But my point is, from a legal standpoint, why not stop after the paperwork and call it good, if that’s what you want to do? Why shouldn’t that be a perfectly viable option for declaring you want to commit yourself to someone else. I know it’s marriage and it’s a big deal, but it’s still a contract, essentially. Why can’t it be handled as a contract from the state’s point of view and then leave the priests, rabbis and Wiccans free to do whatever solemnizing they want to do if they so choose?
The state, or the government, or whatever, doesn’t care that you wrote your own vows and the bride wore taffeta. It shouldn’t care if the bride wore cut-off jeans, a tanktop, a handlebar mustache and cock-ring either.
Marriage is not a contract, it is a legal institution. You can think of it as a default contracting situation, which is an interesting intellectual exercise, but at the end of the day, it’s not a contract.
The concept of solemnization, oath taking, etc. is used for a number of different things. There are things (such as wills in some states) which require witnesses. What is so different about marriage that you are picking this out for eliminating solemnization?
The solemnizing has nothing to do with priests, rabbis or Wiccans. You can use a priest, rabbi or Wiccan, if he has the requisite qualifications from the state, to do the solemnizing, but it is neither integral, nor required.
And moon, spoon, and June don’t have to be part of your wedding.
What are you talking about? No one cares about this stuff if you don’t.
Marriage is a legal matter, but it is not a private legal matter. It’s a contract, but it’s not a contract between two private parties. It’s a contract between you two and everyone else. It’s a change of status in the eyes of the public, and you are claiming benefits from the public, and promising to live up to certain responsibilities, just as in the case of being naturalized as a citizen or becoming a witness in court.
The idea of solemnization, whether a wedding ceremony or swearing in court or taking an oath of citizenship is the public’s way of rapping your knuckles, telling you to sit up straight, and pay attention (in the form of a representative and witness deputized on behalf of the public), because we don’t know how important this is to you, but this is important to the public, and we want some sign of acknowledgment from you that you’re paying attention and understand the rights and responsibilities the public is conferring upon you. That’s what solemnization is all about.
I have long thought the government should only execute “civil unions”, that is, unions under civil law. I don’t think there is any sound reason not to do this.
But I also think that many religious people want the government to continue to, in effect, enforce their concept of sacred marriage as the only form of civil unions. And I agree that many would use any attempt to change the significance of the term “marriage” to energize anti-gay political action, so for the forseeable future this very reasonable approach will remain unavailable.
John’s wife has died. He’s decided to live out his days as a bachelor.
His older brother George (also a bachelor widower) has Parkinson’s disease. John asks George to move in with him, so John can care for his brother in his final days of life. They decide that it’d make sense for them to merge household expenses for these few years, that it’d make sense for them to have reciprocal visitation rights in the hospital, for them to inherit one another’s belongings, and so on and so forth.
John and George would be well served by a civil union. Anti-incest laws prevent them from getting married–and even if the laws didn’t, strong cultural taboos going back aeons prevent them from getting married.
My Mom was married at the courthouse. No religious person was there. One of my sisters and I were the witnesses. A justice of the peace asked Mom if she wanted to marry so-and-so, then asked so-and-so if he wanted to marry my Mom, and then on hearing affirmative answers announced that they were now married. It took five minutes.
No dress code, no mysticism, no vows, no flowers, no cake, no nothing except filling out the paperwork and signing on the line which is dotted and a judge verifying everything.
This is like someone objecting that they shouldn’t have to swear on a Bible to testify in court. And it’s all so unfair and all. But they somehow don’t understand that you certainly don’t have to swear on a Bible and in fact in most cases the bailiff just asks you if you’re going to tell the truth, and you agree that you are. In every courtroom I’ve been in I’ve never seen a single Bible produced.
If a religious leader were required to solomnized a marriage, I could understand your objection. But no one is required to follow any ritual. You are objecting to a fantasy that doesn’t exist.
Regardless of the merits of such an institution, it would seem to be entirely beside the point. Gay people aren’t clamoring for this kind of a civil union, which any two (or more?) people might make use of. They want civil marriages, just like straight people have.
What are you talking about? I think the civil union route is the way to go. For everybody, straight and gay alike. Nothing red nor herringy about it. This seems to be a tangent onto the rite of it, which for me seems superfluous.
So no reaction to any of that explanation of solemnization? I’m starting to feel like I’m having a circular conversation in which the other party keeps saying “But why? But why? But why?” without taking in anything he’s being told.
I know why. I just think the why is retarded. And I get a little fed up with people who hold up this solemnization, or rituals, or whatever, as the end all be all, and it’s just the way it has to be because that’s the way it’s always been.
I’m merely making the point that what should be handled purely legally should be handled purely legally – i.e., two people, whether straight or gay, entering into a marriage that is recognized by the state – no functional need for a “solemnization” for that.
Past that if individual groups want to perform rites so that a marriage is recognized within that group, then fine.
Why the need for a ritual at all. Not why is there one, why does there need to be one?
Then go and get a fucking civil union and shut up.
The commitment I made to Barb when I married her is meaningful to me and to her, a third of a century later. The idea of marriage is precious to John Q. Fundy and his wife Mary Beth. The idea of marriage is precious to Adam and Steve, the couple that weren’t at Eden but who met at a gay bar and fell in love and want to spend their lives committed to each other.
What the law should recognize is civil marriages. What the churches deal with should be religious marriages.
“Guitar” used to mean “stringed instrument plucked or strummed with the fingers or a pick, producing music acoustically through a hollow body acting as sounding chamber.” Then somebody invented electronic instruments that produced the sound of a guitar when plucked or strummed with the fingers or a pick. We decided to term them “electronic guitars” and invent the retronym “acoustic guitar” for what had been a guitar beforehand. We did not suddenly decide “Well, we’ll call both kinds kitharoid instruments, and leave the term ‘guitar’ to the use of Segovian purists.”
Leave Barb’s and my marriage alone. If you want something else, feel free to go get it. And while you’re at it, leave the fundies’ marriages and the gays’ marriages alone too.
Ever have a document properly notarized, by a notary who does not know the signators and is determined to do his/her job correctly? He’ll examine I.D., ask the signators and any witnesses particular questions relating to their identity and their intent in signing it. He’ll do that because it’s his job to affix the state’s approbation, in the form of his name and seal, to that document attesting that John Doe and Richard Roe, who proved themselves to him to be the said Doe and Roe, appeared before him and averred that they were who they purported to be and intentionally and willfully with full knowledge of its contents signed the instrument he’s notatizing.
The purpose of this is to ensure that the contracting parties are in fact who they claim to be and know what they’re committing to in signing the instrument, and that the state undertakes to recognize said instrument as a legal contract, power of attorney, or whatever form of instrument it is after being assured to its satisfaction that they are who they are and intend to do what they’re doing.
Same thing with sworn testimony in court. The ritual forms are there to assure the veracity of the testimony.
In a marriage, two people contract to take each other as spouses, and the state agrees to recognize them as such. The formal ritual is one that assures that the two parties are free to marry, that no one can show a bar to their marrying, and that they do freely and willingly undertake to become each other’s spouses – and the judge or clergyman, acting as agent of the state, gives formal recognition by the state to their marriage.
That’s why the ritual, from a legal point of view.
For the religious point of view, ask a given religionist. Generally, in a religious marriage, the two people swear their vows before God, and He blesses their marriage through the person of the offiiciant clergyman acting as His agent. That will vary from faith to faith, but that’s the idea in a nutshell.
What’s your problem? This isn’t the Pit; calm the fuck down. I’m basically agreeing with you. Civil unions / Civil marriages – same friggin’ thing in my book. It’s the only thing the state should be concerned with, not religious marriages. But that’s not what opponents of same-sex-marriage demand, and by the way, fuck them. I don’t care what they think is proper.
I don’t want to do a damned thing to your marriage. ANd no one who wants to enter into a same-sex marriage wants to do a damned thing to your marriage, they just want to get married too.
Fuck. I thought we were on the same side of this argument. Who pissed in your Wheaties today?
The question was what the meaningful distinction would be. I maintain that civil unions would have greater utility than civil marriages, as they’d help out the John-and-George folks of the world (or, for example, two long-term single roommates, or an adult child taking care of an ailing parent).
My preferences are as follows:
Civil unions for all.
Put the word “civil” on the license, and civil marriages for all.
Marriages for all.
Way below these is:
Ironclad guarantees by expert lawyers written into a law allowing any two adults to get a civil union whose legal protections were exactly equal to those provided by marriage.
And yet it’s not legally handled for all, because same-sex marriage is still not legal nation-wide … because too many people are afraid of “redefining marriage”, which is all wrapped up in point.
Redefinition of *religious *marriages – the ones that require rites – is not being asked for. Redefinition of what is legal so that same-sex *civil *marriages can occur is what is being asked for. This is my friggin’ point, for the umpteenth time. Past all of that, who ever gets married, or civilly unionized or whatever you want to call it… then have your ceremonies – but it shouldn’t be required.
Christ, I’ll concede your solemnization arguments if it means I don’t have to type that friggin’ word again - if you’ll concede that a notary signing a piece of paper is all the solemnization (I really do hate typing that) needed.