This week in Atlanta, 30 black religious leaders declared their opposition, arguing that to claim that same-sex marriage is a civil right is to demean the civil rights movement. Other black pastors condone gay marriage.
The debate about marriage for homosexuals has provoked a widespread reexamination of what marriage is for everyone. A civil contract? A sacrament? Judy Valente reports from Chicago.
JUDY VALENTE: Ken Sieman and Julie Tippett will be married later this year. Today, they are going to another in a series of counseling sessions at the First United Methodist Church of Chicago.KEN SIEMAN: I'm looking forward to seeing my dad, just looking [at] and appreciating all the people that made the effort to come.
VALENTE: Reverend Philip Blackwell has officiated at thousands of weddings. To him, the concerns of Ken and Julie are like those of so many other young couples.
Reverend PHILIP BLACKWELL (First United Methodist Church of Chicago): They want to focus their wedding around something larger than themselves. They want to be part of a great story, the story of faith and their relationship.
There is a nobility about and a seriousness about standing in front of a collection of family and friends, but also standing in front of the altar, and in the name of God saying out loud what you've said to each other several times before, which is "I love you and I'll be with you forever."
VALENTE: Elizabeth Marquardt, an affiliate scholar at the Institute for American Values, sees marriage in a different context.
ELIZABETH MARQUARDT (Affiliate Scholar, Institute for American Values): Judaism and Christianity and the other major world religions have carried the meaning of marriage for us and certainly shaped it, but marriage in and of itself is not solely a religious idea.VALENTE: It is, says Marquardt, about more than just two people loving each other. It's about what she calls a set of societal goods.
Ms. MARQUARDT: Regulating sexual activity, procreation, mutual care and affection, and parental care and accountability.
VALENTE: Same-sex unions are seen as a threat to traditional marriage, but where and how is traditional marriage defined? The institution has been evolving for centuries, and some still see it as uncharted territory.
Bonnie Miller-McLemore is a professor of pastoral theology at Vanderbilt University.
BONNIE MILLER-MCLEMORE (Professor, Pastoral Theology, Vanderbilt University): You don't find the model of marriage in the Bible. It's a very complex text. Lots of Scripture is lifted out of context and used to endorse certain contemporary values. And that's been the case historically as well.Rev. BLACKWELL: The assumption is that it's male and female. The text goes back to a man and a wife should leave their families and become one body. If you use my definition, that marriage is, at its heart, a covenant, a self-giving of one's self to a loving relationship, that in itself doesn't have a gender component to it.
VALENTE: According to McLemore, the moral values associated with marriage do not necessarily exclude same-sex couples.
Prof. MCLEMORE: Procreation, or mutual aid, deep commitment, shared responsibility -- those are precisely the goals that same-sex couples are seeking. Many same-sex couples enter relationships with children, or now, through reproductive technology, have children.
VALENTE: Children are a primary reason for the opposition to same-sex marriage. Elizabeth Marquardt:
Ms. MARQUARDT: Marriage has always been understood as a public commitment that benefits the public well-being. And what we have now, increasingly, is an understanding of marriage as a private, couple-centric relationship that's just -- you know, a marriage is just sort of a public token of your love for each other, and little else. What gets lost in the equation is children.
Rev. BLACKWELL: Where the mystical side comes is the actual giving unconditionally to the point where you will not abandon the relationship. It's based on a religious sense of God's giving to God's people. The model is there between the divine and the human. And what we do is, in marriage -- as well as in many other covenants -- but in the marriage covenant we live it out as best we can.
Rev. BLACKWELL: Theologically and philosophically, I think I can make room for blessing a same-sex marriage. But that becomes a real option for me if there is a way in which those people can be married civilly. And then what I'm doing is not the marriage, but the blessing.
Ms. MARQUARDT: Once you break the connection in the public mind between marriage and childbearing, it is quite likely that more heterosexual couples than even presently will not get married. And that more children of heterosexuals will grow up without a married mother and father, and be exposed to all the risks that that entails.
Mr. SIEMAN: I love her, of course. We have a good time together. Day in and day out is about support and respect, and I think we're learning about compromise.
