Guest Sorbate: The Definition Of Civil Marriage

After graduating from high school in 2000, a male friend of mine gave me a call and told me he was gay. I sat there on the other end of that phone call and I felt honored that he trusted me enough to “come out” to me. Later that summer, as we were hanging out, as two care free teenagers having fun before the seriousness of the “real world” was to hit, I brought up the issue of marriage. I talked giddily about where I’d love my dream wedding to be, what the colors and theme would be, etc. However, I noticed my friend didn’t share in my enthusiasm. When asked why, he responded, “I’m gay. There isn’t a way for me to get married. I won’t be able to have children.” It then dawned on me, we didn’t have the same options for marriage; That we were not equal.

I have another little story.

I was raised Catholic. To this day, I still go to mass regularly. I pray regularly. And I try my hardest to treat others the way that I would like to be treated. That wedding day I dreamed about, when I was young, had grand visions of a Church wedding with a full mass and a huge reception filled with family and friends. But after graduating college, my future husband-to-be, gave me a call and told me the news. He would be deployed to Iraq in a little over a month. There was no hesitation in our decision – we were going to get married.

Three weeks later, I flew to where he was stationed and our immediate family joined us. We were married on a beach in Hawaii. Because of the time restraints, it made sense for us to have a civil marriage and then to later have the church marriage when there was more time to plan.

Four years later, there are no current plans for our church wedding. We still enjoy all the benefits of being married that we are entitled to under federal and state law. However, in the eyes of the Catholic Church, we are not married. For the longest time, I didn’t know that civil marriage was so different than religious marriage. But yet, here I am. I’m married in the government’s eyes and yet I am not in my church’s. And if this was true for opposite sex couples, why couldn’t this be true for same sex couples?

And now the third story.

While living in Hawaii, I befriended a woman who was gay. She and her partner had been together for over two decades. They had also adopted two boys, and were present at their births. Their names were on the birth certificate.  One of their names was under “Mother” and the other was under “Father” even though both of them were “Mothers”. I remember her telling me about being worried if that would invalidate a birth certificate if ever it was needed in a legal proceeding, say to rightfully claim health benefits for each other and their children, if they were denied coverage due to not having a “married” status. This brought me back to that summer in 2000 where I realized that even though we were both U.S. citizens, we didn’t have the same options or rights. We were not equal.

So what does this all mean? I am all for opening up the definition of a civil marriage to include couples of the same sex. I have no problem with religion keeping their own definition and reserving the right to not marry same sex couples. Yes, civil unions and domestic partnerships exist. However, they do no always have the same rights. Some may argue that this is not as issue of equality. Well, I don’t think that it’s fair or even ethical to give the option of marriage to one person and not to another, simply based on what gender their spouse would be. I’m not even quite sure how one could not clearly see that as an inequality. In this case, let’s keep Church out of State.