Wednesday June 30, 2004
Much ado about sex
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As Joan and I approach our 44th3\”> wedding anniversary, I find myself musing about the Canadian psyche, where the most divisive social issue seems to be marriage.
We Canadians don\’t get worked up about highway accidents and workplace injuries that kill or maim millions. We don\’t rise up in arms against corporate fraud that cheats thousands of elderly pensioners out of their life savings. We don\’t object when flawed anti-terrorist legislation erases some of everyone\’s legal rights.
But when a tiny fraction of Canada\’s gays and lesbians – who, according to Statistics Canada, make up barely one percent of the population anyway – request the right to make a lifetime commitment to each other, Canada goes bonkers.
One group insists vehemently that marriage should be limited exclusively to two persons of opposite sexes. Another group believes that the sex of the two persons is irrelevant; all that matters is the commitment.
Sex and sin
\”Times New Roman\”> In other areas of life, any two people can form a business partnership. Same-sex executives conduct complex financial transactions together. Surgeons do intimate things inside patient\’s bodies. Wrestlers writhe in tandem. Teachers and daycare workers raise children.
No one suggests that these close relationships require opposite sexes.
But let two people of the same sex get into bed together, and you\’d think the nation\’s moral backbone had instantly dissolved into mush.
What is it about sex that gets our knickers in such a knot?
For centuries, the church equated sex with sin, forcing devout Christians to believe that Jesus was conceived without sex, so that he could remain untainted by sin.
True, two persons of the same sex cannot procreate. But if children were the sole basis for marriage, then birth control, vasectomy, or sterility should all be grounds for divorce.
Separation of church and state
\”Times New Roman\”> I suggest we got off track when marriage became a legal ceremony. In a civil ceremony, two persons make commitments only to each other. In a religious ceremony, they make vows to each other, and to God, before a community of believers.
That makes marriage a three-way relationship.
Periodically, the United Church of Canada (and some other churches) have debated opting out of having clergy act as unpaid civil servants, performing and registering a legal relationship.
Every time, they have backed down from a formal separation of church and state.
Perhaps it\’s time to reconsider that option. Instead of legislating marriage as the union of a man and a woman, we might better restore “marriage” to its traditional concept of a religious ceremony before God. Couples who don\’t care if God is part of their lives can get hitched by a civil servant, and call it anything they want except marriage.
But those who want their commitment sanctioned by God can get married in a religious ceremony in a church. Since that marriage would have no legal status, the churches could define for themselves whom they are willing to marry. And prospective couples would go only to those churches that accepted their choice of partners.
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Copyright © 2002 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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It\’s also worth pursuing Richard Fairchild\’s United Online site. Another site worth visiting is David Keating\’s ff\”>\”SeemslikeGod\” page.
