I agree. I can only think of one reason a couple would want a religious marriage. That their religion accepts the relaitionship. If it does it is a win/win.
Generally there seems to be a disconnect between religion/marriage and homosexuals.
Surely civil unions are an excellent solution (as a hetrosexual if I had my time back I would have had a civil union rather than a marriage). Civil unions are about publicaly acknowledging a relationship and cemeting the relationship’s legal rights. The only difference from marriage is “god”.
If your church allows gay marriage then YAY to it. Most don’t. I do not think it is acceptable to make gay couples wait for churches to accept them.
The process is already well along in Masssachusetts. Oh, the antis still make noises about constitutional amendments to define marriage as blah blah blah but even they must know they’ve lost. Not saying it’s a paradise of gay rights acceptance, but gay marriage is just not a big deal for most people.
For most of history marriage has been a civil institution with no involvement from religious powers. Martin Luther wrote of marriage “not only is the sacramental character of matrimony without foundation in Scripture; but the very traditions, which claim such sacredness for it, are a mere jest”. He explicity made points that marriage is a civil insititution. It wasn’t until 1754 and passage of Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act that marriages were even registered by law in the UK. It wasn’t until the Council of Trent in the 16th Century that the Catholic Church even required a priest to be involved.
Marriage stopped being a religious issue when the first democratic government without an established church began administering marriages and granting legally enforceable rights to married couples. Since then, marriage has been a secular, administrative matter and no one entering into marriage was required to subscribe to or submit to any religious belief. Marriages are performed by mayors, judges, court clerks, ship captains, and numerous other civil functionaries and in many cases there is a complete absence of “god crap.” It is not exclusively a religious matter.
So has the word “marriage” been completely excised from the New Zealand statutes and other laws? So long as the government continues to recognise marriage, it is a civil matter and to deny same-sex couples the right to marry is discriminatory.
Here in the US, civil unions are only offered in a couple of states and have no validity outside of those states. Even in the ones that have them, they do not confer the same status as a legal marriage.
If every state in this country offered civil unions and they had exactly the same rights and all the benefits of marriage (including all the federal benefits), then I would be fine with it.
The problem is, most Americans identify as some form of Christian, and most of the people I’ve talked to, especially the ones who oppose gay marriage have a hard time thinking of marriage without the involvement of some sort of religious official. To them, marriage equals a religious rite, even though they may know people who’ve been married in a courthouse without the benefit of a blessing.
It really is hard for some people to separate the religous and secular aspects of marriage over here.
Just out of curiosity, is there still a different name for it? Are only straight couples entitled to the word “married”? If so, is there any difficulty over that constituting a second-class status simply by virtue of creating a distinction?
No. “Marriage” is the term for the process by which relationships are socially legitimized in all cultures. It is not a sacrament in my religion; if one wants to stretch it, I had a proper religious marriage by having a Justice of the Peace do a house call, since marriage in my religion is a working of law.
Is the civil union registered in NZ portable across international boundaries?
Let’s say, John and Joe get themselves civil unioned in NZ. Now John is a complete and utter cad, and he hies himself off to Belgium and woos Francine, winning her heart and her hand. Comes the wedding day, the Impressive Clergyman at the cathedral asks the congregation if anyone has reason why this marriage may not take place. Joe, having got wind of his faithless partner’s philandering scheme, rushes up the aisle, waving his certificate of civil union, postmarked Auckland. Does this stop the wedding?
Let’s say John isn’t a cad; he’s a professional diplomat. He gets posted to Washington D.C. to serve as the New Zealand ambassador to the United States. All the other diplomats on Embassy Row have their spouses living with them, and these spouses are provided with diplomatic passports; does John get to bring Joe, and does Joe get a diplomatic passport?
I realised a bit after I saw it that I was feeling the urge to regurgitate it every so often, so it was easiest to search-function it out and bookmark the result.
