Get Big Brother Out of Marriage -- for Heaven's Sake!

The brouhaha over the Obama administration's decision to stop defending the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act barring Uncle Sam from recognizing gay marriages misses the point. Since marriage predates governments, and for that matter formalized religion, what business do the feds and church-ies have "defending" it to start with?

The government doesn't get itself entangled in other sacraments and rituals. It doesn't care if you make a bad confession. It takes no notice of baptisms, brises, first communions, drum circles, bar mitzvahs, salah or last rites. Why is government mixed up in this most personal and spiritual of human activity?

Those who argue marriage is the stabilizing, regenerative dynamic of society and therefore deserving Big Brother's tending obviously haven't been paying attention. Fully 40 percent of marriages end in divorce. More people "live in sin" than seek marriage licenses.

Quickie divorces; multiple, sequential marriages; pre-nuptial agreements with "tentative" writ large; Las Vegas wedding chapels; trophy wives; and tabloid-fueled celebrity wedding-thons have desecrated marriage. Yet people wouldn't stand for legislation defending against all that. Why this?

The requirement for an official marriage license and the right's political agenda have gotten all jumbled up with one of the most tender and cherished moments in peoples' lives.

When two people decide to forego the joy and happiness of single bliss, the government's only role is to witness a business transaction. No more. No less. As such there's simply no constitutional framework to discriminate against homosexuals. So let's call it what it is, a household partnership contract not a marriage license.

The "marriage" part is a whole other matter. Contracts are the venue of lawyers; marriage of priests. The two acts are entirely discrete. Until a couple pledge their lives to each other -- with or without a contract -- before a priest, minister, rabbi, imam, new age guide or even a JP, don't call it a marriage!

I would think conservatives, who view most anything the government does as tainted, would welcome this distinction. Politicians and bureaucrats are the last people who should be mixed up in anything as romantic, joyous and sublime as marriage.

On the day my folks married in 1932, because mom wasn't Catholic, they were abruptly shuttled off to the rectory for the ceremony. No church bells for that Lutheran heretic! For 70 years until her death mom never got over having to start their lives together as second class citizens.

Simply because for centuries homosexuals have been denied fundamental human rights out of the same religious bigotry is no reason to continue to deny them basic dignity today.

It's time to disconnect marriage from the legal rigmarole and political wrangling and celebrate it as an intimate ceremony between two loving people -- straight or gay -- and their spiritual shepherd.