Humpty Dumpty on unholy matrimony

The Book of Common Prayer stands alongside Shakespeare and the King James Bible as one of the great monuments of Elizabethan English, and therefore of the English language itself. For the Elizabethans gave us the most glorious period of the ever-fecund English tongue.

The prayer book’s service for the Solemnization of Marriage begins with these words, whose familiarity has never dimmed their force or reverence:

Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this company, to join together this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony.

The service goes on to note that marriage is “an honourable estate instituted of God” and is not “to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly; but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God.”

Now prepare for the swift comedown to Chief Justice Margaret Marshall’s prose as she explains, on behalf of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, why civil marriage need no longer be limited to man and woman. It’s like taking an elevator down 40 floors in 20 seconds:

“In short, for all the joy and solemnity that normally attend a marriage, governing entrance to marriage is a licensing law.”

Her honor might be talking about obtaining a building permit or occupation license. “In Massachusetts,” she explains, “civil marriage is, and since pre-Colonial days has been, precisely what its name implies, a wholly secular institution.”

In short, don’t let all that joy and solemnity fool you. It’s just another civil procedure. Once that is understood, marriage can be anything the almighty state says it is, and may unite whatever two people it designates. (Gosh, why only two?)

Where civil marriage is concerned, the state now has superseded not only the deity but also the dictionary. Forget Webster’s or Black’s or the simple, everyday meaning of marriage. The Supreme Judicial Council of Massachusetts has overturned them all.

The chief justice’s approach to the law is clear enough, brutally clear: If homosexuals are denied certain rights under the traditional definition of marriage in Massachusetts, then change the definition and, hesto presto, justice is done.

Or as Humpty Dumpty told Alice in Lewis Carroll’s famous guide to Western jurisprudence, “Through the Looking Glass”: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”

Whereupon little Alice, who had acquired some wisdom in her 7 years and 6 months, raised the obvious objection to that kind of logic: “The question is whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

But that is not the question at all, the Hon. Humpty Dumpty replied: “The question is, which is to be master — that’s all.”

The chief justice of Massachusetts’ highest court could not have put it more concisely. Her honor was not about to let a mere word, a mere concept, mere meaning, stand in her court’s way.

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