Rishon Rishon

Religion and Marriage

It seems everyone’s talking about religion. Steven Den Beste posts about marriage – who should be allowed to marry whom. I don’t think that marriage has any meaning outside of religion, as defined in the previous post (i.e. a system of values). Therefore, I think that the government should get out.

I think it will end up this way anyway. Once we start tampering with the marriage laws, it will indeed be a slippery slope. A particular religion has no problem defining what marriage is, but a government trying to satisfy all definitions will. The next obvious target is polygamy. I think there are more Moslems in the world than homosexuals. Why should we infringe upon a Moslem’s right to polygamy? And how about polyandry? There are a lot less polyandrous societies, but it is by no means unknown. Etc.

Actually, we have this problem already today. A Catholic who gets divorced and remarried can be recognized as married to one person by the Church, and another under US law. Why bother? The US government can create a value-neutral legal definition called, say, civil union, with laws to regulate it, and let the various religions (and non-religions) battle it out on the marriage question.