I befriended Suzanne Stradling over a hilarious letter to the editor she sent in to the BYU newspaper many years ago. When I learned that my new roommate was the author of that much-beloved letter to the editor (which I had read long before I met her), I had no choice but to like her a whole lot.
We haven't kept in touch very well lately, but it would appear she's still in the business of writing to newspapers -- now primarily to the Washington Post. Here are her incisive thoughts on gay marriage, from the Washington Post website:
Gene Weingarten: A long, sane post from Suzanne Stradling on the subject of gay marriage and why I am not helping the situation:
For a long, long time, marriage was the way you got permission to have sex. Having sex outside of marriage was offensive to God, and so marriage had the secular effect of creating a legal child-rearing unit and the religious effect of allowing the devout to actually get some action. When Church and State are one, no problem. But society and religion have parted ways on the subject of appropriate sexual behavior, and that aspect of marriage-as-a-concept disappeared sometime last century in the broader American society. There are still significant religious communities where sex without marriage is considered a sin, however, and committed believers remain celibate until marriage.
Most of these orthodox religious communities don't accept a solely religious ceremony as a valid marriage. Having a civil law covenant is part of receiving the religious legitimization of sex. (There is an exception in some polygamist communities, but even there, a man may be required to legally marry a wife, divorcing her before legally marrying again, on the basis that you can ignore the divorce but the marriage is necessary.) Furthermore, in most of these communities, there is no actual religious ceremony required--in the sense that a couple married in front of the county clerk are regarded as being morally chaste when they engage in conjugal sex, while a couple married by a minister but without a legal license are committing the sin of fornication.
In communities where marriage is the one and only way to get God's imprimatur on sexual behavior, gay marriage causes problems of logic. If God hasn't accepted or has forbidden gay marriage (a belief of most orthodox religious communities), then one presumes that a marriage of two men does not carry the same legitimizing religious effect as the marriage of a man and a woman.
You can argue that believing this in the first place is bigotry and perhaps for some it is. But there are plenty of religious people who believe that, while they have been instructed by Spirit or grace to follow certain principles, those people who haven't received the same instructions or made the same commitments are not bound by the same rules. So gay sex (or premarital sex) is forbidden in the believer but not a reason to condemn anyone else. Since it's hard to live in a heterogeneous society without knowing and liking lots of people who have different values and beliefs, I suspect that many or most of the people who govern their own lives by strict religious rules are actually pretty laid back about everyone else's version of decent human behavior.
So why object to gay marriage for others? Essentially, the state has become the only legitimate sponsor of a religious sacrament. Significantly reworking or expanding the definition of marriage calls into question the sacramental nature of the resulting civil act.
Opposition to gay marriage is based in concern about the effect gay marriage would have on the religious validity of heterosexual civil ceremonies. Sound bizarre? Well, yes, making the government the vehicle of something that religiously important IS bizarre. What we have here is the intersection of deeply held religious belief and the obligation of the government to treat all its citizens fairly.
Given the immense religious importance attached to marriage by the religiously orthodox (how would you like to spend years celibate?), it's unfair to call them bigots for questioning the theological effect of a reorganization of marriage. (And, given the celibacy thing, you can even understand if they're a little cranky about it.) If the state solemnizes marriages that fall outside of the religious requirement of marriage, then what happens to the power of the state to act in loco dei and legitimize sex? Does it lose its effect altogether?
This is why you have people who are fine with a gay equivalent of marriage--"so long as it's called something else." The idea is to protect the power of divine sanction for people whose concept of marriage requires that sanction.
The "Save Traditional Marriage!" campaigns have simply failed to point out that the traditional marriage they are saving is one not actually entered into by most heterosexual couples. It's VERY traditional marriage, in which neither partner has sex before or outside the marriage bond. Admittedly, this translates poorly to focus groups. Most people support marriage, but find unmarried celibacy unappealing. But the religious don't want everyone to be forced into their idea of marriage, they just want the original religious significance of the ceremony preserved for those who value it--not an unreasonable request, given that the state originally adopted, supported and modified religious marriage for its own ends.
Here we actually have a nice moment of the religious community getting worked up about a legitimate theological question. Can anyone really doubt that the greatest threat to this very traditional idea of marriage is heterosexual sex outside of marriage? But there is no movement to ban Britney and K-Fed, or to recriminalize gay sex or premarital sex. The focus really is on a genuine threat to the theological concept and treatment of marriage within a religious community.
And, yes, the psycho guy who takes "God hates fags" signs to funerals probably also supports banning gay marriage. But that doesn't tar everyone with his viewpoint, any more than the fact that Saddam Hussein also wants the U.S. to get out of Iraq makes you a deposed ex-dictator. (If I were writing to the ex-Czar of the Style Invitational, now . . . .)
The question is, of course, what ought to be done? The government is and should be in the business of providing equal rights to all its citizens. It should not be in the business of watering down religious ceremonies. I would like to see a complete break between the civil and religious marriage ceremonies (as in France, where marriage always takes place at City Hall and is followed by the religious ceremony of choice, if desired.) At least a few religions have found it necessary to institute additional religious requirements in order to obtain a divorce, so coming up with something for marriage ought not tax their abilities. The idea of making the government come up with marriage-plus-plus (a la covenant marriage) for the devout is idiotic.
Since most orthodox religious communities are, by their nature, conservative, instituting an entire new set of marriage rules is much less desireable than maintaining the status quo. Yet the status quo is going, like it or not, and, as the matter is a theological one, it ought to move to that arena to be resolved. It would also save us all the inanities of clueless politicians posturing to their base without any comprehension of the issues in question.
I genuinely believe that a subtantial number of the people against gay marriage are not bigots. But I should probably add that, for true "non-bigot" cred, they have to believe and observe restrictive religious rules--making the question about them, not about gay people. And there are a substantial number of people in the discussion who are bigots, or whose bigotry fuels a broader desire to "make a statement" about gays or otherwise squash any government support of alternative sexual lifestyle.
So, discussion question: are there gay people who have religious beliefs preventing gay sex outside of marriage but sanctioning it within? The entire argument I've made presupposes no overlap between the gay people who wish to marry and the religious people who place a very high value on marriage-as-sanction. Am I wrong?
