Concerning Homosexual Marriage

In 2005, the Texas Legislature proposed an amendment to the Texas Constitution defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman. It also prohibited the state and any subdivision thereof from creating any legal status identical or similar to marriage. In doing so, the State of Texas has made a grave error concerning the nature of marriage and its relationship to the law and thereby arbitrarily violated US Constitution's fourteenth amendment: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." (Section 1, Amendment XIV, US Constitution)

Marriage is a religious institution. According to Jesus Christ, quoting Moses, and thereby according to Christianity and Judaism in concert, "But from the beginning of the creation, God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’; so then they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate." (Mark 10:6-9; Gen 1:27, 2:24, 5:2; NKJV) For this reason, marriage, according to the church and synagogue is between one man and one woman.

But what is marriage according to the State? It is hardly a religious commitment made before God between one man and one woman. It is no holy covenant in the eyes of the law; it is merely a legally binding contract that joins the rights and property of two individuals under the jurisdiction of the State - a civil union. In any case under the law, the State has no religious authority and therefore cannot grant a marriage in any form or fashion, nor does it have the authority to define what marriage is or is not. The entire conundrum of homosexual marriage in the United States has arisen because the States have meddled from their beginnings in the religious affair of marriage. We have created a false synonymity between religious marriage and legal, civil union. We have called a marriage what is no marriage after all. There is no legal basis to deny any two individuals this same legal status of junction simply based on the genders of the individuals in question. A State is not legally required to grant civil unions to any of its residents, but if it does grant civil unions to heterosexual couples, it must grant them also to homosexual couples, or else it denies persons within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. There should be no religious compunction against doing so.

All this having been said, a State also has no authority to require religious institutions to grant marriages, just as a church has no authority to require a State to legally recognize with a civil union any marriage they grant. The State may choose to recognize with an accompanying civil union any marriage ceremony performed by a religious institution, and a religious institution may choose to perform a marriage ceremony in concert with a recognized civil union; however, neither the Church nor the State has the authority to require one to recognize the acts of the other. Similarly, a State has no authority to require public school students to be taught that homosexuality is either correct or incorrect, good or evil, right or wrong, as this is a moral judgment, and the State has no moral authority. Therefore, the State has no business making moral judgments. The State can (and should) teach that homosexuality is different and that homosexuals should not be physically or legally treated differently according to their sexuality.