Mawwidge…
I’m told it’s an institute you can’t disparage, though that seems anything but the case these days. A litany of arguments in favor of allowing for “gay marriage,” in the short-hand parlance, or “homosexual unions,” has been given by hosts of talking heads, celebrities, and every-day folks. It’s a “civil rights” issue, some will say. “You can’t force your religious beliefs on other people!” “It’s about letting people pursue happiness,” say others. “Besides, it doesn’t affect you,” a third trope will chime in after the others.
The Non-Religious Case Against Same-Sex Marriage
Before I say what I’m about to say, I want to air the arguments that most opponents of same-sex marriage don’t say, but should. There are a host of non-biblical reasons to oppose same-sex marriage, which come down to the fundamental purpose of marriage both now and historically. Basically, marriage is all about making babies, and the civil government has a vested interest in supporting stable, healthy marriages as they tend to rear the most virtuous citizens, on the whole (which does not necessitate that others cannot be virtuous!) Here then, is the best video I’ve seen presenting this case. Take a few minutes and watch it, and then let us carry on below.
A Brief History of Marriage
Marriage is an institution as old as recorded time (and probably older.) It is written on our very being, and it is a natural thing to do which people across all cultures do. It is often done for love, but not always. Sometimes they were about property, and bringing families or tribes closer together, and were thus often arranged. And—as much as this will grind the gears of many—that’s not necessarily a bad thing. 
The simple fact is that arranged marriages (not to be confused with forced marriages) are often quite successful, and do end in love, even when the choice of spouse is not in the hands of either party. (Note, however, that I’m not endorsing arranged marriages.) Always, in the end, children were the aim, because it was virtually impossible to even think of sex without the possibility of children even 100 years ago. Marriage meant sex, and sex meant children, with few exceptions (certainly an elderly widow and widower might wind up married together, but these are the slight exceptions, and they do in fact prove the rule).
A Brief History of Civil Marriage
Civil marriage, that blessed arrangement, goes as far back as regular marriage, right? Nope. The idea of “common-law” marriages are relatively new, all things considered. Up through the high middle ages (1500’s), marriage was viewed almost entirely as a religious affair, to be dwelt with by the Church. In a world without a bureaucratic paper-trail, the idea of recording all but the most important marriages (between nobility, i.e., land owners) was just impractical. 1792 and the French Revolution changed all of that. An era of efficiency and then bureaucratic swept through the land.
“Efficiency! (Often without much beaurocracy!)”
And with the push for bureaucracy came the first compulsory push for civil marriages. It was not well received, but like the proverbial frog in boiling water, society became pretty quickly acclimated to it, and other governments began to require it.
Marriage and the Catholic Church
The Catholic Church is a funny thing at times, because she can straddle the line so well sometimes and for so long that people at some point begin to forget the line exists. This was the case with civil marriage. The Church only recognizes as sacramentally valid marriages which happen under her roof [proverbially speaking, but also usually literally]. But the Church, following the example of St. Paul, has no problem complying with laws which are not unjust, and so over time, many priests became able to perform civil marriages as well as sacramental marriages, which made things simpler and faster (“Efficiency!”) Now, sacramental marriage is something wholly different from natural marriage, as it exists only as a religious thing—a sacrament—which no civil authority can create or dissolve. Let it be said that there is nothing wrong with getting a civil marriage, particularly for the sake of the benefits that go along with it.
The Coming Push for Same-Sex Marriage
George Weigel has a piece making the argument that the Church ought to go back to the way things were before the French Revolution. Weigel writes:
A further threat comes from the gay insurgency, which will press the administration to find some way to federalize the marriage issue and to compel acceptance of the chimera of “gay marriage.” Thus it seems important to accelerate a serious debate within American Catholicism on whether the Church ought not pre-emptively withdraw from the civil marriage business, its clergy declining to act as agents of government in witnessing marriages for purposes of state law. If the Church were to take this dramatic step now, it would be acting prophetically: it would be challenging the state (and the culture) by underscoring that what the state means by “marriage” and what Catholics mean by “marriage” are radically different, and that what the state means by “marriage” is wrong.
Of course, Weigel notes that this is not without some drawbacks.
If, however, the Church is forced to take this step after “gay marriage” is the law of the land, Catholics will be pilloried as bad losers who’ve picked up their marbles and fled the game—and any witness-value to the Church’s withdrawal from the civil marriage business will be lost.
He ends with a call for more members of the church to begin discussing this matter more seriously. Brother Thomas More Garrett with the Dominicans in D.C. took him up on this invitation, begging to differ with Weigel, going so far as to claim that what Weigel suggests is “pastorally irresponsible.”
The Weigel plan would require Catholic couples to have two weddings—a civil ceremony and a separate Catholic wedding—in order to secure a myriad of rights and benefits that flow from civil law (for example, property ownership and inheritance). In effect, the Church would become responsible for introducing in this country a practice mirroring that found in certain others—compulsory civil marriage—in which couples contract marriage in a purely civil ceremony and, if they so choose, separately solemnize the marriage in a religious rite. The Church opposes compulsory civil marriage where it exists, and it’s difficult to see why she would want to facilitate the same sort of practice here in the United States.
Maybe I’m just one for splitting hairs, but I fail to see how merely highlighting the distinction between the sacramental and the civil in this way would make civil marriage any more compulsory than it already is (compulsory, that is, in order to secure certain rights).
I lean towards Weigel; what say you?