Is Civil Marriage a Right?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Last week the European Court of Human Rights ruled that same-sex marriage is not a human right guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights. In\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/03\/is-civil-marriage-a-right.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Is Civil Marriage a Right?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Last week the European Court of Human Rights ruled that same-sex marriage is not a human right guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights. 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{"id":2426,"date":"2012-03-31T12:53:47","date_gmt":"2012-03-31T16:53:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?p=2426"},"modified":"2012-12-14T17:33:54","modified_gmt":"2012-12-14T22:33:54","slug":"is-civil-marriage-a-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/03\/is-civil-marriage-a-right.html","title":{"rendered":"Is Civil Marriage a Right?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

$\"\"$ <\/p>\n

Before I get to the main point, I have to say that last part struck me as bizarre. There\u2019s not a Catholic church in the country that would consent to marry me to another atheist, whatever the gender. There are a number of prerequisites for sacramental marriages, and I have no idea why civil<\/em> same-sex marriage would obligate the Church to officiate anymore than civil<\/em> marriage for divorcees would obligate the Church to marry people in the absence of an annulment. Either there\u2019s something missing from the Mail\u2019s<\/em> analysis, or the court just created a huge and\u00a0under-reported constraint on religious liberty.<\/p>\n

That worry aside, when I read the article, I realized I wasn\u2019t certain whether I thought civil marriage (for any gender pairing) really ought to be considered a human right. \u00a0I guess a big part of the question comes down to whether you think marriage comes out of our right to freely contract with others and have the State enforce those contracts. \u00a0In that case, the State has an obligation to recognize and enforce the bond we create between ourselves and individuals, but it has no duty to single out a particular kind of contract as \u2018marriage.\u2019<\/p>\n

This wouldn\u2019t mean the State couldn\u2019t<\/em> acknowledge marriage in law, in the tax code, etc, or that it wouldn\u2019t be prudent to do so. \u00a0It only means that it doesn\u2019t have<\/em> to and that, in the absence of the State\u2019s involvement or blessing, people can conduct themselves as they wish. \u00a0People can get recognition of their commitment to a spouse from a church, from their family, or from their community at large.<\/p>\n

The \u2018officialness\u2019 of the marriage would be enforced by whatever \u00a0constraints the couple chose to be subject to at the beginning of the marriage. \u00a0Essentially, everyone would be picking from a menu of covenant marriages<\/a>, where the restrictions were enforced either by contract or by social opprobrium.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know that I have any major objections to this libertarian model of marriage. \u00a0I\u2019d like<\/em> for people to have more freedom to specify who gets to visit them in the hospital, who gets to inherit, and who has joint custody of their children irrespective of whether that person is a romantic partner.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s obviously not the system we have, and I think most of the litigation about gay marriage has nothing to do with inalienable human rights. \u00a0The government can have an interest in marriage regardless of human rights, insofar as the regulation and recognition of marriage is an opportunity for soft paternalism, so the question isn\u2019t whether government should<\/em> be involved. The legal question (at least in the US) is, once the govenment is<\/em> involved, is\u00a0it allowed to make a category that deliberately excludes a protected class.<\/p>\n

What I\u2019d like to know is whether you all think the\u00a0government\u2019s\u00a0involvement in marriage is a matter of prudent social engineering or of moral obligation.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"