CAMP Spirit

This week, twenty-two conservative Christian denominations have joined together for "Marriage Protection Week." Though our country’s Bill of Rights provides for a separation of church and state, the President has seen fit to embrace the Religious Right’s rhetoric regarding the sanctity of marriage. While some might say that this is appropriate inasmuch as marriage is a civil institution, nevertheless the very use of the word "sanctity" evokes religious overtones, since the etymological root of that word means "holy." If marriage is "holy," then it must have something to do with religion and spirituality.

If one examines history, it becomes clear that this is precisely how marriage was treated throughout much of western civilization. However, for most of recorded history, "traditional" marriage was nothing like the mythical vision of male breadwinner, female housewife, and happy children depicted in 1950s U. S. propaganda. Premodern societies blurred the boundaries between civil and religious categories. Pagan, Jewish, and Christian religious institutions first commemorated marriages as property transfers, whereby control of the woman was exchanged from her father to her husband; children had no rights and were often abandoned or given away for economic reasons. Thus, what was considered "holy" was the man’s absolute control over his family. The concept of romantic love did not figure into the "sanctity" of marriage for centuries, as marriages were arranged in the interests of familial, political, and religious dynasties. (This is still the case in many parts of the world today.) After the Roman Empire adopted Christianity as its official religion, the state gradually absorbed the function of approving marriage contracts.

In recent years, historian John Boswell has demonstrated that alongside "traditional" marriage ceremonies, there existed parallel unions between people of the same gender. These unions originated in Graeco-Roman religion and were subsequently adopted by the Christian Church. Boswell shows, in Same Sex Unions in Premodern Europe (Villard Books, 1994), that women were joined to women and men to men; these unions often involved right of survivorship and disposition of property to the same-sex partner. As a matter of fact, Boswell points out that it was same-sex partnerships that were first based on love and affection. Heterosexual alliances were formed to affirm power, economic and political; love and affection developed only after marriage, if at all. In patriarchal cultures, women and men were not seen as equals. Thus, it was commonplace for men to have their primary affectional relationships with other men, and women with other women. Whether or not these "relationships" were sexual is a matter of conjecture, but they certainly involved "sanctity" in the truest meaning of that word.

Perhaps what should be examined this week is not whether the "sanctity" of marriage needs to be "protected" from marauding homosexuals, but whether there is actual sanctity in modern marriage. Is there true holiness that honors persons, or is it still an economic arrangement or a means of one person exercising control over another? Does the Religious Right really want to protect the institution of marriage, or simply its own version of what a family should be? If there were equal access to marriage, perhaps there would have to be equality within marriage, which poses a direct threat to those who yearn for a return to that mythical time when Father Knows Best and Donna Reed ruled the airwaves.

Moreover, Marriage Protection Week protects no one as long as it injects into a civil rights discussion the unholy specter of religion and biblical values. To discuss religious ideas of morality, ethics, and sin in the context of equal-protection statutes and constitutional amendments flies in the face of the First Amendment’s religious disestablishment clause. If we were to divorce the concept of "sanctity" from discussions of "marriage," it would not matter what one’s religious or moral stance was on the issue of homosexuality; it would locate the discussion more properly in the realm of human rights, for, as Boswell’s research shows, the notion of "sanctity" is an historical legacy of gay and lesbian unions.

Feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether, herself a heterosexual, Catholic woman, notes that what is really called for today is a reform of marriage at its very core and a true separation of church and state:

"We need to unmask the rhetoric that claims that the affirmation of "holy unions" for gay couples somehow demeans marriage for heterosexuals. All of our unions are made holier by expanding the options for faithful relationship and taking seriously their careful preparation and joyful blessing. Both the church and the state have a stake in stable, committed partnerships that provide the framework for child-raising, sustaining the wellbeing of related people over a period of time, and caring for others in crisis, illness, and old age. But I submit that the role of the state and that of the church in affirming such relationships differ. It is time to uncouple the legal role of the state in defining domestic-partner contracts from the role of the church as the preparer and blesser of covenants."

(Christianity and the Making of the American Family: Ruling Ideologies, Diverse Realities, Beacon Press, 2000, p. 213)