A civilly-recognized marriage between two men is not really marriage. The Catholic Church certainly would not accept such a union as a marriage. If one of the men left that union, repented and wished to marry a woman, he would not need an annulment, under Catholic canon law.
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
My colleague Jennifer Johnson jumps from this starting point to explain why we need to have some system in place for determining the validity of attempted marriages. We cannot be the judges of our own case. This would obviously be unfair. The Catholic system, if it is working properly, examines evidence and makes a determination about whether an attempted marriage was valid. Jennifer then wonders whether any other churches have a mechanism for determining the validity of a marriage.
The importance of the law around marriage makes it plain that the government does have some duty in justice to marriage. So, when people say, “Just get the government out of the marriage business,” chances are they have not thought through the whole question of what justice entails. That is the subject of my booklet, “The Government’s Duty to Marriage,” described below. Your friend, Dr. Jennifer Morse.