A Somewhat Unfocused Post on Marriage

Mostly because I'm a little unfocused myself. Do you suppose it's from living on root beer, ginger ale, and vitamin C for a week?

However, this this somewhat puzzling post by Bean at LG&M generated some very interesting comments. Bean takes off from an OpEd by Stephanie Coontz which is largely an outline of the history of marriage as an institution that these days somewhat awkwardly straddles religious-governmental-private territory. However, I think Bean's comments miscast Coontz' piece:

Here's the nub of Coontz's argument:

Perhaps it’s time to revert to a much older marital tradition. Let churches decide which marriages they deem “licit.” But let couples — gay or straight — decide if they want the legal protections and obligations of a committed relationship.

I am with her 100%. When I suggested as much in my property class during my first year of law school, during a discussion of marital assets, people were shocked and appalled by the idea that marriage should be a religious institution and the state should be in the business only of civil unions for all couples, gay or straight. I would like to think that Coontz's piece is a sign that notions are changing. But then again, that law school discussion was only two years ago.

First off, Coontz' reference to "licit" marriage refers specifically to the Church's decision that only marriages performed in a church were licit, but that couple married outside a church were still married.

For 16 centuries, Christianity also defined the validity of a marriage on the basis of a couple’s wishes. If two people claimed they had exchanged marital vows — even out alone by the haystack — the Catholic Church accepted that they were validly married.

In 1215, the church decreed that a “licit” marriage must take place in church. But people who married illictly had the same rights and obligations as a couple married in church: their children were legitimate; the wife had the same inheritance rights; the couple was subject to the same prohibitions against divorce.

This obviously has nothing to do with whether "licit" marriages should alone carry the "married" status, as Bean seems to imply. Bean seems to be reinforcing the idea that the word "marriage" itself is essentially a term with religious connotations and that the churches should have exclusive authority for its use, which, as you well know at this point, I think is poppycock. In fact, one of the commenters points out:

As an anthropologist, I have to tell you that in the overwhelming majority of cultures in the world marriage is a secular and not religious institution. This, by the way, includes Islamic societies. Under Sharia (Islamic holy law) marriage is a civil contract negotiated between the parties. There are really only a handful of non-Judeo-Christian societies where marriage is a religious sacrament (including Hinduism and the Hopi). Even in the West, marriage remained a largely secular affair until the late Middle Ages when the Catholic church hijacked it.Kind of punches majaor holes in your argument. Marriage is, and should remain, funadmentally a secular social relationship which regulates the care and assignment of children, the disposition of property, and the division of labor, among other things.

That accords pretty well with my understanding of the role of the state, the church, and the individual. The comments, as seems to be the case generally with left-wing blogs (at least, the left-wing blogs I read), are generalyl intelligent and well informed. It's just that the initial post is so vague.