So-called conservative Catholic law professor, Douglas Kmiec, who says that President Obama is pro-life, wants government "to get out of the marriage business."
-- From "Catholic Obama Campaign Adviser Wants to Replace All Legal ‘Marriages’ with ‘Civil Licenses'" by Pete Winn, Senior Writer/Editor CNSNews.com 5/27/09
“As awkward as it may be, I think the way to untie the state from this problem is to create a new terminology that they would apply to everyone--straight or gay--call it a ‘civil license,’ said Douglas Kmiec, a law professor at Pepperdine University and author of “Can a Catholic Support Him?’
“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,” Kmiec said.
“One of the possible outcomes that would be good in this case, would be if the state got out of the marriage business, did their licensing under a different name--which, of course, would satisfy the state’s interests for purposes of distribution of taxation and property, but then the question of who can and cannot be married would be entirely determined in your voluntarily chosen faith community.”
But Princeton University law professor Robert George, who is also a top constitutional scholar--and a Catholic academic--said that Kmiec’s idea would do away with the public role of marriage--and banish it to the religious “ghetto.”
“That is a terrible idea,” George said. “The idea that the state would abandon its concern for the institution of marriage, that it would treat marriage as a purely religious matter, is I think a very bad one.”
“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 said.
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