Category Archives: Religion

Thinking of marriage again, it occurs to me that there are really three forms of the institution. These are…

1) Anthropological Marriage: This is the binding males to females of our species that predates history and civilization. As humans evolved on the plains of Africa, they adapted to the growing savanna by adding meat to their diet.

Hunting required adaptation, however, and great intelligence evolved to serve that need. Brains are slow to develop and infant heads are large passing through the birth canal. Thus, human infants are helpless longer than any other mammalian species. A gazelle can run minutes after birth. A human child can’t run at adult speeds for many years.

Helpless infants result in helpless mothers who are forced to care for them preventing mothers from hunting or defending themselves. Human females, unlike most other mammals, required human males to assist them. Human females, also unlike most other mammalian species, became sexually receptive year round.

The result was permanent pair bonding or harem bonding of individual males to individual females. This was the birth of anthropological marriage and existed in a state of nature. It is, therefore, a natural right.

2) Religious Marriage: Christian marriage, for example, was instituted and ordained by God for the lifelong relationship between one man as husband and one woman as wife. Christians consider it the most intimate of human relationships, a gift from God and a sacred institution.

Christ underscored the importance and sacredness of lifelong marriage in his own teachings. He said that in marriage “‘Have you not read that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Christians regard the foundational principle of the lifelong union of a man and a woman to have been first articulated biblically in Genesis 2:24, and reaffirmed by Jesus in Matthew 19:5 and Mark 10:6-8, and by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 6:16. Marriage, therefore, is a gift from God and, therefore, a natural right. Other religions hold similar views.

3) Civil Marriage: This is a contractual relationship defined by the state and requires no religious or anthropological component. It is a licence by the state to become legally bound and share financial resources, responsibilities and benefits.

In all states in the United States, it is possible to obtain a civil marriage and none require a religious component. Such ceremonies are conducted before a local civil authority, such as a mayor, judge, deputy marriage commissioner or other public official.

In many jurisdictions, however, no license or ceremony is required. Marriage relationships may be created by the operation of the law alone, as in common-law marriage, sometimes called “marriage by habit and repute.” This is a judicial recognition that two people who have been living as domestic partners are subject to the rights and obligations of a legal marriage, even without formally marrying.

In the United States, civil marriage is a function of the government. Civil marriage is not an absolute right.

Having established the three forms of marriage, it is important to understand that the debate over same sex marriage involves only civil marriage. No government has the power to modify in any way the first or second types of marriage. Neither the Congress nor the President nor the Supreme Court have the slightest authority to modify either.

Laws passed and enforced will not change the essential biological nature of humans and the purpose of permanent bonding of individual males and females. It is beyond the purview of government.

Laws passed and enforced will not change the essential religious nature of God’s purpose of giving mankind the means to permanently bond men and women. This, also, is beyond the purview of government.

Government only has the means to modify marriage as a civil union.

Think, for a moment, about the really important aspects of marriage. It is about biology as the best means for propagating the species. It is a gift from God and sanctified as the most intimate combination of two people.

It is not a set of constantly changing rules regarding taxation, survivorship and so forth laid out and varying by jurisdiction.

As far as the wide scope of the meaning of marriage is concerned, civil marriage is a trivial component. It is virtually meaningless in comparison to the deep human and spiritual aspects of the other forms. Yet civil marriage is all that is at stake in the current debate.

Nothing the government does in the coming weeks or months can change marriage in any meaningful way. It is just window dressing and fooling around with the rules. No matter what happens, the critical and meaningful aspects of marriage will remain unchanged and timeless. That is certain.