www.roanoke.com

Robert Benne

Benne, director of the Center for Religion and Society at Roanoke College, wrote this on behalf of the Public Theology Group.

On Nov. 7, I will vote for the proposed amendment, which will become Section 15A in the Virginia Bill of Rights if it passes. The main clause states: "That only a union of one man and one woman may be a marriage valid in or recognized by this commonwealth and its political subdivisions."

I will vote for it to preserve a very important social institution -- marriage -- that is in serious danger of being thinned down to a private contract between persons over the age of consent who stipulate whatever meaning they want to give it.

However, in Western history, marriage has until very recently been defined in a "thick" manner, i.e., it was arranged so that only faithful, permanent unions of fit, sexually complementary pairs could be publicly supported and protected.

This arrangement was legally supported because it proved to be the best milieu to bear and nurture children, which was deemed to be one of the major ends of marriage. Further, this social institution, when working as it should, became a major contributor to the common good by bringing up new generations of good and productive citizens.

As a "thickly defined" social institution, marriage involves specifications about who can enter, much like the limits to other social institutions, e.g., the military and higher education. There are no universal basic human rights violated in such limitations.

The traditional definition of the social institution of marriage limit it to complementary pairs who generally have the capacity to procreate and thereby fulfill the purposes of marriage I outlined above.

Those purposes of marriage are still honored by the American people for both religious and nonreligious reasons, but there are powerful forces behind the effort to reduce marriage to a limited contract rather than an unconditional covenant. Thus, we have the efforts in many states by large majorities of citizens to protect by constitutional amendment a social institution that is under threat from various groups -- gays and lesbians, polygamists and polyamorists, among them -- whose interest it is to reduce this social institution to a contract.

These groups have enlisted radical legal philosophers and jurists to do their work. Following their lead, activist judges often overrule the legislation enacted by the representatives of the people. Sadly, then, constitutional amendments are necessary.

Already many destructive changes have been abetted by these legal efforts to transform the meaning of marriage and family life.

As the legal meaning of marriage has been reduced, fewer people marry. Why bother?

Co-habitation is an easier in and out arrangement. Often, those who do marry fail at it because it means so little.

Thus, married life has become increasingly unstable, with women and children bearing the primary costs. And the negative effects on society are enormous.

There are very good secular, practical reasons to preserve the traditional social institution of marriage, but for those in the Judeo-Christian tradition there are also compelling religiously based moral reasons for doing so.

They believe that God has implanted in his creation various patterns of morality and justice that, when observed and honored, lead to harmony and peace in the long run and in general.

When society ignores or violates them widely, there are repercussions in the form of conflict and disorder. (This, of course, applies to more than marriage and family life.)

These divinely implanted patterns operate a bit like a magnet beneath a paper of iron filings. When the magnetic field is followed, the filings fall neatly into a harmonious pattern. If the filings escape the field, they fall randomly off the paper.

Religiously based moral arguments have just as much right to be expressed in the public sphere about these issues as other kinds of argument.

Indeed, Western marriage and family law was decisively shaped by the Judeo-Christian tradition. While dissenters from or reinterpreters of this tradition indeed have the right to express their convictions, there is certainly no violation of the separation of church and state for religious believers to exercise theirs.

One last point. Those opposed to the marriage amendment argue that the second clause of the amendment will interfere with contractual arrangments that many unmarried heterosexual couples enjoy, as well as those enjoyed and sought by gays and lesbians.

However, in a lengthy advisory opinion offered on Sept. 14, Virginia Attorney General Robert McDonnell argues that such effects are neither intended nor likely to happen. The amendment's language was carefully drawn.