Many people believe that “The State” -the government- should get out of the marriage business altogether. There are two main reasons for this belief. One is the presumed doctrine of separation of church and state, as furthered by those who don’t approve of any religious influence in government (more on the separation doctrine tomorrow). The other side is those people of faith who don’t approve of governmental influence on religion.
However, the government recognized marriage as an important component of civilized society and decided to bestow certain benefits on married couples, in order to encourage people to get married, as well as to stay married. In essence, benefits were intended to help create committed relationships, households, and families. Stable homes make for a more stable society. Regulating marriage is also intended to make property rights, inheritance rights, custody, and other issues more manageable. But, is that good enough?
Other people believe that while it’s fine for individual states to define marriage and decide what benefits go along with it, the federal government has no business getting involved. This argument does carry weight, since marriage is not specifically addressed in the Constitution. It should be a states’ rights issue, according to the Tenth Amendment.
While states do legislate marriage to some degree, there are still federal provisions, requirements, and benefits in place that many see as wrong. The interesting thing is that there are also people who believe it should be a federal issue despite the fact that such a position is not in line with the Tenth Amendment.
There are more sides to this debate as well. On one side, advocates for alternative definitions of marriage believe that the federal government should include those alternatives and offer benefits, and that the government should force all states to accept such marriages. On the other side, advocates for the protection of one man, one woman unions hope to amend the Constitution instead of attempting to further their agenda via judicial fiat.
When it comes to marriage, there are many debates, and within each one, there are many different arguments. So, who’s right?
In my opinion, we should abide by the Tenth Amendment, which gives power over anything that is not addressed in the Constitution, to the several states, or to the people. The only other legal method is to amend the Constitution so that it does in fact address the issue of marriage. This is not to say that gay marriage activists cannot promote their own amendment as well, but rather to note that these are the constitutional methods for dealing with issues not spoken of in our founding documents.