A prominent Catholic law professor in the United States has proposed the end of legally recognised marriage, and replacing it with a neutral civil license. “The net effect of that, would be to turn over–quite appropriately, it seems to me, the concept of marriage to churches and a church understanding,” he said.

While that might be so, if our goal is for everyone to be Christian, do we not want them to at least have the social structure of a Christian marriage so they might strive towards it??

Robert P George, another American legal professor said this:

“It’s a pre-political institution,” he said. “It exists even apart from religion, even apart from polities. It’s the coming together of a husband and wife, creating the institution of family in which children are nurtured.”

“Family is built on marriage, and government–the state–has a profound interest in the integrity and well-being of marriage, and to write it off as if it were a purely a religiously significant action and not an institution and action that has a profound public significance, would be a terrible mistake,” George told CNSNews.com.

Would making marriage more ‘exclusive’ for ‘true’ Christians make everyone who entered into a Christian marriage really think about what they are doing and the meaning of it? I doubt it, because people like ‘tradition’ so they will still opt for it anyway… – rather like the way people get married in Churches, while they don’t go to Church on a Sunday.
Perhaps that is something we should happy about though – the fact that when people really think about it, deep down they value something they call ‘Christian and family values’.

And anyway, New Zealand has civil unions right now… along with the Relationship Property Act which recognises unmarried ‘partners’ as having legal rights to each others things – but people still choose to get married.

I guess we could move toward being a bit more like France – where people have their civil ‘legal’ wedding, then a Church wedding before God if they want to.

It is certainly interesting to watch our core family and marriage structure evolve – more and more women entering the workforce full time has certainly changed the way families operate in the last few decades.

It does seem secular society is drifting further away from the marriage family structure into a less structured ‘partner’ mentality. When did we start using the word ‘partner’ anyway – It’s funny my American friends think that only means a ‘gay partner’ but we seem to use it for everyone here.