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Granted, a high percentage of modern marriages end in divorce, and many others are marred by infidelity, separation, abandonment and discord. But it still came as something of a surprise to learn that the institution of marriage is so fragile that it needs the protection of a constitutional amendment.
That appears to be the view of Marilyn Musgrave, a Republican who represents the Fourth District of Colorado in the U.S. Congress. On May 21, she introduced Joint Resolution 56, which proposes an amendment to the federal constitution. It's short; here's the full text:
Marriage in the United States shall consist only of
the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution
or the constitution of any State, nor state or federal law,
shall be construed to require that marital status or the
legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples
or groups.
That raises some interesting questions -- with
sex-change operations, how will man
and woman
be defined? By state or federal law? If it's by
chromosomes, what about XXY people?
At any rate, this attempt to establish federal jurisdiction over what had been a state matter -- the definition of marriage -- comes from a member of the same Republican party which is always complaining about federal encroachment onto state prerogatives.
But that's a relatively recent GOP development. The
party ran its first candidate for president in 1856. The
platform called for expanding federal jurisdiction,
specifically against those twin relics of barbarism:
polygamy and slavery.
Eliminating slavery required the bloodiest war in American history. The chapter about eliminating polygamy seldom appears in our history books.
Polygamy was a feature of many Native American cultures, but the relevant federal campaigns in the 19th century were aimed at eliminating Native Americans, not merely any associated polygamy.
Polygamy was also practiced by the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter Day Saints. By 1846, when the westward
migration to Deseret began, some Mormon leaders had already
entered into plural marriages.
There were many more
once they got to the Great Salt Lake and began building an
empire.
The first federal effort to contain them came with the
Mormon War
of 1857, when a federal army marched West
under Col. Albert Sidney Johnston (who went with the
Confederacy and was killed at Shiloh in 1862). Winter
halted the army in Wyoming, which gave Mormon leader
Brigham Young time to negotiate an agreement. The theocracy
of Deseret was pared down to become the federal territory
of Utah.
As territorial citizens, Utahns managed some of their own affairs, but of course they wanted the greater control they would get with statehood, which they began pursuing after the Civil War.
The problem with Utah statehood, as the other states saw
it, was that the federal constitution guarantees Full
Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public
Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other
State.
If Utah, as a state, allowed polygamous marriages, then if a Utah resident moved across the line to Colorado, Colorado would have to recognize that marriage.
So the federal government, even without benefit of a constitutional amendment, acted then in defense of the Musgrave definition of marriage in Utah.
To quote from the late David Lavender's regional
history, The Rockies
, published in 1968:
In 1882 and again in 1887 Congress passed repressive
laws designed to break the political and temporal power of
the Mormon Church. Under these acts persons who believed in
polygamy as a religious principle, and that meant the
generality of Mormons whether they had actually contracted
plural marriages or not, were declared ineligible to vote,
sit on juries, or hold public office. Church property was
confiscated and placed in receivership; children of
polygamous marriages were disinherited. Federal agents,
often striking at night, sought to run down and jail
persons who dealt in unlawful cohabitation.
In other words, citizens lost their rights not only for practicing polygamy, but also for belonging to a church that included polygamy among its doctrines. They were punished not for what they did, but for what they believed. The law also required spouses to testify against each other.
That sort of perversion of traditional American standards of fairness came about the last time the federal government decided to enforce a definition of marriage. Does our country really need to go through that again?
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