One of the dismaying dimensions of ministry was that people would walk in without any affiliation or knowledge of the living congregation and ask for a wedding to be performed by myself in this church. They usually said that they wanted to be married there because it was a “pretty” church building. They wanted the wedding to be “perfect,” not because it was what they believed at all, but because it was aesthetically in conformity to what the Bridal arbiters feel is “beautiful.” (Wedding planners get White House government jobs these days. And, I presume, eat “the most beautiful chocolate cake you ever saw.”)
Presently the Supreme Court of the US is considering “freedom of cake ordering,” whether a baker can refuse the business of a gay couple who wanted a cake for a marriage event. It’s not about cake. It’s not about gay versus straight. It’s about what we think marriage is.
Let’s be frank. The bottom line is not even sex, though in the US today just about everything seems to be about sex. The real purpose of weddings, as the Royal Family of England knows, is keeping order by contracting for the care of children and the ownership of property, particularly when it comes to inheritance. In fact, sometimes it is so much about these that ownership of children and females are forthrightly discussed, in terms of the right to control and even abuse them. "Custody." But other times it's as though the bride catches and owns the groom.
When the United States separated from England and specifically defined itself as NOT having a religion-conflated government, a previously unacknowledged spit became apparent. Marriage, previously an act that mixed law with church in order to increase the strength and stability of institutions, became two things. One was the legal dividing line between the laws applying to singletons and those pertaining to people who had entered a contract together. That line was marked, recorded and attested to by clergy as trustworthy witnesses. But it could also be marked by a ship captain or a clerk of the court. It could be recorded in the church records, but was more legally binding if recorded with the county clerk. Of course, one received a certificate for one’s own records, which in those days were kept in a family Bible.
I always felt a little strange signing the documents alongside the two witnesses. It was a bill of sale in some ways. The secular part of it was actually more important than the “sacred”, esp. among those who were unchurched, only there because it was pretty. When I was an intern minister, a young couple came in one summer day. The girl (she wasn’t old enough to be called a woman, but she was of legal age) was wearing a sundress that bared her shoulders which were bruised by the boy she intended to marry. I refused to marry them. My supervising minister did not approve, on grounds that we might be accused of prejudice and possibly sued.
All major shifts in human life are celebrated conventionally with a party, a feast, gifts and dancing. The cake is part of this celebration which is NOT sacred, NOT religious, only a party. Today it nearly consumes and overwhelms the sacred ceremony. This is because it is a huge income stream, an industry. The nature of the cake is a matter of secular purchasing. It’s aesthetics are dictated by the culture or subculture of the people involved, both purchaser and provider. If they are vulgar people, the party is also likely to be vulgar.
I looked at Google Images for wedding cakes and was astounded. Here’s a tentacle wedding cake. Would I perform a religious ceremony for a couple who wanted this cake? Maybe. Their gender and sex life would have nothing to do with it. I’m marrying two human beings if they seem serious and real. What do tentacles mean to them?
These are real wedding cakes that are considered jokes. Would I marry people who ordered these cakes? Probably not, though some duck the issues by calling the cake a "groom's cake."
There was another cake that was obscene, a pun on “to have and to hold” that showed a hand holding a penis. Would I marry a couple who planned on this cake? Probably not. It's not my culture.
Would I marry a couple who didn’t plan a cake or even a celebration? Depending on their sincerity and maturity, I wouldn’t give a damn about the cake. In fact, though I probably shouldn’t, I wouldn’t care about how much alcohol would be consumed or whether drugs were present at the party. I would appreciate the presence of supportive friends and truly loving parents, but they wouldn’t be key, as they will be for Princes of England.
Divorce is normally secular, though some want a celebration party the same as for marriage, as a matter of equity. One bride became so obsessed by the perfection of the clothes, the wine, the musicians, etc. that she went ballistic when she discovered that the church, which had so many weddings because it was so pretty, had a huge cooler and because her ceremony was in the morning of a day when another wedding would take place there in the afternoon, both wedding cakes would be refrigerated at the same time. “In the same refrigerator together,” she screamed. “At the same time!!” I don’t know what her fantasy was about what they would do in there.
I told her that she was destroying herself, that she should redefine this event as a big party, like a debutante coming out (which weddings often become), and just leave the religious ceremony out. When she had recovered from the party — let’s say, two weeks later — she should come back for the actual vows and moment of commitment. She canceled the whole thing, which dismayed my supervisor because of the loss of the money. I don’t think I ever spoke to the groom except for an interview early on, which he made clear he resented because I had no right to interfere.
Commercial purchase has overtaken and obliterated human spiritual dynamics, whose symbolism is easy to capture and market. That the Supreme Court should be involved in the right to purchase a cake for an event that might or might not be religious in the institutional sense, is ridiculous. That a couple seeking legal commitment "in good faith" should be upset because a bakery refused them, is ridiculous. That a baker should think that his religious beliefs had anything to do with a cake, is ridiculous.
The event is really about trade and whether some categories of people can be refused as customers. Churches are involved in the case only if they are selling themselves to provide legitimacy for an essentially secular ceremony, when the sacred core of it has been emptied.
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