Christians Still Believe in Purity and Pollution

In ancient Middle Eastern cultures-- including Judaism-- there were a variety of actions that were thought to make a person ritually "impure". For example, working with leather, touching a dead body, and menstruating were all considered "unclean" behaviors. The person who engaged in such behaviors acquired an intrinsic taint that would be passed on to his children and anyone he touched. This intrinsic taint could only be removed by the bloody sacrifice of an animal. But because the person was so unclean, he could not come into the presence of God to offer his sacrifice. God could not bear the presence of such a filthy person. It was a catch-22. Fortunately for the filthy lower castes such as leather workers, there was a higher caste of priests who carefully kept themselves pure enough that God could bear their presence. These priests acted as mediators between God and the lower castes, offering sacrifices on their behalf while carefully avoiding physical contact with them.

Christians like to think they have moved beyond this old Middle Eastern way of thinking. Christianity no longer has castes, and the taint of ritual pollution is no longer thought to be transferable from person to person through physical contact. Christians have also done away with the arbitrary lists of things that are supposed to make one ritually impure.

In reality, though, Christian theology still operates according to an Middle Eastern logic. It's true that the list of sins has shrunk, and sin has been redefined in a more rational, less arbitrary way. But sin is still thought to intrinsically taint one's soul, which makes one too impure and unholy to enter the presence of God. Christians also still believe that one needs a pure high priest to perform a blood sacrifice on one's behalf in order to remove the taint-- specifically, the self-sacrifice of the utterly pure high priest Jesus Christ. This is really just a different version of the same old system of ritual purity and pollution that has been the bane of menstruating women for millennia.

Divorce and the Privatization of Marriage

Slate's David Boaz offers a simple solution to the gay marriage debate: privatize marriage. The state, Boaz explains, should treat marriage "like any other contract: The state may be called upon to enforce it, but the parties define the terms. When children or large sums of money are involved, an enforceable contract spelling out the parties' respective rights and obligations is probably advisable. But the existence and details of such an agreement should be up to the parties." The brilliant thing about this solution is that it has the potential to do much more than satisfactorily resolve the gay marriage debate. It could also help address a major social ill: divorce.

Empirical research over the last several decades has demonstrated that divorce has very negative consequences for children. Children of divorce are more likely to develop behavioral and psychological problems, perform poorly in school, and experience long-term financial instability than children whose parents remain married. Part of this difference can be explained by the prior characteristics of parents who choose to get divorced in the first place, but researchers agree that a non-trivial portion of the difference is caused by divorce itself. Despite this disturbing data, all 50 states have "no fault divorce" laws (i.e. divorce-on-demand), and defenders of "traditional marriage" have done little or nothing to challenge these laws. The general feeling among legislators seems to be that since states set the terms for marriage, those terms must be flexible and permissive enough to accommodate a wide spectrum of Americans.

The privatization of marriage would allow individual couples to circumvent the "no fault divorce" laws, and to set their own terms for contract termination. Undoubtedly a large segment of the population would continue to make it easy to dissolve the marriage contract, but religious organizations such as the Mormon and Roman Catholic churches could be expected to demand stronger terms for the marriages they sponsor. Even some non-religious Americans might opt to protect themselves against nonchalant contract dissolution. In short, the privatization of marriage would not only allow liberals their Constitutional freedom for social innovation, but would also allow conservatives to implement stronger, socially-beneficial safeguards in their own, more traditional marriages.