I don't. Rebecca Steinfeld and her new civil partner, Charles Keidan, have got marriage all wrong. Credit: Jack Taylor/Getty Images
I will admit it. I have a frosty relationship with the local Register Office. It’s not really their fault. But I just don’t trust them. The Home Office has turned them into snitches.
It all goes back to the Immigration Act 2014. Before then, if two of my parishioners wanted to get married in the church, I could carry out the ceremony without having to ask the state for its permission. The only legal preliminary required was that I call out their names on three Sundays before the wedding.
After 2014, if one of the couple is not an EU national, I have to go and inform the Register Office. And then they have to tell the Home Office. At least one of my parishioners was taken from his bed and spent several months in a detention centre — basically a prison — the other side of the country because he was exposed by the Register Office as having overstayed his visa. He is now happily married, thankfully. And all is well. But the couple did have to put their lives on hold for over a year to get there.
Where I am a priest in South London, the practical effect of this nasty law is that darker skinned people have to answer a whole load more questions about where they come from than generally white-skinned Europeans. Hopefully, this disgraceful bit of racism will bite the dust with Brexit.
So, yes. I have issues with the Register Office. I resent having to ask their permission to marry people. But, this isn’t really about the Register Office per se. It’s more a question of the relationship between the Church and the state. And when it comes to my ability as a priest to confer the sacrament of marriage, I recognise the authority of my Bishop, not the secular authority of the Government.
Which brings me to the arrival of mixed-sex civil partnerships, the first of whom were ‘hitched’ — probably not the right word — earlier this week. In many ways, the existence of civil partnerships is something I am not instinctively sympathetic to, because I really do not see very much difference between civil partnerships and civil marriage.
You can already get married at the Register Office in your jeans and without any sort of religious ceremony whatsoever. If you want to, you can make it have all the spiritual atmosphere of the taking out of a mortgage. And the legal differences are negligible. But the proponents of civil partnership are not satisfied with the resoundingly secular civil marriage. They believe the very term ‘marriage’ itself is so imbued with patriarchal assumptions that it is irredeemably sexist and fit only for the scrapheap of history. Indeed, what the more radical wing of what we might call the Civil Partnership Movement now proposes is that the state should get out of the marriage business completely.
See, for example, Against Marriage by Clare Chambers (OUP 2017). I came across this book on the Twitter feed of Rebecca Steinfeld, who, along with her new civil partner, Charles Keidan, was responsible for the successful legal action to make civil partnerships available to opposite sex couples.
The argument is well made and fascinating. Why should the state take a view about the private domestic arrangements between human beings? Why should it add its authority to an institution in which women are ‘given away’ like possessions? And for extreme liberals, the involvement of the state in marriage violates the principle of state neutrality. So marriage should be privatised — the state should be as involved with marriage about as much as it is involved with friendship. So goes the argument.
And here I find myself initially tempted into an unlikely alliance. I want the church to be free from the state; the marriage privatisation movement wants the state to be free from the patriarchy of marriage. It seems we agree.
Except, we really don’t agree. For when I press my irritation with the Register Office to its logical conclusion, I realise that I have been rather naïve. Because, even though many presume that marriage was originally a religious thing, the truth is that marriage has never been the sole preserve of the church – indeed, far from it.
Marriage wasn’t even considered a sacrament until the 12th century. The institution of marriage is in its very DNA a combination of church and state. And the disestablishment of marriage would threaten its very existence. Marriage privitisation is de facto marriage abolition. Marriage has always been a combination of the public and the private, that point at which love and law reach out to each other and form a mutually reinforcing pact. And society is much the richer for it.
Yes, there are parts of the world where this coming together of the public and the private does indeed feel oppressive. In Israel, for example, where my wife is from, secular Jews have to get on a plane to Cyprus in order to get married outside of the auspices of the Rabbinate. There is no state provision for them to be married within their own country. Moreover, in Hebrew, the word for “my husband” is “Baali”, which also means “my owner”. In 1953, David Ben Gurion attempted to rid “Baali” from official documentation, but didn’t succeed. In such circumstances, it is hard not to sympathise with those who want marriage to be distanced from such deeply embedded patriarchal assumptions.
But does the English concept of marriage contain the same resonance? Not any more. In over 25 years as a priest, I have not once used the old fashioned formula of “love, honour and obey” – and the only times I have been asked for it were because the couple wanted a kind of retro liturgy, thinking it more traditional and somehow more proper. And I talked them out of it. Likewise, the idea that the bride is “given away” by her father is now liturgically optional – and when it is used, it is never understood as a transfer of ownership. It is a shocker that Marriage Certificates require the name of the father and not the mother, but even this is now being changed.
Those who have campaigned for mixed-sex civil partnerships have rejected the civil marriage option, not because the two are different in terms of law, but because of the historical resonance of the term marriage. Here, the argument reminds me a little of the whole ‘Rhodes must fall’ debate: it is an argument with the past. And an attempt to rid the present of the influence of the past.
But you don’t get rid of the moral influence of the past by burying the evidence that it once existed. Racism is not eliminated by destroying the reminders that it was once embedded deep in our society. And, likewise, sexism is not eliminated by relegating to the private sphere a word that was once associated with the oppression of women.
In fact, the opposite may be true. Without reminders that we once got it so wrong, we will be all the more likely to repeat the same mistakes. Let’s not pretend that mixed-sex civil partnerships can escape the power imbalances of sexual politics simply because it has done away with the very concept of marriage. Sin, for want of a better word, is much stickier than that.
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SubscribeMoreover, the illegitimacy of Cheney’s Committee makes it difficult to take seriously. There was no Republican representation appointed by Speaker McCarthy – an unprecedented & unbalanced Committee never before seen in the country’s history. Nancy Pelosi rigged this show trial and it’s a national disgrace.
Perhaps you should replace Benedict Arnold with Nancy Polosi?
Well, at the least, Donald Trump isn’t Aaron Burr.
“Rigged” is the overriding theme of the 2020 election in the US.
And the sheer intensity of the hypocrisy is blinding to the thinking person. To portray a gaggle of mostly overweight, unarmed, balding light beer drinkers as an “insurrection” does a huge injustice to the English language.
It certainly contrasts with the “mostly peaceful” demonstrations of the BLM/Antifa bunch. “When words lose their meanings, people lose their lives” – Confucius
great quote. definitely unequal contrast
and a re-run of the c—p they tried to throw at Trump throughout his term, Russiagate et al, and look where that ended up
The rioters showed a touching faith in the US constitution. As if they might have disturbed the ratification and that would have halted the accession to the presidency of J. Biden (an illegitimate president in their eyes and in the opinion of many outside observers).
They could have killed half the members of Congress and the smooth continuation of power would have been undisturbed. Where was their support in the military? Or in the judiciary? Or their toehold in the hydra-headed agencies of bureaucratic control?
Those who insist this was close to a coup and that democracy was in danger that day are simply cynical liars. Democracy is indeed in danger and perhaps mortally poisoned. But the killers are those who pretend that power is not already in their hands and that the ‘coup’ was against the people and constitution of the USA.
Excellently said.
It’s not what happened at the Capitol on Jan. 6 that concerns me. It was the behind the scenes planning to keep Pence from recording the electoral votes from the states, votes that had been previously certified by all the states. The election was over and Pence’s role was a formality. Peter Navarro discussed this plan to a reporter, a plan that would not accept the electoral votes from some of the states, and the end result would be that Trump would win the election. If all this is true, then yes, I think our democracy was in danger.
Of course, and the greatest danger is the decay in US civics such that a great number of Trump supporters have turned away from democracy, enlightenment values, and who closely resemble captured cult members, just as surely as the most fervent, over-reaching social warriors do.
you should be writing articles for Unherd
They would have you believe that members of the most armed demographic in the nation decided to overthrow the government of the mightiest military in the world yet chose not to bring along any guns.
And 2 people were murdered by the Capitol police that day. Roseanne Boyland was the other unarmed woman who was beaten by a female cop. There is video.
Ashli Babbitt, and may I ask who was the other unfortunate victim?
Perhaps they edited their post, but the name is in there now: Roseanne Boyland.
Many thanks.
Many thanks.
No, Democrat hysteria IS Jan 6 hearing
I think it is more like a funeral dirge.
I had to laugh at the drama with which the clips of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner were surrounded. What was said was so innocuous and anodyne.
Yet the New York Times said gasps were audible when Jared Kushner said the White House counsel was whining. Really?
Donald Trump can be a boorish bloviator. Many don’t care for his style. Same with boorish Boris Johnson in the UK and his stupid parties.
But come on, man. These men are effective politicians who put their competition to shame. Prosecutions like this Committee hearing are so petty.
We live in an era of spin. Crowds invading parliaments in Georgia, Ukraine, Romania etc. are democratic forces but the one in the US is anti democratic.
When the riot happened I certainly did feel astonished and wondered about the future of our democracy. But when nothing happened afterward, i.e. coordinated attacks elsewhere in Wash DC or state capitols etc., one realizes it was indeed a momentary expression of speech, not really an insurrection. So the empty spectacle of these “hearings” only serves purposes related to certain political agendas, and will likely have the added result of further dividing the electorate.
There are known tools that are used to turn a crowd into a mob then onto riot. Bullhorns were a feature used to inspire, ready in place but who were those people? Why did the police throw flash bangs followed rubber bullets into the crowd milling about making noise? Who gave that order and why?
An interminable barrage of would-be agitprop. Flaring case of Long Trump Derangement Syndrome. At least, maybe there’ll be a crop of “Jan 6 babies”, as nobody had their tellies on. Who wants to watch a convocation of venal geriatrics try to jump a long-dead shark?
I needed a laugh. Thank you.
February 26 coup in Japan: 1936, 1500 troops revolt, two former prime ministers murdered, incumbent almost murdered, generals murdered, martial law declared, the country forced into militarism.
January 6 ‘coup’ in the U.S: 2019, side door opened, boomers take selfies in an empty building, multiple ‘putschists’ killed or injured by police, no politicians are even so much as scratched but hysteria lasts for a year and a half.
….and the POTUS called for a election to be overturned in his favour, without evidence (and still does, thus inciting civil conflict) and railed against his own VP, AG, and Chief of Staff and the entire US legal system. Yup, nothing unusual there, just some Dem whining.
Donald Trump has a big mouth, and offends a lot of people, but as president he was moderate in his actions and surprisingly effective. Here’s some of what he accomplished:
— Energy independence.
— A secure southern border.
— Ending the Afghanistan war.
— A robust economy.
— Reinvigorating NATO.
— Moving our embassy to Jerusalem.
— The Abraham accords.
— USMCA.
— Clipping Iran’s war wings by killing Qasem Soleimani.
— Meeting with Kim Jong Un.
— Crushing ISIS without getting mired in the muddle of Middle Eastern politics.
Donald Trump swept into office and despite unprecedented persecution by Bob Mueller and his minions never stopped working for four years. Joe Biden swept into office and has performed pathetically.
Here’s a complete list of Joe Biden’s accomplishments in his over 4 decades in public office (including over a year as president):
.
.
The weird thing about the J6 committee, is the number of legal boundary lines it appears to have breached – so matters like how it was founded, the powers its used to gather evidence, the way its crossed lines on executive privilege and enforced compliance through arrests. Yet, it seems that there has been little legal challenge to how the committee has been behaving from the other side of the aisle. Some challenges by individuals but not so much en bloc.
The Republicans either don’t care, or they’re happy to take the precedents that are being set for when it’s their turn.
Come November, game on.
or to watch the Democrats digging themselves into an ever deeper hole
Clearly Schumer’s threat in 2020 that two named Supreme Court judges would reap the whirlwind and wouldn’t ‘know what hit them’ made to a crowd outside the Supreme Court building was an attempt to incite an insurrection.
Thank goodness this new Committee is finally going to deal with that manifestly craven and illegal act.
Thank you Madam Chairperson for this brave example of bipartisanship!
An “insurrection” in which NONE of the “insurrectionists” was armed.
But then again, according to Speaker Pelosi, our Supreme Court justices are safe and don’t need protection. And according to Majority Leader Schumer, should “pay the price” for any decision that doesn’t comport with his side’s worldview.
They can technically call it an ‘armed’ insurrection by including almost anything that can be used as a weapon, like a flagpole.
Cheney’s singular hate for Trump was on display. With such a bias claiming democracy at risk was ludicrous. No new revelations arrived. We have yet to understand why enhanced security was dismissed and police so ill-informed of the risks. Do we know who the inspiring players were that turned the angry crowd into a mob that turned into a riot?
The people with bull horns pointing the way to the Capital building were all associated with the FBI. Some were employees some were independent contractors.
I haven’t really been following it, but what little I’ve seen on the BBC is parroting the CNN line without any argument or analysis.
The Democrats are desperate to exclude Trump from the next presidential election. Their constant obsession with him will probably have the reverse effect.
Why has Ray Epps not been arrested? (He is clearly visible and identified in several videos from the day telling people to get inside) Was he a federal agent inciting the riot? Why did the Democrats dodge the questions about him?
Ray Epps has been very effectively memoryholed. And it’s not difficult to see why: high ranking FBI officers admitted in a Senate hearing called by Ted Cruz that they were “aware” of Epps, but dodged all other questions. Named as nr 17 on their Jan 6 ‘most wanted’ list, Epps was silently removed from it after several months, despite damning video evidence of him repeatedly egging people on to “go into the capitol”. It’s quite clear there was some level of organized provocation, implemented by Epps and his team, and that this was a “super covert” operation which was only brought to the attention of wider FBI management when the unwanted video evidence appeared.
The answer to your “whys” is therefore simple: arresting Epps (who undoubtedly has “insurance”) or even admitting he was present & provoking the protesters, would bring the whole Jan 6 “insurrection” narrative crashing down. And perhaps even trigger an investigation in the opposite direction.
My opinion is that this is an effort to stop Trump from standing for president again, rather like the way countries pretending to be democratic ‘disqualify’ the main opponents on some contrived accusation.
Personally, I hope he doesn’t stand, because I think he might be elected, after which our news would again be dominated by anti-Trump stories for another four years.
I always check the background of what appears to be a polemical piece of writing. I suggest others in this thread do the same. Read about the Claremont Institute and its opinion of Trump. You may be surprized.
You mean this – “After Joe Biden won the 2020 election and Donald Trump refused to concede while making claims of fraud, Claremont Institute senior fellow John Eastman aided Trump in his failed attempts to overturn the election results.[4][5] In 2021, the Claremont Institute published an essay written by one of its senior fellows which called for a “counter-revolution” against the “majority of people living in the United States today [who] can no longer be considered fellow citizens”
They are dealing with the prospect of annihilation in other ways. New Mexico has given temporary papers to 7000 illegal immigrants. Look for them come November. Pennsylvania has allowed undated ballots to be counted in a Republican primary even though this was admitted in 2020 as a Covid emergency measure. If Fetterman is trailing in a close finish in November this precedent will be available. In Colorado it appears that a Democrat PAC has been advertising for a MAGA Republican in the primary so as to have an easier go of it come November. George Soros is buying a bunch of radio stations in Florida for an easily guessed reason.
If only this paragraph were a paranoid fantasy!
and this is why Americans won’t be giving up their guns. On the contrary, they seem to be stockpiling, in preparation…
Wow, a lot of kool- aid drinkers here. Lifelong Americaphile here, broken-hearted by the insanity breaking out all over the States (on both sides of the aisle). Although as I get older to it appears to me that this was an accident waiting to happen. Remembering various stunned European adults of my youth in the USA (1970s) noting, with classic old world understatement that, ‘Ameruca is a young country, and generally Americans may not be that sophisticated. There is a place called the centre ground where reasonable people and theories are – go there; and if you don’t then you will be an integral part of the collapse of your country. No joke.
Still surprised there are people who believe the Clown Trump,and Democrats who won’t let go of the knuckle head.
Agreed. If anything , the Jan 6 committee is doing the dirty work of cleaning house for moderate Republicans. There’s a hoard of independents and disaffected Democrats ready to vote for a reasonable conservative-anyone other than Trump.