The State Should Butt Out of (Gay) Marriage, That’s Business for the Clergy

April 27, 2012 1

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – Marriage is a religious ceremony. It has historically been performed, especially in the Western world, by members of the clergy. If you’re a member of the Catholic faith, it is what is known as a sacrament, it’s a gift from God. There are seven sacraments and marriage is one of them. Therefore, if this is a law of God or a gift from God, how can mortal men alter that which has been given to us by God? Check out today’s transcript for more…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike: Ryan, how are you?

Caller Ryan: Yes, sir. I’m pretty good this morning. How are you

Mike: I’m good. I’m better. I have a live voice. Who knew?

Caller Ryan: I’m calling about a proposed constitutional amendment here in North Carolina. If I can quote from the ballot, “To provide that marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this state.” I’m a little torn on this issue and wanted to get your opinion.

Mike: Why are you torn?

Caller Ryan: Well, my personal belief is that marriage is between one man and one woman based on my faith, my upbringing, my own morality. At the same time, the [r]epublican in my feels like this is not something that’s the state’s business. It feels to me that it should be a personal matter, not necessarily a legislative matter. I wanted to see what you thought about that.

Mike: Well, it wasn’t until recently — this is a pretty modern invention here, like most of our current governmental overreaches and acts of tyranny are modern inventions, although there are plenty of old ones to go around as well. Humans, we just seem to keep repeating the same mistakes of the past, maybe because we don’t read the history of the past because it’s old, it’s fuddy-duddy and it doesn’t matter. [mocking] “All that matters is what is today.”

Marriage is a religious ceremony. It has historically been performed, especially in the Western world, by members of the clergy. If you’re a member of the Catholic faith, it is what is known as a sacrament, from the Latin sacramentum, meaning gift. It’s a gift from God. There are seven sacraments and marriage is one of them. Therefore, if this is a law of God or a gift from God, how can men alter — and when I say men, I mean mortal men. How do mortal men alter that which has been set out or has been decreed, not really decreed — we’ve been blessed. We’ve been given this by God.

Farther back, you’ll have marriages and marriage ceremonies being performed by the Hebrew faith and the antecedent or what came before Christianity. It wasn’t around in the 1830’s or ‘40s, I think Massachusetts was one of the first states, had decided that they wanted to make this something that the state had to sanction and you had to get this license thing. You had to pay a fee and this, that and the other.

As a matter of fact, there’s a story at American Conservative magazine, amcommag.com, written by Daniel McCarthy about how the conservative movement has totally botched it and blown it on the issue of gay marriage. Now that it’s out, now that we have modern reality and we have to deal with it, there really is no position that a conservative can take other than just let them have it and be happy that the numbers are going to be small. If I am to understand McCarthy correctly, this is just the way it is. The politics and the reality of the situation have evolved and changed and there’s really not much you can do about it.

I have a different point of view. The things that come to us from our religions and from our faith, these are eternal. This just boggles my mind. People are confusing the political with the spiritual and with the eternal. I think when you conflate the two, this is where, as civilizations, you get into trouble. It has been the flight away from the eternal and to the ephemeral, two words that both have roots in Greek, eternal and ephemeral, eternal meaning everlasting, or saecula saeculorum as you would hear in a Latin ceremony in church, and ephemeral meaning short-term, [mocking] “I don’t care about that. I just want what’s good for me right now,” which is a human urge.

I think when you stray from this doctrine, especially in matters such as this, in social matters, this just sets the stage for the next and the next. It may not be a spiritual thing that is trod upon next. It may be something that is purely social and maybe even political. I would say that the reaction should be that states shouldn’t be involved in it at all. Maybe the proper amendment is that marriage is an institution that is consecrated and created by God and the state doesn’t have any business in it, other than choosing who they can tax because they’re married and who they can’t because they are not. I would leave it at that.

Your legislature’s urge to do this is obviously to try and prevent the importation or the forced acceptance of homosexual marriages in the State of North Carolina, I suspect. Your state is not alone. Other states will act accordingly. Now, you make marriage, the beautiful, God-given gift between a man and a woman, now you make it part of the governmental structure. Now it’s part of the political life and not of the spiritual. There’s something wrong with that. To me, that’s not the proper course of action. The cat is out of the back, as they say.

So if you’re asking me in the perfect world what I would say to you about it, I would say the state ought to butt out. That’s the business for the clergy. The Presbyterian, Catholic, Lutheran and all the other churches, if they stand firm and just say we’re here to conserve and defend and administer God’s law as it was handed down from us. It’s not for us to change it. If he sends a prophet down here and tells us, “Hey, I’m a prophet. You need to listen to me. You need to change that,” that’s a different story.

End Mike Church Show Transcript