The myth about marriage

Why do so many supporters civil unions lack similar support for same-sex marriage, apparently irked by a a fiddly semantic nuance? Most are influenced in at least some way by Christianity. But not even among supporters of complete equality is one simple fact about marriage widely known: it doesn't really have any sacramental history at all. Garry Wills makes this pertinent historical point:

The early church had no specific rite for marriage. This was left up to the secular authorities of the Roman Empire, since marriage is a legal concern for the legitimacy of heirs. When the Empire became Christian under Constantine, Christian emperors continued the imperial control of marriage, as the Code of Justinian makes clear. When the Empire faltered in the West, church courts took up the role of legal adjudicator of valid marriages. But there was still no special religious meaning to the institution. As the best scholar of sacramental history, Joseph Martos, puts it: “Before the eleventh century there was no such thing as a Christian wedding ceremony in the Latin church, and throughout the Middle Ages there was no single church ritual for solemnizing marriage between Christians.”

And on a personal, and I think rather pointed, note:

In the 1930s, my parents had a civil marriage, but my Catholic mother did not think she was truly married if not by a priest. My non-Catholic father went along with a church wedding (but in the sacristy, not the sanctuary) by promising to raise his children as Catholic. My mother thought she had received the sacrament, but had she? Since mutual consent is the essence of marriage, one would think that the sacrament would have to be bestowed on both partners; but my non-Catholic father could not receive the sacrament. Later, when my father left and married another, my mother was told she could not remarry because she was still married to my father in the “true marriage.” When he returned to my mother, and became a Catholic, a priest performed again the sacramental marriage. Since my father’s intervening marriage was “outside the church,” it did not count. What nonsense.

This curious position of advocacy for civil unions but not for 'marriage' was Obama's for a rather long time. Like most, I've known people who struggle personally with the trivial distinction to be made between marriage as they see it, a divine rite, and marriage as it ought to be recognized by the state, a legally-binding contract of kinship between two people. But of course it's a distinction that really need not matter.

Previous coverage of gay marriage on the Report here, marriage in general here.