So, I guess the mayor of San Francisco decided that he (or the city he manages) was above state law and decreed that the city would recognize gay marriages. I don't follow the news as much as I used to, so I'm a bit hazy on the details, but that's about the gist of it, right? And the state of California said, "No, buddy, a marriage is defined as a civil union between one man and one woman, so there's no such thing as a gay marriage." Am I following the story so far, even if only in general terms?

As a result of all of this, the U.S. President says he wants an amendment to the Constitution to codify what the Congress has already legislated, and what the states have already legislated, defining marriage as a one man, one woman arrangement. The Defensive Marriage Amendment or something like that, right?

Now, I'm not sure why a constitutional amendment is needed, insofar as the laws are already on the books, unless one is worried about the laws being overturned by the Supreme Court. But, that said, the rationale I'm hearing for such an amendment is this: that we need to preserve the sanctity of marriage.

Of course, given that there is *supposed* to be a separation of church and state in this country, it seems rather odd to me that the government should be in the business of preserving the sanctity of anything. It's up to the various religions to determine was is sanctified and what is not, right?

Now, before I go too far down that road, let me also acknowledge that yes, this country was founded upon Christian ideals and that, additionally, the government does have legitimate reasons to regulate the legal status of marriage, a civil union with peculiar property rights issues and child guardianship matters and which is much more than merely a public proclamation before the church and any God or Gods concerned.

It stands to reason that our nation would regulate the legal status of marriage in accordance with the Christian traditions that have informed so much of our nation's governing principles. Still, to do so in the name of preserving sanctity is a dubious claim, especially when sanctity is a church issue, and some churches define marriage (and divorce and annulment and so on) so differently from others.

But whether you agree that the government should or should not get into the sanctity business, and whether you agree that the default concept of sanctity should or should not be based upon the traditional Presbyterian (or other Protestant, non-Morman* church of your choice) definitions of marriage, I am struck by the idea that the gravest threat to the "sanctity of marriage" is the idea that women want to "marry" women and men want to "marry" men.

The alleged sanctity of marriage has already been completely and utterly undermined by the trend of men not wanting to stay married to women and women not wanting to stay married to men. In practice, the notion of "Until Death Do Us Part" has been replaced by "Until I Don't Feel Like It Anymore." According to a February 2002 report by the U.S. Census Bureau, 50% of first marriages in the United States are likely to end in divorce. According to this report, as of 1996, a mere 55.9% of first marriages that began in the early 1970's even made it to their 20th anniversaries.

One of the hallmarks of marriage is supposed to be commitment. It is exactly that commitment that is lacking in the modern American definition of marriage, while it is exactly that commitment that gays and lesbians say they desire for themselves. And thus, we arrive at the irony of preserving the sanctity of marriage: that we don't honor our own commitments while at the same time we refuse to recognize the commitments that others (gays & lesbians, polygamists, etc.) would like to make to each other.

Allowing gay and lesbian civil unions, by whatever term you wish to call them, does not cheapen monogamous, heterosexual marriage. Divorce, infidelity, jealousy, annulment, and spousal abuse cheapen marriage.

Protestant Christian America has left marriage in a ditch along the highway of history, nearly road-kill and barely clinging onto its life. How does only allowing straight, allegedly monogomous men and women to degrade it do anything toward preserving its sanctity?

In my next post, I'll describe the most effective way to preserve the sanctity of marriage.

* I am aware that the Mormon church currently officially defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman, but I mention them as an exception because they show that even an ostensibly Protestant faith can and has maintained an arguably controversial definition of marriage as including more than simply one man and one woman.

You will also note that I say Protestant rather than Christian. The Catholic version of marriage allows for annulments, whereby wealthy parishioners can buy their way out of a marriage as if it had never existed in the first place -- a kind of marriage-morning-after abortion pill that is not recognized by the legal system in the U.S. despite its status in the church as being legitimate.