Issue date: 12/1/08 Section: Columns

The fury over Prop 8 involves two equally strident, equally passionate camps; one that wants government to define marriage to allow people of the same sex to marry and another that seeks to restrict marriage to mean a legal union between a man and a woman only.

I confess, there may be a lot of sound, relevant arguments on both sides and there may not be. I'll not bother with the finer points. Instead, the burden falls on me to illuminate what is missing from the debate which, as often happens, is painfully obvious: what role does government even have in defining marriage?

This question might appear out of the blue to many, but then again, most people never really give the blue adequate consideration. To these people, government is legitimately involved in marriage for the simple reason that as far back as living memory goes; that's how it has always been.

This is hardly the end of the discussion, but it makes for a fine beginning. To trace how far off the correct path we are, I think it is useful to consider what the fundamentals of marriage involve. Let's consider the day of the wedding itself. Generally, it finds two people (usually a man and a woman, but I digress) making a binding promise before their peers and before their god. In legalistic lingo, marriage might be reduced to a simple contract where the pastor or priest is the officiator and the family and friends are the witnesses.

But amid the general sweet loveliness of it all there lurks a shadowy, uninvited guest. This offender is a government bureaucrat and he, though a complete stranger to all assembled, has the deciding say on whether or not the blissful pair's union will enjoy the auspices of being an "official" marriage. Until this cheerless bureaucrat makes his ugly little mark with his crude little stamp on that useless little shred of paper, all the love in the world, all the well-wishing of family and friends, and all the sacred rituals combined, cannot make the marriage official. What an insult to marriage, what an insult to love!

I don't know about you, but this bureaucrat fellow seems like an unpleasant and perfectly needless interruption to an otherwise dreamy day. What right does government have to restrict the consensual contracts made between two competent individuals? Is it not true that a vast number of legal contracts are made every day without the intervention of government? But, I'm told, people are protesting in the streets, clamoring for this misunderstood privilege of having the government recognize their marriage as official.

Continued...

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