Homosexual Marriage: A brief to the U.S. Supreme Court

[Opinion] Should the government recognize homosexual marriage? Sure. But it should also stop preforming marriages all together, for both homosexual and heterosexuals.

I'm getting really tired of people using the argument that marriage is for procreation against same-sex marriage. Are we all such religious prudes that we have never read "Song of Solomon" in the Bible? There is lots of "grinding the wheat," "plowing the field", "climbing the palm tree", "grabbing its fruit" and drinking from her "full cup" in there, and painfully little about giving birth.

That said, marriage as a legal institution is functionally dead in the US. With the advent of no-fault divorce, the teeth of the covenant arrangement has been kicked out. The rise of gender equality further confuses covenant protection. Ancient marriage covenants were designed to provide financial protection for vulnerable and abuse-able women. But when women are just as economically empowered to enter college and obtain high caliber careers, which party needs protection from the other? [I would argue both]

But the major conflict here is not about the definition of marriage, or even marriage eligibility. The major cultural conflict here is the loss of marriage as covenant before god, and the rise of marriage as a contract before Government. Covenants are made before a spiritual higher power and are enforced by that power, to use our fear of retribution to validate our guarantee to another. Contracts are made before mortals, who can only police them using mortal means.

Which brings me to my personal legal suggestion to the Supreme Court. Since no U.S. justice actually attempts to enforce the marriages they preform, how can they properly be called 'marriage'? No local, state, or federal official should be so pompous as to 'marry' any two people, heterosexual or otherwise. Throw the term marriage back to the people themselves, since it is a social construct, and since this is devolving into a copyright war over a branded label, a label which no office created and upon which no court may infringe.

Let the government enforce what it is good at enforcing, contracts. If two individuals begin trusting themselves so thoroughly to each other that they become vulnerable and thus want the government to ensure certain rights, benefits, responsibilities, and liabilities, then let them petition the government (not religion) and receive such services. Just don't act like such a human agreement is what marries individuals to each other.

In other words, some people who marry, whether they do so before a priest or a clown, will also go to city hall to procure some sort of prenuptial agreement. While other people who marry, may choose not to attach further legal or inheritance benefits to their relationship.

But if anyone is interested what the foremost scholar on marriage and divorce in the Bible says on the matter of homosexuality, I recommend Instone-Brewer.