Catholic Government Officials and Same Sex Unions

I've a good deal of sympathy with the concerns to which Robby gives characteristically eloquent voice in his 'Which Side Are You On' post yesterday.  I've also no doubt that he is right about at least some, perhaps even many Catholic politicians, in surmising that their views and voting behavior might be shaped and guided by some form of expressive individualism. Finally, I've also little doubt that some if not most forms of the latter are, at a minimum, in tension with the Catholic and natural law traditions, as well as with what are probably the most widely accepted understandings of the Jewish and Christian, not to mention Islamic, ethical traditions. I wonder, though, whether a somewhat more charitable interpretation - in a 'giving the benefit of interpretive doubt' understanding of 'charity' here - might not be available to us in the case of some Catholic or otherwise religiously committed government functionaries or political figures.

What I have in mind here is this: Perhaps some religiously committed functionaries or political figures attempt in good faith, how ever successfully or otherwise as an analytic or conceptual matter, to draw a sharp distinction between matters of church (or temple or mosque or ...) on the one hand, and matters of state on the other hand. (Perhaps they've not yet read, or not yet read and found persuasive, Robby's own acute writings on the subject, or any of the other great scholarly work plying the natural law or even 'communitarian' traditions in querying the ultimate tenability of the distinction as a conceptual or as a practical matter.)  Marriage these people might in turn find to constitute a strictly sacramental or ecclesial category, while finding something like dyadic 'domestic partnership' to constitute all that there is by way of analogue in the realm of legitimate state categories.

These people, if such exist, might then also firmly subscribe and commit to, and with sincere hearts defend and act in accordance with, their congregations' understandings of marriage, while at the same time believing that state functionaries would be abusing state office, state sanction, and state power were they to employ identical criteria in framing the conditions of state-recognized domestic partnership as they do in framing the conditions of marriage within their ecclesial traditions. One such criterion that they might then in good faith find legitimate in the first case but not in the second case might speak to the genders, as distinguished from the ages, competences, and cognate contract-relevant characteristics of the would-be spouses or partners.  So far as legitimate state interests are concerned, they might reason, reasonably (but secularly) qualified dyadic partnership is what warrants state recognition and favor of various sorts, while sexual complementarity, ultimate sameness of flesh, and like matters of profound metaphysical significance are matters of ecclesial but not legitimate state competence. 

It is true, of course, that the word 'marriage' is used, at least in the U.S., in respect of both of the categories I mention - ecclesial and state. In that sense, our legal terminology, admittedly and perhaps regrettably conflates the two categories. But of course it need not; it could be reformed. And it seems to me that in the meanwhile a, say, quite seriously devout Catholic legislator might prefer globally to change the legal terminology where state-recognized domestic partnership is concerned, while at the same time being willing, until such time as that happens, to approve legislation that ends the state's making what amount to ecclesial decisions concerning the substantive criteria upon which state-recognized and -encouraged dyadic domestic partnership is to be determined. Could s/he not?

Now assuming that the charitable interpretation of at least some actual or possible tradition-faithful state functionaries' or political figures' decisions and actions in respect of 'same sex unions' here offered is plausible, it should go without saying that it does not carry over, at least absent further elaboration and argumentation, to the case of such persons' decisions or actions in respect of abortion. For that latter, of course, involves not only two acting partners of one sort or another, but innocent third parties as well - or at the very least critically implicates precisely that fateful question, as even 'pro-choicers' would be bound in candor to admit.

(Cross-posted at ReligiousLeftLaw)