Love & E-Marriage

The Left, throughout its history, has never been particularly enamored of the concept of Holy Matrimony, as my predecessor at Accuracy in Academia, Dan Flynn, shows in his masterful book, A Conservative History of the American Left. Thus, it would not be too surprising for conservatives who take an altogether different view of the institution to look skeptically upon any attempt to “update” the ceremony.

“Couples who marry today do so in ceremonies much like those held a century ago,” Rick Haglund reported in the Detroit Legal News on February 17, 2010. “They say their ‘I do’s’ while standing before a minister or other person empowered by the state to officiate at weddings.”

“But two Michigan State University College of Law professors say it’s time to change marriage laws in a way that would allow couples to use online technologies in tying the knot.”

“Marriage statutes have been largely unchanged for a century,” Michigan State law professor Mae Kuykendall said. “They don’t recognize how mobile people are now.”

“Kuykendall and fellow law professor Adam Candeub are co-creators of The Legal E-Marriage Project, which would assist couples in one state to use the Internet to marry under another state’s law,” Haglund reported. “Their work originally was focused on studying how e-marriage might help same-sex couples living in states where gay marriage was illegal get married in states where it is allowed without having to travel there.”

“It seems a not very cleverly or well-disguised scheme to establish the legal and emotional fiction of so-called homosexual ‘marriage’ in states which truthfully define and legally recognize marriage as only between one man and one woman,” American Family Association of Michigan President Gary Glenn stated.

Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.