2 posts tagged “marriage”
When my dear wife and I first made our love-life together all legally proper, it was in an unfamiliar city the day after Christmas—I had carried the marriage license around for weeks. The day also being a Saturday, just about all offices were closed. But, after romantically huddling out of the teeth-chattering cold in a phone booth, we fortuitously were able to come in contact with a disbarred lawyer that had become a justice of the peace and needed the money. For a small fee he set the whole thing up in twenty minutes.
For the required two witnesses, he secured the services of a building janitor and a man that operated a wine store on the ground floor of the building that up close to pigeon-heaven housed the justice’s dingy office. The janitor served as maid of honor—his pants legs sticking from under a dust smock and his long hair tiaraed with a Chicago Bears stocking cap. The wine-store clerk, the groomsman, sported a very Gucci look—dark pegged pants, pinstriped grey vest and an open at the neck white silk shirt.
The bride and I were bundled in the thickest winter clothing that we had—damn it was cold outside that day and only slightly less so in the official's office. Our two attendees opted to stand in the hall just outside the nuptial chamber. There, with the stairwell door propped open, some heat came rising from below.
Following a brisk ceremony, the groomsman invited everyone down to his warm and cheery wine shop for a reception that included bottle after bottle of his very finest champagne—all on the house.
The reception was well attended by people coming in off the street to redeem coupons that they had been given as Christmas presents. All were certainly in a merry mood, but regrettably our marriage officiator said that he would like to come but that he best decline—something about alcohol getting him into trouble in the first place.
Years later, after my wife had decided to join me in faith as a Roman Catholic, we got married again in the Church. Our vows were exchanged prior to a clean-up Mass that was seldom packed to the gills. For some reason both of us think that our first marriage has bound us most closely together.
If a mother of a new bride were to start describing in great detail her daughter’s grand and elaborate nuptial ceremony, I could count on seeing my wife’s face brighten with an amused squint to her eyes and a lightly forming smile on her pretty lips, and if perchance we could share a knowing glance, she’d give me a clandestine wink.
But both of our marriages have worked, but maybe in differing ways. The first one made us feel good and the second one makes us feel good.
Government should get out of the “Holy Matrimony” business and leave its celebration to religious organizations. The First Amendment establishes that government shall “make no law respecting the establishment of religion.” Thus, sacraments and rituals of sanctification should be non-public matters and private concerns to be pursued in accord with individual conscience and proclivity.
Government does however have a Constitutional responsibility to protect the rights of consenting adults to freely enter into relational and obligatory contracts. In accord with its responsibility to keep State law from impairing this freedom, marriage licensing should be stripped of religious trappings and redefined as civil unions.
If gays and lesbians, or others, desire to extend their civil union into Sacramental Marriage, they can find a body of faith that is willing to sanctify their contractual relationship. If they cannot find one, their freedom of religion entitles them to start a denomination of their own.
