Professors Douglas Kmiec and Robert George
Posted on 05/28/2009 6:35:46 AM PDT by NYer
.- Doug Kmiec, a prominent Catholic who backed Barack Obama’s presidential bid, has endorsed replacing marriage with a neutral “civil license,” a proposal law professor Robert P. George called a “terrible idea” that would make the government neglect a vital social institution.
Speaking to CNSNews.com, Pepperdine University law professor Doug Kmiec said that although his solution to disputes over the definition of marriage might be “awkward,” it would “untie the state from this problem” by creating a new terminology that would apply to everyone, homosexual or not. “Call it a ‘civil license’,” he said.
“The net effect of that, would be to turn over--quite appropriately, it seems to me, the concept of marriage to churches and a church understanding,” he said.
Kmiec said that a motive for California’s Proposition 8, which restored the definition of marriage to being between a man and a woman, was religious believers’ “genuine concern” that the California ruling imposing homosexual “marriage” was not addressing religious freedom issues.
Saying he was among those believers who had such concern, Kmiec noted the possibility that churches which don’t acknowledge same-sex “marriage” could be subject to penalty, lose public benefits, or be subject to lawsuits “based on some theory of discrimination.”
Kmiec argued “civil licenses” would address the question. He proposed the state withdraw from “the marriage business” and do licensing “under a different name” to satisfy government interests for purposes of taxation and property.
Under his proposal, “the question of who can and cannot be married would be entirely determined in your voluntarily chosen faith community,” he added, saying that the proposal would reaffirm the significance of marriage “as a religious concept,” which has a much fuller understanding than is found in civil marriage.
Responding to Kmiec’s proposal, Princeton University professor Robert George said it was a “terrible” idea and a “very, very bad one.”
George told CNSNews.com that marriage is not like baptisms and bar mitzvahs but has “profound” social and public significance.
“It’s a pre-political institution,” he said. “It exists even apart from religion, even apart from polities. It’s the coming together of a husband and wife, creating the institution of family in which children are nurtured.”
“The family is the original and best Department of Health, Education and Welfare,” he continued, saying that governments, economies and legal systems all rely on the family to produce “basically honest, decent law abiding people of goodwill – citizens – who can take their rightful place in society.”
“Family is built on marriage, and government--the state--has a profound interest in the integrity and well-being of marriage, and to write it off as if it were a purely a religiously significant action and not an institution and action that has a profound public significance, would be a terrible mistake,” George told CNSNews.com.
“I don’t know where Professor Kmiec is getting his idea, but it’s a very, very bad one.”
Catholic Ping
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Can’t the Church officially excommunicate Kmiec, so at least when he makes such ridiculous statememts, others have an easy retort to the MSM that he is not a Catholic?
Feminist see marriage as some type of shackle of oppression or bondage against women. Liberals don't want any government favorability to the institution of marriage and the so-called gay-marriage debate is just a Trojan horse to destroy the marital union altogether.
"Laws are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices. Suppose one believed that human sacrifices were a necessary part of religious worship, would it be seriously contended that the civil government under which he lived could not interfere to prevent a sacrifice? Or if a wife religiously believed it was her duty to burn herself upon the funeral pile of her dead husband, would it be beyond the power of the civil government to prevent her carrying her belief into practice?
So here, as a law of the organization of society under the exclusive dominion of the United States, it is provided that plural marriages shall not be allowed. Can a man excuse his practices to the contrary because of his religious belief? [98 U.S. 145, 167] To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself. Government could exist only in name under such circumstances."
I wouldn’t be so quick to condemn this idea. Marriage is a religious institution first and foremost. Really, who cares what the state does with it’s (more and more) completely unrelated institution that goes by the same name.
Homosexual monogamy can never produce children...
These people seek a ceremonious sanctification and an esoteric absolution.
If you let em carry on for a while, eventually they make their madness evident.
Personally I'd be willing to take my chances.
L
Better if they took him for a nap with the fishes.
he is full on insane. period.
Loud and Proud.
Like most things it is involved with, we will never get the gubberment out of the marriage business, much to the detriment of the institution of marriage.
But this guy is really a weasel.
Freegards, thanks for all the pings
The government should be neglecting all social institutions. Protect us from murderers and terrorists and leave everything else alone. There's no need for even these 'civil licenses' -- people can choose to form whatever sort of private contracts they want.
I’m sorry but if you supported Obama, you aren’t a Catholic.
CINOs - The group that keeps taking and taking - alive and thriving since 1962.
They took the Mass; they took Baptism; they took Confession; they took Communion; they took Confirmation; they took Holy Orders; now they want Marriage. When do they take Extreme Unction? Or will the dead be allowed this one Sacrament?
Good point. And then it will allow for the union of a man and a dog, a man and three small children, a women and four goats, ten men and forty two lemurs, two children and their pit bull, and...
Really, we care. Every state, apart from what it might be argued theoretically, has always relied upon some kind of world view system of morality. Whether that was the pagan view of Rome, or in the case of the US, in the biblical view of Judeo-Christian propriety.
We cannot escape such a connection between the underlying world view and the public morality, so the question will be: With what do we replace this with now?
The best we can do is be Salt of the Earth and hope people listen to us.
Marriage will still be valid to the believers long after the government gets rid of it. Once the financial benefits disappear, so will the homosexuals “need” to be married. But for those who look at the oath as to “God”, it won't matter one bit what the rest of them think, we will still be married and God will still bless our union.
Separation of church and state, folks. You wanted it. Now sit back and enjoy the results.
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