5 August 2010 Will the heterosexual divorce rate jump?

5 August 2010 Will the heterosexual divorce rate jump?


Yesterday’s court decision, blocking the implementation of California’s Proposition Eight has already provoked hordes of complaints stating that the sanctity of “marriage” is ruined and that the nation is now in grave danger.

The marriages that are somehow threatened are, of course, those heterosexual, church-performed events that are prime examples of the intrusion of religion into civil law in the U.S. The decision of the various states in the U.S. to allow religious entities – churches, etc – to license and officiate at the civil union of a couple; is a holdover from the days when churches controlled governments, crowned divine right rulers, and forced Christianity upon European nations and their colonial offshoots.

In today’s United States there should be no involvement of any religious entity in civil affairs. No laws should be written preventing the sales and use of birth control drugs and devices in order to please the Catholic Church. No hospital should be required to limit procedures or maintain dying people on needless life support systems to appease Christians. No church should have any say in who is defined as a unified couple for civil purposes. For Church, you may substitute Mosque, Temple, Synagogue, Synod, Convention or any other religious governing body.

For all legal purposes that might arise between two people sharing life as partners, civil unions, licensed by the states should be in force. There should be no difference between the civil unions of any state and all states should honor the licensed unions or other states.

Marriage is a church function, a throwback to the days when brides were purchased and only clergy could read well enough to keep records of who was married to whom. Marriage should not be a legal function, but should be a religious ceremony having no legal consequences. After all, if an Elvis impersonator with no clerical education can solemnize a marriage, how serious can it actually be?

The chorus of objections to the Prop 8 decision lament the damage to the sanctity of the lamenter’s marriage. Must have been an Elvis wedding. How can anyone else’ actions damage the strength or sanctity of anyone else’s marriage? Being married while drunk or stoned, on a whim, because one partner is suddenly pregnant, for fear of social condemnation, and other causes for a sudden marriage may weaken the marriage and damage its sanctity. But those are internal problems in the relationship of two people.

It is amazing how much power the LGBT populace has, to suddenly damage and place at risk millions of marriages formalized by the various Christian sects. If we draft them all into the military can they end wars?

The loudest objectors are behaving no differently than the Taliban. Of course, dehumanizing sub-populations and defining them as infidels and unacceptable to take part in cultural rituals is wrong whether it is done by our Christian Taliban or someone else’s Moslem Taliban.

It’s time to end the custom of “marriage” as a civil agreement and union. It’s time to relegate marriage rituals to the religions that spawned them and to remove any legal significance from the term marriage.

No American citizen should be denied civil union because fundamentalist Christians object to their lifestyle or religion/lack of religion. No church should be required to provide marriage ritual for anyone; but since the term will have no legal weight any longer, it should no longer matter. It’s time we enter the 21st century and free ourselves from the hold religions still have on our lives and our culture.