venereal activity, or genital activity if you prefer, but no one needs to stabilize that. The state's interest is in sex, because its interest is in the future of the state.) If my husband and I form a domestic contract and we agree that neither of us is responsible for any offspring that develop, is the state ok with that?Actually, the JAG Commander thinks he has a solution for that:
Under a contract, the parties would be free to negotiate its terms, including the number of partners (not polygamy, since not a marriage), and how the partnership may be dissolved. Child custody and support would still be state-law matters.
He's just made every child automatically a ward of the state. What is this, Sparta?
Probably that's not what he means, though. In that case, I'm sorry, but all he's done is accept same-sex marriage, but changed the word "marriage" for "contract." Big whup. I don't care if he calls it "strawberry." There are only two options. Either there is something unique about the union of one man and one woman and their offspring or there isn't. Call it anything you want, but there are only two options. Either marriage is something specific, or it means anything, which is the same as meaning nothing. Have it or don't have it, call it anything you want, there is no way around that stubborn little fact. It's an essence thing, not a semantic problem.
So what we have here is an example of defenders of marriage and the same-sex marriage movement in complete agreement with each other: no one gets married! The state has no interest in the matter!
In the meantime, one man-one woman marriage is the single greatest natural platform for individual liberty, and in our minds we've all already tossed it away. Ladies: pay attention. In the short run you won't notice the difference; in the long run it is not possible for same-sex marriage and equality of women to co-exist. Marriage means women share an equal dignity with men; same-sex marriage means they are chattel for breeding --or that their value lies in how much they can be like men.
