The Theocracy Movement: Redefining Marriage Exclusively As Religious Sacrament

by tristero

We’re gonna have a little fun along the way in this post, maybe even a few yucks as we ponder a few of the ideas surrounding the opposition to gay marriage. But the subject isn’t funny in the slightest. Not in the slightest. And opposing gay marriage, that’s only part of what makes it so awful. I apologize up front for the length.

In responding to David Klinghoffer’s defense of evangelical condemnation of same sex relationships in the wake of the Haggard affair, Jonah Lehrer notes several blatant flaws. Among the more bizarre is Klinghoffer’s argument that assumes a priori that a desire to have sexual intimacy with a person of your own gender is “just another temptation to be denied.” In fact, Klinghoffer goes so far as to compare the irresistible lust of woman for woman to – I’m not making this up, people, I am not that imaginative – the alluring scent of pepperoni pizza to an observant Jew.

Hmm…well… Yes, it’s true, and I’ll be the first to admit it. Certain limitations make it impossible for me absolutely to confirm that indeed sapphic desire is not like a near-uncontrollable urge to stuff your face with a high calorie, high cholesterol convenience food topped with cured pig parts (their exact provenance you don’t want to know) which your religion forbids you from eating. But I really, really, doubt it.

Now here’s another argument David makes. But this one isn’t silly. This one’s ominous, once you start to look at it for a minute:

This is why gay marriage threatens heterosexual marriage. When the awe in which people once held matrimony is diluted, by treating it as a man-made and thus amendable institution rather than a divinely determined one, heterosexuals find sexual sins of all sorts harder to resist.

Ok. I’m gonna ignore debuking David’s logic here ’cause it’s simply too obvious. It’s the notion of marriage as a “divinely determined” institution that is deeply troubling, the assumption David tosses off as a patently obvious given while on the way to the “therefore” part of his logical assertion. Let’s think about that a bit.

Yup, David is saying that if Ted Haggard married you, you’re married. But if instead, you went to the Justice of the Peace, a nice little old woman who’s lived with her pepperoni pizza – sorry, I meant her partner, I got confused – for 30 years and raised three kids, if she marries you in a civil ceremony, you’re not married. Why? Being exclusively “secular,” there’s been no “divine determination,” that’s why. But, what’s exactly meant by “no divine determination?”

Well, it can only mean “not by Pastor Haggard or some other cleric” because what else could it mean? Two people can’t just go off and get “married in the eyes of God” without someone pious third party agreeing that yes, God was looking. Otherwise, who’s to say, other than the couple themselves, that God really was looking? That couple may not be as pious as they should be. They can’t themselves determine divine imprimatur.

And that someone else, who could that be? Someone like a priest or a rabbi. It certainly can’t be merely some possibly atheist clerk in a government office, even if she’s straight because… What’s her religion? If she’s not in good with God, then there you are, the marriage has not been divinely determined. (Okay, may not be. As you’ll see, it hardly matters ’cause marriage licensing is only one part of it.)

This is bad enough. But the implications of what David is saying are far more worrisome. He is challenging the basic principles upon which the United States government rests. He is asserting that the United States is actually a theocracy ruled by divine law, that the US has forgotten that it must adhere to divine law, and it must stop pretending that it is a civil, i.e., secular, government. Especially when it comes to such vital issues as marriage, which is clearly “divinely determined.”

But the Declaration of Independence is extremely clear; the power of the American government resides in the people, not in some kind of divine will. The binding agreement of marriage did not descend from God. And even if it had, the Declaration asserts that the legal power for that agreement resides not with God but with the people.

Therefore a couple married in a civil ceremony is deemed married in the eyes of American society. The divine determination? That’s between the couple and God (or not, depending upon their beliefs). It’s optional, as far as the American government is concerned. And thank God for that.

Therefore, the laws that govern marriage most certainly can be changed to enable any two people that love each other to get married in the eyes of the US government. If the people so choose. (And, of course, sooner or later they will. And I hope I live to see it.)

Stepping back for a moment to the larger picture, there is nothing that says American conservatism, as a political philosophy, must embrace the overthrow of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. However, today’s Republican party, dependent upon religious nuts for political support, have created a kind of radical conservative worldview, paradoxical as that sounds, as opposed to the older reactionary one.

David’s little tucked away assumption actually is a radical assault on bedrock American political philosophy. And I assure you, he and and his pals know it.

I’d also like to note one final thing about David Klinghoffer’s worldview, which was glossed over.

For the sake of argument, let us grant that the only genuine marriages are not civil marriages but only those that are “divinely determined,” i.e. religious. Well, there’s a huge question here that Klinghoffer sidesteps: Whose religion?.

Surely, David realizes this problem. An in his book*, David provides numerous sophisticated theological arguments to postulate the basic, and eventually real, unity by the people of the Book. No, I haven’t read David’s book, but here is some of Commentary’s description in their careful review of his ideas**:

Rather than thinking of their respective faiths as related but rival systems, [Klinghoffer] believes that the time has come for them to realize they are in the same boat; whatever their doctrinal differences, they are engaged in promoting the same truths, defending the same values, and worshiping the same God.

Not exactly an original observation, but it’s not exactly a trivial one, either, especially when combined with David’s extraordinary ability to synthesize and extrapolate. Here is Klinghoffer himself describing how the three religions are essentially one:

Being a “kingdom of priests” [as the Bible commands Israel to be] means ministering to others in a priestly role, for who can claim to be a priest if he has no congregation? God’s instruction to the Jews at the moment of the revelation of the Torah was to serve the congregation of humanity, bringing the knowledge of the Lord to them. It would seem that the Christian church now plays the role of congregation … with the Jews serving in the ministerial position. Christians and Muslims alike know of the God of Abraham only because they met him in the Bible…. It served God’s purposes that there be a unique religion [Christianity], acknowledging Him, for the people who spread out from Europe. It was not Judaism. It departs from Judaism in many ways. But in revering the God of Israel it contains the seeds for an ultimate reunification of the people [of the earth] in God’s service.

By now, I’m sure the parallels between David’s worldview and some of the more apocalyptic utopian ideas of the evangelicals is clear. In fact, Klinghoffer’s borrowings of Christian evangelical tropes makes his description of the meta-religion sound something like a pepperoni knish. (I couldn’t resist, sorry.)

And now, let’s take David’s breathtaking vision of one super-religion that potentially re-unites all of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and apply it to that pesky question of exactly whose religion is the real divine determinant of marriage. It’s easy. Obviously, anyone married as a Jew, a Christian, or a Muslim is married.

Well, I’m gonna not argue Talmud with David Klinghoffer, I wouldn’t know where to begin. But I certainly know bullshit when I read it and his ideas sure as hell stink to high heaven.

First of all, there is a big “No Duh!” Klinghoffer simply cannot escape.

The notion of some kind of transcendent, reunited (!!!) uber-religion of the Book is, in the real world of our lifetimes and our children and their children and so on, utterly preposterous in and of itself – Protestants are still killing Catholics the last I checked, and no one in America can figure out what the Shia’s got against the Sunnis, and Jews: reform Jews aren’t considered Jews by certain powerful sects in Israel.

One unified religion with one God? So, um, what, exactly is the Holy Spirit, David? Chopped liver? Back here on planet Earth, religious belief is eclectic and highly contentious. And “reunited?” Religious belief was eclectic and highly contentious in Jesus’ time, too, fer crissakes. And in the time of his disciples.

And underneath David’s bullshit, dig we must. And we find that the question “whose religion?” wasn’t met with an answer. It just slid and slipped down the drain.

How about Buddhists? Are they married? What about Hindus? What about Pastafarians (disciples of the Flying Spaghetti Monster)? Look at the excerpt from David’s book. These minor religions – as we all know, there really aren’t too many Hindus around – they don’t figure in David’s raputurous vision at all.

And that’s the reason, David, why there is civil marriage in America and I thank God there is.

So that one religion can’t “determine” which other religions have the blessing of the Divine for a marriage and which don’t. Because once you start redefining marriage,*** you have established one religion over all others, namely the religion that the state decrees has the right to marry you.

And that’s not a good thing, David.

Trust me, if marriage is ever redefined as sacred, the folks who do so? They ain’t gonna buy your Jewish “priesthood” crap. Not for one fucking second. You think, it’s gonna be like, “Step aside, Pat Robertson! Here comes the real priest to lead the Christian congregations of the world. Sound the shofars! It’s… Rabbi Klinghoffer!

Uh-huh. Pepperoni pizza will sprout wings long before that day.

Okay. No more ridicule. This is serious:

When you play with American theocracy, David Klinghoffer, you are playing with fire. And I mean that literally, my friend and you know what I’m talking about. So, I’d read that Talmud again if I were you. And read it carefully.

Something tells me you will find nothing in there that requires Jews to construct an elaborate intellectual structure to support their own annihilation. But that is exactly what you are encouraging when you start asserting that civil institutions are in fact, religious ones. Back off, sir. What you’re talking about really is not good for the Jews.

Forgive him, Father. He knows not what he is doing.

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*Please don’t get me started on the title. I could rant on for days at how many awful assumptions it contains.

**If the review gives an inaccurate precis, I’d appreciate a detailed description of exactly how from David himself. Otherwise, I willl assume at least rough accuracy, which is confirmed by a later quote from the book itself.

*** That’s right, Klinghoffer and his colleagues are the ones redefining marriage, as an exclusively religious institution. I am defending the institution of marriage as the traditional civil institution it has been since the Revolution.