Theologians know the danger of positing a “God of the gaps”–inserting God as an explanation of whatever phenomena we don’t yet understand. The problem with defining God in those terms is that as human knowledge proceeds, God shrinks. God used to be the cause of thunder (and thunder therefore a proof of God’s existence), until we understood what causes thunder. Then God was the cause of rainbows, until Newton came along and explained rainbows. But wait, God still created human beings by fiat–until we saw all the evidence that human beings arose via evolution. None of this means there is no God–just that, if you rely on a “God of the gaps” for your belief, you are standing on an ice floe in warming waters.
The lawyers defending Proposition 8 have a similar problem. Advocates of what people are now calling “traditional marriage” used to say that marriage had to give men rights over women, or it wasn’t marriage. They lost that when women’s right to control their own property and bodies was affirmed. Then came Loving v Virginia and they argued that a crucial purpose of marriage was to preserve the integrity of the races (just look it up!), but the Supreme Court said, no, that’s not what’s essential about marriage–any man and any woman can marry. Then they rested on that for a long time, until people started questioning the difference between a male-female relationship and a female-female or male-male one. “Ah,” the marriage-of-the-gaps people said, “It’s that men and women can procreate, and that’s what marriage is for: protecting procreation.” But so many people have argued the obvious point that we do allow male-female couples to marry who cannot, or state an intention never to, procreate, that they’ve had to change their definition of marriage again. Now, according to Charles Cooper (lead attorney for the Prop 8 defenders in the federal case), it has something to do with protecting people whose sexual relationship could lead to accidental pregnancy.
Of course, this has nothing to do with marriage; instead, they have searched for the one demonstrable difference between hetero and same-sex couples, and declared it the gap that must be filled by marriage. That’s a mighty small gap. I think they’re running out of gaps.
The divine, to many of us, including me, is not an explanation for the supernatural or inexplicable, but a name for the wondrous and good, so we don’t have the problem of our god diminishing as knowledge fills in the gaps. And marriage is not a bludgeon used against undesirable members of society, so we can affirm it for what it is today in our culture: the rights and responsibilities assigned to people who choose to be life companions, for whichever reasons they want, but usually because of mutual affection and the desire to share their lives.
Incidentally, readers of the Bible will note that that definition bears little resemblance to what marriage was in Biblical times and places–and a good thing, too.
Sermons in Stones 
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December 6, 2010 at 2:33 pm
Bill Baar
You’re confusing marriage with the practice of civil government issuing marriage licenses. One reason for licensing to become more prevelant in the US after the civil war was to enforce miscegenation laws. Licensing is by definition a process of discriminating.
You also overlooked one other long standing reason for marriage: to pass down inheritances and titles. I believe that’s why the Concel of Trent decided to get involved abolishing clandestine marriage.
Many people are hesitant to alter an institution that’s been around for many years, even if it’s seen as failing. And few people are in the habit of comparing “marriages as equal” as people who’ve had more than often can attest their own have been very different from each other.
I think the notion SSM will over any kind of affirmation or sense of belonging to community to those who partake it, a very sad notion indeed. The last thing a couple should need is any kind of affirmation or endoresement, from the County of Cook in Illinois lets say, that their union is some how recongized by the citizens of cook for then handing over of $30 bucks and some paperwork. That would be a fraud.
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December 6, 2010 at 3:17 pm
Amy Zucker Morgenstern
I know the difference between civil and religious marriage. I’m not sure the advocates of Prop 8 do.
I also know the difference between discriminating and discrimination. As one of the lawyers said this morning, you can note that left-handed people, or color-blind people, are different than others. But to get from there to “right-handed people can marry and left-handed people can’t,” you have to show that the difference MAKES a difference to a state interest. The state has arbitrarily said, not that there’s a difference between homosexuality and heterosexuality, which no one is disputing, but that that difference entitles one category to special treatment.
I’m happily living in the defrauded state you describe. We didn’t need the celebration of our families, friends, and church to make our commitment to each other, but it sure made a difference. (If it didn’t, I wouldn’t bother to officiate at people’s weddings. It’s a lot of bother and expense for something that doesn’t matter.) And we don’t need the state’s approval to do it, either, though the state could make our lives very miserable if it denied us all the legal accompaniments of marriage.
But setting up an honorable institution and then saying, “You, you over there–you’re not allowed in”: that is using the legislative process to deliver an insult to a group of citizens–not to mention that it creates a precedent to go much farther than an insult and actually strip us of other rights.
Interesting point about the different marriages. I think you are confusing “equal in the eyes of the law” with “identical,” when in fact it doesn’t even mean “equal in quality.” I’ve been married twice, and my current marriage is a better, happier one than the first one–that doesn’t give it higher standing in a family court, nor should it. (Actually, it has less standing–which it also should not.)
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December 6, 2010 at 6:15 pm
Bill Baar
Anything licensed by the County, is discriminating/discrimination. It’s soul purpose is to raise money and discrinate who can and can’t do something.
Marriage wasn’t always like that, and only recently post civil war have we gotten into it big time in the US.
That times ended. Government ought get out of the marriage licensing business. Government can’t confer any affirmation on our own self worth or value as human beings. If people are getting that from Government, the Religious really ought work against it, because it’s quite the reverse of how civilized people should identify themselves… It’s We the People… instead of We the Government…
It’s simply past the time for Government to get involved in the marriage business. The complexities too great. The Social Engineering goals whether they be control the passing of property, too keep odd notions like “racial purity” (a big reason in post civil war us to license marriage), or just to confer social insurance and welfare, just no longer things properly done (and done well) by Government at any level.
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December 9, 2010 at 6:27 pm
Amy Zucker Morgenstern
Bill, all I ask is that while we’re debating whether there should continue to be a bundling of rights and responsibilities called civil marriage, all adults who can find a consenting partner be allowed to participate. Perhaps it would be better to unbundle them, and those who want to buy insurance or leave their property to someone can just do it all as single individuals do now. But until your dream of abolition is realized, my suggestion would be: don’t like government-approved marriage? Don’t have one.
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December 7, 2010 at 2:00 am
tracy A
As Amy pointed out, whether “government” (County, whatever) is involved or not, does not make a social phenomenon intrinsically wonderful or not.
Perhaps “licensing” is somehow discriminatory against those indigent or pathologically anarchistic, but as long as the license is not prohibitively expensive or the process protracted, I will (and have) lived with it.
The County does maintain records of births, deaths, marriages, divorces, court cases, property ownerships and building code violations. I am not altogether convinced that keeping such records is evil. I can see the value in some of it and I am not above paying for those records to be kept and managed and made accessible to the public. Nor am I above requiring other taxpayers to bear their fair share of that load, since many of them also benefit from the same services that they plaintively decry.
If you must insist that Government get out of the marriage licensing business, then be prepared for private businesses to do it instead. Note the Las Vegas model where this is already common, and fully expect that same sex couples who pay the money, will be at least as welcome as barely-solvent “straight” (and even religious) couples. The now-proverbial final meltdown of society, the scenario where a feeble minded man wishes to marry his dog or his refrigerator, would likely also be available for a price.
Who knows, maybe the LDS “traditional” (read: plural) system will come back into fashion. Since, you know, it’s all about business anyway, and we want to keep the government out of it.
Churches can still be involved, as long as they advertise enough to keep the attention of the potential customers, and compete with the “marriage mills”.
In the interests of keeping their coffers full, perhaps the truly enterprising of the Mega-Churches (apparently God’s answer to multinational corporations), will come to see the value in offering officiated divorces as well, replete with catered receptions and color-coordinated napkins and tablecloths.
I agree that self-worth should not come from Government. So much better to have it come from Robert Schuler’s Glass Church (now in Chapter 11), or Ford Pickups with factory tonneau covers, or Maybelline Eye shadow, or cosmetic surgery to enhance a man’s pectoral musculature by the miracle of petroleum-based polymers. Indeed, let us return to traditional values, where we defined ourselves as a group by those whom we actively discriminated against.
If indeed “since the Civil War…” things have been different, this is still not any kind of basis for judgment about whether the changes are “good” or “not good”. Many societal norms have gone by the wayside in US culture since then, and frankly let not the door hit them on the backside on their way out.
Your Turn.
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December 14, 2010 at 9:01 pm
Suffering, gratitude, seasonal celebrations, and other UU blogging | Celebrant
[…] The Rev. Amy Zucker Morgenstern compares the “God of the gaps” with the “marriage of the gaps.” […]
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