But that’s the MOST LIBERAL state in one of the MOST CONSERVATIVE industrialized nations on Earth. And my calculations are based on the historical trend of voting on gay rights issue, was has tilted sharply in favor of gay rights in the last two decades, and which show no indication of tilting back at this time. Losing in California was a pretty bitter defeat, because we thought we had gained a lot more ground than we had here. But even though we lost, it doesn’t change the fact that we’ve closed the gap on this issue enormously in a very short period of time.
I agree that this is the best practical solution. I also think it would be a political disaster.
Yes, as has already been explained in this thread, most states require some type of witnessed ceremony in order to solemnize (that is, make official) the marriage. Here’s a link to California’s pertinent law.
Thirded or fourthed or fifthed.
I have no problem using my efforts to move in the direction of the OP, but I don’t intend to just sit patiently in a state of legal limbo with my partner while we all try and sort that out. There are many paths we can take to get there, and any of those paths are going to be a a bloody-knuckle fight (and no I am not threatening to go hitting anyone).
As has already been mentioned, marriage IS a civil union. If you didn’t know that, why did you think atheists got married?
Marriage can also mean a religious union. But this meaning has nothing to do with the government.
Changing the name would be idiotic. It would be saying, among other things, that the government has been joining atheists in religious unions all this time without their knowledge.
Stupid ideas like this are probably part of the reason people vote in favor of gay marriage bans. This is a scare tactic intended to make people think gay marriage is going to destroy marriage.
Why? There are human societies that do not have a concept of “contract”. There are human societies without a concept of law. But there are no human societies without marriage. Do you imagine that Eskimos 200 years ago thought of marriage as a form of contract? Of course not, the whole point of a contract is that if you don’t fulfil your promise someone else is going to force you to fulfil your promise. And yet they married each other.
Marriage is not a contract, it existed before the concept of contracts. Marriage is not a religious concept, it existed before the idea of gods and goddesses.
200,000 years is the earliest known anatomically modern humans. Human taxonomy - Wikipedia
Fine by me.
No, I lie. Not ‘fine’ but ‘a consummation devoutly to be wished’.
Right, and we do not go far enough to separate the sacred from the secular regarding this institution.
The word secular has meant different things in different times. Secular generally meant like the business end. Like priests would be considered secular as opposed to Monks in the Catholic church. It is recent that secular has become to mean separate and distinct from religion, as opposed to just a description of division of labor.
Yeah, a conservative friend of mine about the time that gay rights were making their big push in several states including California a year or so ago was saying, “Watch they’re going to win the battle and lose the war, all these states will have constitutional amendments on the ballots shortly.”
I think ultimately you’ll win. But it’ll be Gen Y that delivers the finally blow, not the last remnants of the Baby Boomers. If you consider a timeline of two decades as being a short period of time, then you’ve got a realistic outlook. I give it another 20-30 years for the war to be won, for the bigots to be old and fatigued, and their kids who might have opposed it to be utterly apathetic, and the kids of those who supported it to be like, “Wow this issue is stupid, just let them get married already.”
For me personally, I won’t lie to you I have some visceral issues with homosexuality and the whole idea of gay marriage, but as far as I am concerned a healthy relationship between two gay men is their concern, and as it regards the adoption issue, I’d just as soon get as many kids out of orphanages and into gay foster families as soon as possible. I’ve seen too much fucked up shit regarding twisted straight foster families to think that a gay couple could be any worse. Maybe if there is more supply of foster families the state can be more choosy about who it places kids with.
The aspect of antagonism to ‘Breeders’ really disconcerts me, but it’s more prevalent than just within the gay community. The fact that there is a latent disrespect for those of us who you know are ensuring the continuation of the species, really gets under my skin. You don’t want to have kids don’t but there are real issues regarding demographic decline that have to be addressed when a society falls below replacement rate, and I think there is too much blowing this issue off. I am kind of moving in the opposite direction of most people who think that gay marriage would make a mockery of marriage, and hope that more gay married couples would be a stronger force for family values coming from a sector that most mainstream straight people wouldn’t expect it to come from. I think gay marriage would strengthen the nuclear family rather than weaken it. At least I hope so. I’ve read some statistics of a high divorce rate amongst married gay couples, but I am not sure what to believe, and even so, it’s too early to tell. Maybe some people rushed to get married in the legal window hoping they could grandfather their relationship in to win one for the movement, and then realized, “Oh fuck, I’m married to this person now.” If it were normalized, we may see a different trend.
I can’t comment on Eskimos.
I disagree. I think a marriage is a form of contract. That’s one of the reasons people talk about it being the foundation of civilization it is the basic unit upon which all of that other stuff is built. That’s the crux of the argument. If you prefer we can use the word, ‘compact’. But ultimately simply fucking and producing offspring isn’t marriage. Sure biologically bonded mates occur in nature all the time. I hear Lobsters mate for life but I still wouldn’t consider Lobsters to be, ‘married’.
Sure, but we don’t know what came before recorded history, because we have…no records.
So here’s something that occurred to me.
If, to become married, a couple must go through some sort of solemnization rite then why isn’t there a reciprocal de-solemnization rite in order to grant a divorce?
Why can’t it all be handled in a lawyer’s office, from soup to nuts?
- Accident of history
- Divorce is even now not considered an act that people feel good about solemnizing
- The majority of people like solemnizing marriages
- Even if you could get enough people to agree to stop requiring it, enacting such legislation would be more trouble than it was worth. It’s not actually putting you out all that much to require you to do it. There’s not enough return for the effort.
I disagree. Land of the free and all of that. I find it goofy to the extreme to require a rite in order to make something legit … at least legally.
Rites belong to the world of the mystical.
For whatever reason, there are a number of places where some type of rite or ceremony or oath is required by our government. Marriage, naturalization, providing testimony in court. I had to swear an oath to become a member of the State Bar.
There are people who will rationalize why such ceremonies are required. I’m not going to do that. But I have to agree that it’s not that big a deal. And a lot of people must not think it’s a big deal, given how many places this kind of thing pops up.
None of the government required ceremonies have anything mystical about them. If you want to add something mystical, that’s up to you. (Well, there are some gov’t ceremonies which you are allowed to invoke God, but that’s for historical reasons, and there’s always a non-mystical alternative).
What freedom are you being required to sacrifice? The freedom not to solemnize? Frankly, that’s petty. As I said, it’s just like the affirmation you make in court. You’re demonstrating to the government that your serious about this in exchange for some pretty damn good benefits.
If you don’t want the benefits, you don’t have to do it.
Is it a mystical rite when you are asked to affirm that you will tell the truth in court? You are asking the society to recognize a change your status that will earn you considerable benefits. In exchange, you’re asked to affirm through whatever goddamn ceremony you choose that you’re serious about this. You don’t need to incorporate anything mystical into your solemnization if you don’t want to.
It’s not even like the Pledge of Allegiance or a loyalty oath, which I agree do have the air of extracting a promise from you under coercive nature. It’s simply an affirmation that you intend to stick to the deal that you’re being offered.
It seems to me there’s something more to this. You’re showing signs of extreme discomfort with something that society considers to be routine and not harmful to you at all. Care to be a little more expansive on your objections?
And if the ceremony is signing a piece of paper and shaking my attorney’s hand with hearty, “Thanks,” that’s not good enough, because I have to pretend that “solemnizing” something means fuck all.
It’s nothing sinister, I assure you. I’m just vary wary of traditions. I think for the most part, they are ridiculous and useless and only serve to not make waves.
I know I’m being antagonistic about this, but at the heart of the matter, I don’t see why, if marriage is dealt with as a legality, it can’t be handled as a legality. Moon, spoon and June doesn’t enter into tax breaks, now does it?
What you’re not getting is that it can be handled as a legality. You can get your paperwork and then hit up a justice of the peace and a few witnesses and BINGO! you’re married. I really don’t see what’s so difficult about that nor do I see how changing it to “civil union” is going to change the system we already have in place. In fact, if we were to switch it to civil unions I bet we’d still have priest, rabbis, and Wiccan priests presiding over ceremonies.
This is a waste of time. Civil marriage already has a distinct name from religious marriage - “Civil marriage”. Changing it’s name to “civil union” does nothing but piss in the eye of the non-religious - saying that their civil marriage no longer is a “real” marriage, by explicitly taking the term away from them.
Forget that. Civil marriage is civil marriage, and the various exclusive religious marriages are each of them an exclusive religious marriage, and that’s perfect. The magical property that the current situation has is that they’re both marriages in the slightly more general sense of the term; a union between two or more things, that is probably recognized as such by others. The shared term is inclusive and unifying and promotes people treating each other decently rather than trying to railroad the other group towars the back of (or underneath) the bus.
The only problem are the hate-filled and the fear-filled religious bigots who want a theocracy where they can ride roughshod over everyone else in their quest to build a little world where everyting is forced to comply with their worldview so that they won’t be forced to deal with anything that they find even slightly disturbing. These people who aren’t even the majority of religious people, are the antithesis of diversity and peaceful co-existence, and to a large degree are opponents to many of the principles that america now professes to stand for. These lot deserve no concessions regarding civil law - rather, they should be allowed to have their little exclusive social clubs where they can do what they want, and when they come out they can just suck it up and deal with the fact that other people exist, and that those other people still have rights despite being not them.
What he said ^