The Massaschusetts Supreme Court has issued a ruling favoring gay marriages.

This whole debate over gay marriages seems to be simply a matter of words. I understand why religious conservatives, among which I count myself, are vehemently opposed to this. It certainly flies in the face of most of the major religion’s teachings about marriage, family, and sexuality. But the problem here is the gay community. Rather, it’s the government.

Marriage has historically been linked to religion (and many different types, at that), as a sacrament or rite. The government certainly recognized the benefit of licensing and regulating this religious act, for the purposes of taxes and other purely civil ends. In doing so, the government decided that among all the religious acts performed and observed in the Church, marriage was worth regulating. Baptisms aren’t regulated. Neither is Holy Communion. Nor are last rites, christenings, brit milahs (Jewish circumcision), bar/bat mitzvahs confirmations, or any of the hundreds of other religious rites practiced in this country. Maybe because these things don’t have immediate revenue potential or legal advantages from which the government would benefit.

I think the time as come for the state to simply recognize civil unions only and stop regulating marriage. Civil unions should be open to any two people who wish to be united for the purposes of receiving the rights bestowed by the government.

This means that a wife and husband who are married in a church would eligible, but so would two gay men who choose to live together in a relationship. It might also apply to two friends who live together in a platonic relationship. If the idea is that certain rights are bestowed because of a relationship, then let’s open it up and get rid of the religious connotations that have long stifled this debate. Keep marriage in the church or the synagogue or the mosque or the temple and let the government do what it does best (allegedly), and that’s regulate.

Seems that this would make both the religious conservatives happy because you start messing with their vocabulary and it makes the gay community happy because they are given equal rights. If a particular church or denomination or sect doesn’t want to let gay people practice the sacrament of marriage, then they can either find a church that does or apply for a civil union.

I think there is an implicit violation of church and state when the government decides that it be in the business of telling my wife and I that we are legally married. My marriage is not a governmental contract. It’s a mystical union between my wife, myself, and God. It’s ordained by God and exists outside of any governmental recognition.