As an officiant of the Universal Life Church I would consider it an honor to solemnize your vows. As long as the reception includes an open bar.
Do we have to retroactively change all the songs and poems and movies and stuff? “Peggy Sue Got Civil-Unioned,” etc.
We had this discussion in another thread recently. I suggested something roughly similar to the OP and got fairly seriously trashed for it.
Time Magazine published in interview with Gore Vidal a few years back. One of questions they asked was about his views on same-sex marriage. I liked his answer: Straight marriage is such a disaster of an institution, why would anyone else want to imitate it?
(Not sure if I’m remembering the exact words right, but I’m sure I’m getting the gist and tone right.)
Just get a civil union. It has all the same benefits. Who cares what it’s called as long as everyone as access to it?
The notion that marriage is a religious institution is simply ridiculous. Religions have rituals for marriage, but they didn’t invent marriage, any more than holding funerals means they invented dying.
Marriage is a civil institution. If you want to call civil marriage a “civil union”, then knock yourself the fuck out. But what exactly is the point? A civil union is a marriage. A mass ctrl-c/ctrl-v to replace “marriage” in all legal documents with “civil union” doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t solve anything.
Oh, you think that if government doesn’t call marriage “marriage” then the Religious Right will shrug their shoulders and say, hey, as long as you call it “civil unions” then we’re cool with gays marrying each other?
I am an atheist. I am married. I had a wedding. I have a wife. I don’t have a civil union, I didn’t have a partnering ceremony, I don’t have a civil partner. You don’t need a goddam Unitarian officiant to get married. Atheists get married. God doesn’t marry people, people marry each other.
You never hear Christians claiming that Japanese or Indians or Chinese or godless Europeans aren’t really married because they weren’t married in a Christian ceremony. Human beings have practiced marriage before the invention of Christianity, before the invention of monotheism, before the invention of agriculture, and very likely before the evolution of anatomically modern Homo sapiens. Christians can’t keep non-Christians from getting married any more than they get to keep non-Christians from getting born or dying.
Separate but equal has been deemed unconstitutional. Civil unions are not equal. Few, if any, are recognized across state lines and are not available in all states.
Even where CUs are valid, they don’t always afford the same benefits as marriage and are not recognized at the federal level.
Did you not read the OP?
Why should the civil marriage get the crappier description? The term “civil union” was invented with the sole purpose of giving same-sex unions the taint of inferiority (if nobody had cared about ranking same-sex unions, then they would have just called them marriages from the very beginning). Why would anybody want to extend a bad thing to everybody?
Which countries officially degrade civil marriage as inferior to “real” religious marriages?
So… you’re an Atheist but you still want the blessing of the imaginary sky wizzard?
What the heck are you talking about Miller?
The point is, Christians would no longer be able to use the trite argument that the government is trying to redefine marriage. In my OP, the only people who would define it are the Churches and the like.
And you’d still be able to call you wife, your wife. (or whatever the hell you want.) Do you think you have a constitutional right that the government call your wife a wife? Also, there is nothing in the OP that would prohibit you from getting married. Unless you’re suggesting that churches should be forced to marry people that doesn’t go along with their dogmatic views.
Except that marriage is currently defined, by law, as a civil institution.
So your plan to stop Christians from claiming the government is trying to redefine marriage… is to have the government redefine marriage.
In most states, the government defines marriage as one man one woman.
Making governmnent get out of the marriage business all together is not redefing marriage.
No, he wants to get married. Neither the concept of marriage, nor the word “marriage” specifically, was invented by Christians. (The word is ultimately from the Latin maritus and has prehistoric roots.)
He still could. What’s stopping him?
I think the confusion is compounded by the fact that so many non-government employees in the USA are empowered to perform marriages. This blus the line between the civil and religous meanings of the word. The legal marriage should be performed by a government employee, in a government building if necessary e.g. it happens when you take out the license.) Religious unions can have their own rules.
And BTW I favor the terminology of “marriage” for the legal union and “religious union” for the religious ceremony, instead of the OP’s proposal.
Well, your proposal, as far as I can tell.
Shakes is saying let’s remove all constraints from marriage. Joe and John Blow can do whatever they feel is necessary and boom, they’re married. It doesn’t mean anything legally, for that, they’d need a civil union. But the same rules apply to Beth and Tommy Doe. Marriage would be up to the couple to define how they see fit.
Miller wants marriage to remain the legally protected term with a checklist one must meet in order to earn the right to call oneself married.
Is that clearer?
I don’t think it’s clearer. There are no constraints on non-governmental marriage now. I can find a Universal Life minister to marry me to three women, two men, and a dog. Or a Unitarian Universalist minister to perform a same-sex marriage.
What Shakes is saying is that the government should no longer use the word marriage for the legal union.
Oddly, the term “marriage” does have a real, and valued, meaning to people regardless of whether they subscribe to a given religious belief, and one that is vitally important to nearly every aspect of civil law.
A marriage is the commitment of two people to come together as spouses, as each other’s helpmeet, and establish a new household and family. This usually but not aleays entails their living together, their engaging in sexual relations, and their raising of children.
if done purely as a commitment between the two, we term it a common-law marriage.
If done in accordance with whatever standards the state may set for contracting such a marriage, we term it a civil marriage.
If the prospective couple holds a religious belief and wishes their marriage to be blessed by the deity of their choice, through His, Her or Its priestly representatives, we call this a religious marroage.
Inventing a new term to precisely replace one that has been in existence and use for several centuries seems to me to be the height of ridiculousness. And conceding to the American Religious Right the authority to define who can be “married” is surrendering something valuable to many people not affiliated with them – including, for example, my church, which sees no issue with SSM.