Last year, Tennessee’s overwhelmingly Republican General Assembly enacted a new law, approved by evangelical Republican Governor Bill Lee, that for the first time affirmatively licensed homosexual “marriages.” I just learned about it. Initially, I was angry, but the bigger problem is embracing the foolish idea that civil governments, by enacted statutes, create any kind of marital relationship. So, why do Christian ministers and Christian legal and policy advocates join in the folly? My experience with this issue may provide a helpful answer.
In 2015, in Obergefell v. Hodges, five justices on the the U.S. Supreme Court opined that marriage licensing statutes in Michigan and Kentucky were unconstitutional. Those five were of the opinion that those State’s “enacted law and policy” and “civil law,” interchangeable terms, could not limit the issuance of licenses to male and female couples.
It was clear these justices think state governments have the authority and autonomy to define a marital relationship. And, by virtue of state licenses, take control over God’s creational ordinance and create their understanding of that relationship.
In the mid-1990s my Dad, a widower at age 65, married a woman in her 60s who was a widow. After exchanging vows before her minister and the congregation, the minister, with me present, asked my Dad to join him in his office to sign the state’s marriage license.
Astonished, my Dad said, “What license? We’ve both been married for over forty years. Why do we need a government license?”
Horrified, the minister next asked if my Dad and his bride would be “sleeping together" that evening.” I didn’t want to know, but his quick response was, “Of course! We just got married in front of you, God, and 300 people!”
Hooray, Dad. He understood what he did in exchanging those vows. Obviously, the minister didn’t.
For the minister, what they had done before God and the people did not form a real marital relationship. Why? Because to his mind, they didn’t have permission from the government to marry.
But that’s true in Tennessee as a matter of law, and I suspect most other states. A man and woman do not have a marital relationship the law will recognize, even for surviving spouse benefits, without an executed and recorded license on file with the government.
Welcome, ministers, to the world in which the state, by its licensing scheme, reduces you to its agent. By your signature as a government agent, a government-defined and owned marital relationship is created. Without that document, the ceremony is a zero in the eyes of the law.
Justice Antonin Scalia’s Advice in Obergefell Is Ignored
Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissenting opinion in Obergefell suggested that the Court could not mandate on states marriage licensing schemes defined without regard to sex. He wrote that the justices needed to be “reminded of our impotence.” He was telling us the justices had no power to make any state change the wording in its statutes.
But most lawyers and policy leaders I knew in 2015 (and still today) seemed to think “same-sex” marriage is the “law of the land.” They joined in the folly that governments create marriage.
Consequently, states, like Tennessee, began to ignore the language in their marriage licensing statutes. It was as if the Court’s judgment against Michigan and Kentucky had amended the licensing statutes in every state.
But Justice Scalia’s words reminded me of my Dad’s admonition to the minister, and in my mind, I turned them back on the Court: Why are grown man and woman impotent to marry without a government issued license signed by one of its designated agents?
Republicans Were Given a Way to Challenge the Court’s Essay
I explained the Court’s impotence to Tennessee’s Governor Lee and his lawyers. I explained it a few times to the legislature’s Republican leadership. I gave them 3-ring binders full of materials explaining the whole thing.
The reason for this educational effort was to justify legislation I offered them, the Marital Contract Recording Act. Everything you need to know is at godgivenmarriage.com.
In sum, though, the act does one thing: It authorizes county clerks to accept for filing an affidavit from a man and woman declaring the fact they are married. The affidavit provides one way for the couple to “prove” their marriage to others. It operates on the same principle as filing a deed with a clerk to allow private parties prove a real estate transaction to others.
It is a provable type of marriage under unwritten law: common law. Only a man and woman can marry at common law, and can file the affidavit.
The best part is that the Obergefell Court put aside from its consideration any form of marriage other than those created by “enacted law and policy.” Under the Act, the man and woman create the marriage, not the government! With its recording statute, Tennessee could bring a new legal question to SCOTUS: How could filing an affidavit by a man and woman who created their own marital relationship be unconstitutional?
Tennessee’s legislative leaders and Governor Lee would not support the bill. In fact, the Governor’s office of vital records worked against it. It could not get voted out of committees in the House.
Despite my requests for help and explanations of the legislation, Alliance Defending Freedom, Family Research Council, and Family Policy Alliance choose not to get involved.
I explained the bill to and asked for public support from the heads of The Tennessee Baptist Mission Board and the state’s Assembly of God organization. I did the same with leaders of Tennessee Independent Baptist for Religious Liberty, Tennessee Eagle Forum, and the Tennessee Home Education Association. To my knowledge, none of them did anything publicly to support the bill.
All were free to do as they pleased and for their own reasons, but this uniformity of seeming disinterest in restoring God’s design for marriage puzzled me. This week, one possible reason crystalized in my thinking..
The Two Conversations That Got Me Thinking About a Trinitarian Problem
Over the last 10 years, I’ve had conversations with numerous evangelical ministers, some with a national platform. It seems, generally speaking, that ministers don’t have a problem signing a state marriage license because they will only marry a man and woman. I know some policy/legal leaders think that way too. I think two things are at play here.
First, ministers don’t realize that, in the state’s eyes, they are not serving as ministers in solemnizing a marital relationship under a governmental licensing scheme. They are acting as agents of the state to create a state-defined marital relationship. Without that signed license, there is no enforceable and legally protected marital relationship.
To sign is, to me, like bowing down to the law about Nebuchadnezzar’s idol, but saying one is not doing so in his heart.
The second is more significant. I recall one of them saying to me it was irrelevant that homosexuals could also marry under the exact same statue. It dawned on me this week some might not be applying the doctrine of the Trinity correctly to these statutes.
Twentieth century Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck wrote: “[I]n the confession of the Trinity, we hear the heartbeat of the Christian religion: every error results from, or upon deeper reflection is traceable to, a departure from the doctrine of the Trinity.” God and Creation, 28.
No one I’ve talked to or referenced would deny the doctrine of the Trinity. But a “deeper reflection” can always be helpful.
For example, such reflection resolved an ancient and on-going debate that began with Plato and Aristotle. Philosophers termed it a debate realism and nominalism. I think it is being repeated in regard to marriage licensing statutes.
Realists, like Plato, believed there was an unseen unifying reality or essence behind the particular things we see. Aristotle said we don’t have knowledge of the unseen, but we do have knowledge of particular visible things. He said the truth about the nature of things that we can know is in the particular things we see.
The doctrine of the Trinity resolved the debate by saying both are true. The doctrine says there is a transcendent unifying reality, but there are also particular things that are defined by and partake of that reality. This is based on the Christian belief there is one God, a unity of being, but there are “particulars” within that unity, the persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Thus, Christians believe there is only one essence or meaning pertaining to the nature of marriage, but there are particular marriages within that unifying essence.
But the same concept applies to marriage licensing statutes and the particular marriages “created” pursuant to it. When Christian leaders lose sight of the doctrine’s application to a licensing statute, it can become easy to think the truth about marriage is only in the particular marriage being solemnized.
When this Trinitarian imbalance arises, we will ignored the “transcendent” law—now the state licensing statute—that unifies in principle the meaning of all particular marriages in a state. I think that may explain why the defining, controlling law creating the state’s understanding of marriage for every lawful marriage is irrelevant to ministers and many policy and legal leaders.
We don’t think of state law as effectively “incarnating,” a kind of transcendent conception about all marriages in the state. Sex is not relevant to any marriage, and we’ve acquiesced to their folly.
Looking at State Law from the Heavenly Father’s Perspective
Our Heavenly Father is preparing a Bride for His Son. He gave us an “image” of it in the marital relationship between Adam and Eve.
Since Paul calls Jesus the “last Adam” and the “second man” (1 Corinthians 15:45, 47), we might say the Father wants a last Woman and a second Eve—a new humanity—for His Son, who is its covenantal head
Surely any state law that says or implies that another “Adam” could serve as Christ’s bride and be equal in dignity to an Eve must be a stench in the nostrils of Jesus, who is the ruling King over all lesser magistrates. I pray our minds have not become too desensitized to this smell.
A Path Forward
Now is the time for the Bride to challenge the essay on marriage penned nearly 10 years ago by five reprobate justices on the Supreme Court.
We can do that with the Marital Contract Recording Act.
And in its present legislative session, Tennessee’s Republicans can begin to live up to their state’s nickname--the volunteer state.
Will anyone help them?
