Government should recognize ONLY civil unions

Great Debates
61

If a civil authority defines it, sets its limitations, defines its benefits, is essential to its formation and dissolution … yes it’s nothing else but a civil institution.

And that’s exactly what it is. It is created by the government in order to confer certain civil benefits to some people (married people) and deny them to others (unmarried people) for certain civil purposes.

I have no idea what you’re trying to say. This sentence is meaningless. Marriage is a kind of civil union.

It is. When you want to get married, you go to the local court and apply for a marriage license. When you have executed that license, you file it with the court and they issue you a certificate. It’s an entirely civil process.

It’s no different than asking your mail carrier, unemployed brother, or family dog to officiate at your wedding. It makes no difference. You have to obtain a license from the government first and the government will tell you who is allowed to sign it.

62

No you haven’t had it longer than they have. You for better or worse live in a society that was completely and totalitarian religious for about a millenium, and it’s not like people were atheists before Saul of Tarsus came along and tricked everyone. Religion and culture were inseperable until the revolutionary idea of the separation of church and state came about during the enlightenment. So you most certainly did not have an institution of marriage before religious people coopted it. There were religious institutions at every point throughout known history. It is your notion of secularism that is the Johnny come lately.

If we rename it then it takes the government out of what is an emotional/spiritual deal between two people. As far as the government is concerned it should be nothing more than a contractual arrangement.

But hey, don’t listen to me, the gay rights movement is losing this argument. shrugs Maybe in 30 years when Gen Y kids who don’t care about this sort of thing are the power generation, will the tides turn, but that’s pretty much what’s going to have to happen. You’ll have to wait until the current generation is dead basically. Just like how many of Martin Luther King Jr’s contemporaries the racists and activists alike are now dead and the bulk of the voting public grew up on the other side of the threshold he set in order to get a black President.

'Why should we…when they…" arguments are silly. There are a lot more religious people than there are gay people. Both sides see it the same way, that the other side should give the inch.

That is why in my opinion we should fix the governmental language so that an emotional compact between two people doesn’t require state involvement.

Brightnshiny You IMO are the only person in the entire thread offering a reasonable counter-argument.

63

You think so? The largest state in the union passed a gay marriage ban by only 2%. Fifteen years ago, a similar ban passed by almost 25%. We’re still losing at the ballot, but we’re winning converts to our side at an exponentially faster rate than the anti-marriage faction is winning converts to theirs. As you say, in thirty years, this will be a non-issue. But that will be because of the changes we make in the next ten.

64

Maybe, but I think you are making an error in calculations. The largest and MOST LIBERAL state in the union passed a gay marriage ban by only 2%. How big will the percentage be in New York or Massachusetts? Lets not even talk about South Dakota and Alabama.

65

Ok, but we’re not living in 15th century England. Today, in the United States, the legal institution of marriage is purely civil and is completely separate from any religious institutions. People do erroneously continue to conflate the two, but that doesn’t make it so.

66

I don’t claim to know how the american system works (I’ve only been exposed to it by Hollywood) but, in Argentina, if you marry by church you are not married at all. The only valid marriage is the one performed by a public officer.
More than that, until a few years ago if a priest married a couple without the public officer certificate he would have ended in jail.
The Argentinian system was created in the decade of 1870 and was the cause of a long dispute with the Vatican (after all we are a catholic country).
Because of this it’s very clear for an average argentinian that the states decides what is legal and not in this issue. That’s why many cities in Argentina have adopted a civil union for homosexuals.
Still, marriage, disposition of property after death and adoption are reserved by our constitution by the Federal Goverment, so homesexuals don’t have that rights (I have to say that I am against adoption by homesexuals in most cases).

67

Which religion invented marriage?

Marriage exists in every single human society from Greenland to the Kalahari to Australia to Siberia and back to Greenland again. It is almost certainly older than Homo sapiens sapiens. Marriage is an instinctive natural human behavior. The existance of religious rituals and attitudes surrounding marriage doesn’t mean marriage was created by religion, any more than saying grace before meals means religion created eating, or last rights at funerals means religion created death. Marriage likewise predates any governments or human-created social order.

Government didn’t create my marriage. Jesus didn’t create my marriage. My wife and I created our marriage. If the United States government collapses tomorrow I’ll still be married and people will still get married. If every church emptied tomorrow I’ll still be married and people will still get married.

I am a stone atheist. Show me a god, any god, and I’ll disbelieve it. Yet I’m also married. How can a person like myself exist?

Renaming marriage to civil union doesn’t solve anything. Calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg. Marriage is marriage whether you call it a civil union or a kwijibo. It’s still marriage.

68

I don’t know that more nonsense could possibly be packed into a single paragraph. Animals do not get ‘married’ they mate. Marriage is a ritualistic cultural institution. The idea of religion as separate from culture is a modern convention and did not exist prior to about 300 years ago.

69

In America, the government grants officials as well as private citizens (like priests) licenses to execute marriages. Anyone holding such a license and officiating at a wedding is acting in the capacity of a civil official.

70

Which is something else I don’t quite get.

When I got married, we spent an afternoon running around city hall and filling out paperwork, to make sure that we would heretofore be recognized as being married – until we got divorced, of course.

Why the hell did we need to go through with the justice-of-the-peace, other than to make my mother happy? Couldn’t we have just traisped merrily along our wedded way without having to recite specific words to a man I’d never met before that day?

71

Jack, of course the two of you could have just turned to each other and declared yourself married to each other.

The problem comes when you try to involve the rest of us. Suppose later that day you got hit by a car and were unconscious in the hospital. Who would get to make medical decisions for you while you were unconscious? According to our law your next of kin would do so. But how do the rest of us know who that is? That’s what the piece of paper is for, to let the rest of us know that this stranger is now your next of kin, has power of attorney for you, will inherit your estate, and so on.

If you want to go to a lawyer and draw up a living will, a power of attorney, a will, and so on, you can certainly do so, but we’ve got a short form method of doing so in this country. We make you sign the piece of paper in front of witnesses so that we know who to believe if you’re unconscious in the hospital and one woman says pull the plug and the other says to keep the machines going.

As for mswas, what’s the difference between “marriage” and mating? There are some animal species that cohabitat and cooperate to raise their offspring for extended periods of time. It turns out that humans are one of those species. Some of our closest primate relatives don’t live this way, but we humans do.

Marriage wasn’t invented 300 years ago. It wasn’t invented by priests. If it was invented by priests, then why does it exist among every hunter-gatherer society ever encountered on every continent and in every era? How could this happen, if marriage was just a cultural institution? Cultural institutions are things that vary between human cultures. If a behavior exists in every human society ever recorded, doesn’t it seem odd to declare that it’s just something some priest made up one day? If it were just a cultural institution, wouldn’t we find SOME human societies that didn’t have this human-created institution?

Sure, ancient people didn’t make a distinction between civil authority and religious authority. But marriage has existed before there were contracts and governments, before there were priests and temples. It’s probable that the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees that lived 6 million years ago didn’t have a social structure that included something like marriage. Gorillas, chimps, humans and orangutans all have very different social structures, you’d have to go to gibbons to find close primate relatives that have a social structure reminiscent of marriage. But at some point our modern human social structure evolved, and since this social structure is universal among all human beings it is almost certain that this social structure is older than the most recent common ancestor of all human beings. It could easily go back millions of years to Homo habilis or earlier.

While we might think it reasonable that the common ancestor of humans and chimps had a mating system that more resembles modern chimps, it could be that modern humans are more similar to our common ancestor than modern chimps are.

Marriage is therefore at least 200,000 years old, the age of the first appearance of Homo sapiens sapiens. It could be even older than that. But it sure isn’t something dreamed up by some Sumerian priest-king.

72

Sure, if all that mattered to you was what you and your wife thought about your relationship. But being married means demanding certain rights, privileges, and benefits from the government and society. You can’t claim or obtain those rights and benefits simply by making googly eyes at each other. You have to tell someone who has the authority to grant public benefits, and you do that in the form of a public marriage.

73

It’s the difference between fucking and sealing a contract in front of witnesses.

And priests didn’t exist in hunter-gatherer societies? I don’t understand what ‘Just’ a cultural institution means. It is a cultural institution period. Even if it’s adopted by all cultures, it’s still a cultural institution. Culture grows out of biology too you know.

Marriage is a contract, so it couldn’t have existed before contracts. Maybe it’s the earliest form of contract. There were priests and temples pretty much as far back as we can go. Even if it’s just the oldest man in the tribe standing on a pile of rocks they’ve deemed sacred, it’s still a priest and a temple. It can’t be older than the common ancestor of human beings. Because if it were then that oldest common ancestor would actually be ancestors who were married, right? All of that common ancestors ancestors would be our common ancestors wouldn’t they? The idea of ‘oldest common ancestor’ is pretty specious as a result.

A marriage isn’t just mating, it is the recognition of the mating process as witnessed by the rest of society/culture/tribe. If there are only two mates and no others of the species anywhere then the concept of marriage is simply moot, it’s irrelevant, there is no necessity for it therefore it doesn’t exist. As you have said, many primates have different social organizations, whether it’s one alpha male picking and choosing from a harem, or whether it’s one constant orgy like Bonobos.

You haven’t demonstrated anything, 200,000 is some arbitrary number you pulled out of your ass. Sumerians didn’t invent priests, and they probably didn’t invent Kings or marriage either. Right now you are reaching so far back that you are speculating about what the marriage contract may have been like before recorded history.

The bottom line is that during recorded history there has never been a time until Modernity where religion and state were separate.

74

We signed a piece of paper saying we were married about 24 hours before we stood in front of the J-O-P. That’s sounds like a contract to me. Couldn’t we have had my uncle Mortimor declare us man and wife while trying not to fall out of his row boat ten feet off shore and called it good? Or do I have to pretend like a specific rite makes a shit bit of difference in the deal?

75

It’s a solemnization. Same reason you affirm you’ll tell the truth in court. Of course, your Uncle Mortimer could conceivably get a license to solemnize weddings, the same way he could become a notary to validate signatures. The point is that someone is deputized to represent the public at large in order to affirm and witness that you’re going through with this.

76

What’s wrong with the notary public at city hall? He was there.

77

Maybe nothing. But that’s not how things have worked out. Maybe someday the notary public will be deemed good enough.

78

So you’re saying one has to go through a rite or a marriage isn’t valid? No choice in the matter. One must say some form of “I do” or it doesn’t count.
I don’t buy it.

79

  1. It depends on what you mean by “rite.” Each religion has its own idea of rite, the justice of the peace or some other public official has his own idea of rite, and the people who choose a friend or a family member who has signed up to be a minister with the Universal Life Church have their own ideas of rite. You can conceivably do any damn thing, so long as a duly deputized representative of the public officiates, including “okay, sign here and we’re done.”

  2. It depends on what you mean by “valid.” When you’re demanding benefits from the public, the public gets to set the bar of how high you have to jump. When you’re demanding something from a church, the church gets to tell you where to dot the I.

Generally speaking, in seeking to be married, you’re seeking recognition from society, so society gets to make the rules regarding what exactly it will recognize. If you don’t want recognition from society and you don’t want to claim the benefits of a status defined by the government, you can make your own rules to decide what’s valid.

80

Gee, that sounds like an institution of civil society to me.

Of course the ancient Sumerians and the ancient Greeks and pretty much everyone before the Enlightenment utterly failed to distinguish between the sacred and the secular. It would not in the least surprise me if in many ancient societies contracts we would regard as completely secular–an agreement to exchange seven goats for eleven bushels of grain or what have you–would have been witnessed and solemnized by the priest of some god or another. In modern societies, though, we have secular governments which do things like enforce contracts and act to facilitate “the recognition of the mating process as witnessed by the rest of society/culture/tribe”.