Kim Davis, the county clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky, is not the only public official to refuse to perform or certify marriages. This should come as no surprise; marriage has always been both religious ritual and legal contract. It was inevitable that the two would collide in a republic in which citizens disagree about the appropriate degree of separation between church and state. We can resolve this conflict by getting government out of the business of recognizing marriages.
Civil marriage is becoming obsolete. Human beings invented marriage to legitimize sexual relationships in order to hold parents responsible for the care and upbringing of children. Our idea of legitimizing sexual relationships is becoming providing documentation that both parties consent to a sexual encounter. The state now enforces child support, whether a child’s parents have ever been married or not.
When a county government issues a marriage license, it takes on the responsibility of adjudicating division of property and pensions when the marriage ends in divorce a few years later. More of us now circumvent the dating-to-divorce pipeline.
Marriage can remain a religious ritual or sacrament for those who wish to participate, but county and state governments do not need to keep track of who marries and who divorces. We will still need the courts to administer division of property and pensions when a couple decides to go their separate ways, but the courts can handle such problems as contract disputes.
Removing the certification of marriages and the performance of weddings from the job descriptions of public officials would be an important step in the separation of church and state. The churches should welcome such separation. The greater degree of separation, the less the government will interfere with religion.
