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Important Decisions Regarding Marriage Soon to Be Made In Tennessee

Friday, April 8, 2022

A few months ago, the Family Action Council of Tennessee published an article explaining why proposed legislation in Tennessee, “The Marital Contract Recording Act” (MCRA; Senate Bill 562/House Bill 233), is needed. Among other things, the article highlights the differences between marriage certificates in Tennessee before and after the Obergefell ruling (the 2015 Supreme Court opinion that mandated same-sex marriage throughout the United States):

At this link you can see what the state’s Certificate of Marriage looked like prior to the Obergefell decision and how it now reads. It will be apparent that the state has eliminated the exclusivity of male and female as husband and wife.

At the very least, this poses a problem for a couple in Tennessee who believe in natural marriage, and for ministers and pastors who perform marriage ceremonies across the state who also believe that marriage is, and can be, only the union of one man and one woman.

There are even more problems than this. The following provision in Tennessee marriage statues is still on the books and is crystal clear about marriage licensing in Tennessee:

T.C. A. § 36-3-104(a)

(a) No county clerk or deputy clerk shall issue a marriage license until the applicants make an application in writing, stating the names, ages, addresses and social security numbers of both the proposed male and female contracting parties and the names and addresses of the parents, guardian or next of kin of both parties.

Yet, even though

no court has ever ordered the state to stop complying with the statute and the legislature has never changed it, state and local officials have unconstitutionally administered the statute as if the legislature had amended it to delete the requirement that applicants for a license be a “male and female.”

But the way the law is now being interpreted by the governor and county clerks creates a problem for people who believe marriage is a kind of reality defined exclusively and exhaustively in terms of the union of male and female as husband and wife. Belief in such realities is pervasive. For example, the meaning we ascribe to any thing, even sexual acts, is more than the thing itself.

The Marital Contract Recording Act would not solve all the problems Obergefell has created, but it will address some of them in important ways. As the FACT article explains,

The Marital Contract Recording Act allows a man and woman who have exchanged marital vows or promises to file with the local county clerk a document recording the fact that they have married.…

The Act is based on the fact that the relationship of a man and woman as husband and wife is not created by an act of the state legislature through licensure. Moreover, the right of a man and woman to enter into this particular kind of relationship is not based on a grant of permission given them by the legislature.

To picture what the Act does, picture a real estate contract between two people for the sale and purchase of a home and the subsequent recording of the deed to evidence the contract. If you can picture that, then you know how the Marital Contract Recording Act works.

This bypasses Tennessee’s illegally revised marriage certificates that now include the genderless options of “PARTNER-1” and “PARTNER-2” as options that can be chosen over “BRIDE” and “GROOM.”

One pastor who strongly favors the Marital Contract Recording Act is Paul Becker, pastor of Concordia Lutheran Church in Kingsport, Tennessee. Recently, Rev. Becker testified in favor of the proposed legislation before the Senate Judiciary Committee. His testimony lasted for just three minutes.

The MCRA is now making its way through the State Legislature. So far it has survived, but miraculously. It was at one point sent to a summer study committee. Had it remained there it would have effectively been killed for this session; but the House of Representatives suspended the rules and brought it back for consideration.

As of Friday, April 8, 2022, according to an email from FACT,

      • the Senate Judiciary Committee recommended the bill for passage to the full Senate by a vote of 6 to 3, and
      • the House Children and Family Affairs subcommittee recommended the bill to the Civil Justice Committee by a vote of 4 to 2.

These two votes were the first in the nation by any state legislative body recognizing marriage as a relationship between a man and woman since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 decision, Obergefell v. Hodges. In that decision the Court held that limiting the issuance of marriage licenses to a man and woman was unconstitutional.

However, other important hurdles loom for the MCRA. This past Wednesday, April 6, the MCRA was on the calendar to be considered by the members of House Civil Justice Committee. The email I previously mentioned was one requesting prayer for FACT during the month of April. In that same correspondence, FACT president David Fowler wrote,

The vote will be very close. I can’t say more about that at this time, but pray that God will bring along these three Republicans or expose to their constituents what they really believe about God as Creator and the proper role of government with respect to marriage—creating and defining it or merely protecting it:

Had the House Civil Justice Committee voted to in favor of the MCRA, the Senate version of the bill would have been considered on Thursday by the entire Senate. Here’s what happened, according to Mr. Fowler in an email sent April 7:

As far as I know, the efforts of the Family Action Council in Tennessee and David Fowler are the only efforts in the nation to contend legally for recognition of natural marriage — marriage as God designed it and defines it. Meanwhile, most people, including most Christians, have absolutely no understanding of what the Obergefell ruling is doing to unravel natural marriage and natural parenting in the United States. Effectively, Obergefell mandates that all marriages, even opposite-sex unions, have to be treated equally. This means they must be treated as a same-sex marriage.

Effectively, Obergefell mandates that all marriages, even opposite-sex unions, have to be treated equally. This means they must be treated as a same-sex marriage.

In an email sent on Wednesday, April 6, David Fowler encourages his readers to listen to attorney Jeff Shafer explain some of the most severe implications of Obergefell in a brief, 6-minute audio clip. Fowler wrote, “Friends, attached is an audio clip of an interview with attorney Jeff Shafer from CrossPolitic, out of Moscow, Idaho. I beg of you to listen to it.” He continued,

But for God’s promise never to abandon his creation that reveals his glory, this would be the most chilling audio I’ve ever heard that provides insight into why the marital contract recording act may truly be the most important piece of legislation pending before any state legislative body this year.

It conforms, in the negative direction,  to the positive testimony Jeff gave to the Senate Judiciary Committee about why the legislation is so important and why it is important to take advantage now of the rationale in Obergefell that was clearly limited to statutory law. If we don’t, then we may wander in the wilderness for 50 years like we have followed Roe.

God has given our state the opportunity to make a declaration regarding the true nature of man and woman and marriage and mother and father and parent and child and the family. These are worth fighting for as a matter of faithfulness, even if God does not give us victory in the United States Supreme Court. Like the servant in Luke 12, we will have “done that which was our duty to do.”

Here is the audio clip. You can play it here, and

you can download it here.

 

 

 

 

Copyright © 2022 by B. Nathaniel Sulllivan. All rights reserved.

top image credit: Photo by micheile.com on Unsplash