I remember writing a post long ago when the California Proposition 8 controversy was at its greatest flury. At the time, I had bemoned the divided state of the Christian community over this issue:
On the one side, there are those who are against the moral issue of homosexual union in marriage or otherwise. These, according to moral conviction, are voting positive on Proposition 8 to ban homosexual marriage. The other side of the Christian community, a minority amongst evangelicals, is voting negative on the proposition, but also according to moral conviction that homosexual marriage is not wrong. The major discrepancy is what both sides have in common – voting according to moral conviction.
Now that the proposition has been overturned, this seems to be the largest argument amongst those who are against such ban, Christian or not – that we should not vote according to morals.
Whereas I would agree with this still, there has to be some clarification. Morality is the center of government and law. It is this uniquely human capacity that causes us to seek endorsement of certain values in our societies – don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t to bad things to each other. So if we see a certain set of morals that may be law and another set that may not be, how do we reconcile what morality is right to endorse through government and what is not?
Seems to me we need a criterea for deciding exactly what is government morality. First, how about we just step back for a minute to envision just exactly what the darn-tutin’ a government is for.
Picture a group of people without any overarching law or body of ruling individuals. They each settle down with their families and began farming and herding to provide food for themselves. Farmer A is happily tending his crops one day when Farmer B strolls onto his property, kills him, and steals a bunch of his crops. Maybe he didn’t have any that were good. Maybe he just had a bad day. Who knows.
Now, mind you, these are all humans in this world, so they all share the common human moral center that tells them that killing are stealing are wrong. But something within Farmer B, namely selfishness or some left-over evolutionary trait, overrode this human morality.
The rest of the population in the area are scared. What if this happens again? What if something overcomes Farmer B or some other individual so much so that this commonly shared morality becomes second to his own selfish desires?
So the population comes together as a community and establishes certain guidlines to, get this, prevent one individual from denying another individual of his own rights as according to standard human morality. The community that is subsequently gathered exists merely to enforce this by means of punishment meant to either deter this problem or to permanently stop problematic individuals from commiting the same crime.
Now it goes that this community exists in relative harmony for a while under these established guidelines. But after a while, a large portion of this community starts talking together. They discuss how they all don’t like the way a certain few of the community have decided to dress (I’m trying to keep this simple). So they all come together and use those same punishments of processes of law to endorse a certain dress code. In the end, Farmer J and his family are put to death because they simply will not follow the dress code of the majority. Do we all agree this is “right”? Of course not.
Therefore, even though what is agreed on as standard human morality needs endorsement and reinforcement, so do the standards of reinforcement and those who act as governing body over the reinforcements.
How do we take care of this problem? Simple – we throw out morality from government. We make it entirely nuetral so as to never give way to this corruption. And we do this by defining government differently. No longer is it to prevent one individual from denying another individual of his own rights as according to standard human morality, but to prevent one individual from denying another individual anything he or she desires to do as long as it does not prevent another individual from doing the same.
This works out for the community. Farmer K desires to kill Farmer R. Can he do this then? Well, Farmer R desires to live, so it conflicts. Farmer K cannot kill Farmer R. You can say, Farmer R’s desire to live conflicts with Farmer K’s desire to kill him.
Well, what’s the difference here? The difference is that what Farmer K desires is active, in that it is directly against another individual. What Farmer R desires, however, is passive, in that it directly affects only himself and no one else. Note the importance of the word directly rather than indirectly.
So now, of course, we say that governmet is there to prevent one individual from denying another individual anything he or she desires to do as long as it does not directly interfere with or prevent another individual from doing the same.
But wait. Farmer X and Farmer Z want to make a pact with each other to share all of the crops each other makes and divide them evenly, since, with the types of crops each grows, Farmer X grows crops in seasons when Farmer Z can’t. So they make a contract. But who’s to enforce the contract? Well, a new aspect of government is born.
Let’s give one last and final definition of government: to prevent one individual from denying another individual anything he or she desires to do as long as it does not directly interfere with or prevent another individual from doing the same and to endorse privately constructed contracts chosen of free will and individually agreed to be adhered to between two or more individuals.
This is the natural definition or government. Now, there’s another aspect of government, namely that of property. Like it or not, government owns, ultimately, the property of the country. Why? Because they’ve got the firepower to protect it. It’s government and its armies that keep our homes from being invaded by whatever Joe Dictator who decides to take over our country because of bad indigestion. This also entails certain responsibilities for government: like roads and public facilities, or the protection of wildlife and forestry by means of national parks. But this all falls under the fact that they own the property and must be responsible for it. They do not, however, have any right to control what happens at the level of the private sector of, say, business.
I could go on with this, but it’s not the point of this post. Suffice to say that this bi-fold definition of government, when you really think about it, does the best to create a government that provides the maximum amount of freedom and civil liberties to its people.
Why are we missing the point again? Because we’re debating on whether or not government should endorse or deny gay marriage. What position should it take?
Neither.
After all we just said about what government is, we can see what it is not. Marriage is not a governmental institution. It is a religions and cultural institution in the realm of the private sector. The government has no right or responsibility to be directly involved with marriage. What the government can do, however, is endorse contracts between two or more individuals. These contracts may include, but are not specifically, marriage and whatever it entails. So a contract that looks a lot like marriage may be drawn up between Joe and Stan, Betty and Sue, or Sue and Joe, or whomever. As far as the marriage is concerned in itself and the rites and ceremonies involved, it’s entirely up to their religious or cultural institution to support or deny them of this. If your religious or cultural institution doesn’t support what you want or you simply don’t agree with them, then, well, why are you a part of it?
So, yes, we’re still missing the point. The point is that government is still placing its sticky fingers where it doesn’t belong, and we need to do something about it. We don’t need to be voting for or against Prop 8 – we just shouldn’t be voting at all on this issue. We ask, “Should government define marriage as between a man and a woman or otherwise?” when we really should be asking, “What does government have to do with marriage in either case?”
Let’s go and get our freedom back.
My Thoughts on the Religious Argument
I think it all comes down to a feeling of powerlessness. Evangelical sects of religion tend to believe it is their duty to transform the nation. I’m not denying they may believe this. It may be true. But they forget something. Biblically, Jesus did not come to reform government; he came to establish a covenant people for himself in the world. His power and his efforts come through this institution that he himself set up: the church.
The moment the Church believes it needs the government to work the will of Christ is the moment it admits the Church that it’s founder set up is powerless. Therefore, it admits Christ is powerless.
So I have this to say to those Christians: trust your founder, Christ, and his established institution to do his will. Government is there for worldly and civil order. It’s an institution of man and not of God.
I can see where many Christians may only have the best of intentions in mind (some do not, I’m sure). After all, we have compassion for our fellow humans and don’t wish to see them go by the wayside. But you should trust your founder, Christ, and what he established as a means to save, not any other institution of Man.
Ahem. Sorry for the sermon.
I’ll just leave you with a quote from the Christian’s own Paul:
“For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside.” 1 Corinthians 5:12-13a
