MARRIAGE AND BIGOTRY: Richard Heyduck

[Richard Heyduck is pastor of First United Methodist Church in Pittsburg, Texas.]

Mark Tardiff wrote: "The antimiscegenation laws which are often invoked are a much later addition to the common law tradition introduced because of increased contacts between the races. When the common law tradition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman was formulated no one had the foggiest idea that two people of the same sex would ever want to marry. How can marriage have been defined out of an alleged bigoted desire to keep certain people out when the supposed object of the bigotry was unimaginable?"

Our challenge seems to be that there has been a dual movement in our culture. First, the State has been crowding out (or swallowing up) the Public. Second, the Law has been doing the same thing to the customary. Some might say this is an inevitable consequence of our multicultral reality, but I'm not convinced. I'm more inclined to see it as an example of the reduction of our lives to two poles--the Individual and the State. Given the total Individualism which is the natural consequence of modernity, a strong and "neutral" state is required to level the playing ground and keep things fair. Any institutions that stand between these two poles (marriage, family, church, school, etc.) are seen as completely arbitrary and thus maleable to the ends chosen by Individuals. Those desired ends, now becoming enshrined as "Civil rights," lack any strong conception of a civitas for their coherence.
posted by Eve at 3:59 PM VOTE

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