# Marriage: Two Hypotheticals **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 26, 2013, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marriage-two-hypotheticals/656765 "2013-04-26T15:30:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Cheryl44](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@Cheryl44](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheryl44)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marriage-two-hypotheticals/656765/61 "2013-04-29T00:53:16Z")
I’ll tell you what I don’t like about proposal #1. The total involvement of a religious entity. As an atheist, that would mean I couldn’t get married. ---
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marriage-two-hypotheticals/656765/62 "2013-04-29T00:58:52Z")
> [@cosmosdan](#): > > Is expanded really a redefinition? A change for sure, but it doesn’t seem to be a redefintion since the change {expansion} still leaves the traditional definition completely intact. I agree- take the word “waiter”. Most older definitions have as one listing “a male server”. We now use waiter to be more gender neutral. Was waiter _re-defined_ to remove reference to specific gender, or simply expanded to remove the gender language? From 1963 Webster’s Dictionary wait-er 'wat-ar\ n 1 : one that waits upon another; esp : a _man_ who waits on table From 2013 online Webster’s Dictionary : one that waits on another; especially : a _person_ who waits tables (as in a restaurant) (ETA: italics mine) ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marriage-two-hypotheticals/656765/63 "2013-04-29T02:16:50Z")
> [@Cheryl44](#): > > I’ll tell you what I don’t like about proposal #1. The total involvement of a religious entity. As an atheist, that would mean I couldn’t get married. Proposal #1 was to eliminate the state’s power to license marriages. A marriage is xontracted by the two parties who are marrying, without the government getting into the act at all. In the personal anecdote I gave, my grandparents elected to be married according to the ritual of the Presbyterian Church, since they were as it happens Presbyteriabs – but it could equally well have been a J.P. officiating, or even them taking their vows before witnesses with no officiant. The essence of the proposal is to restore a right to being a right rather than a privilege for which the state grants permits. And Proposal #2 presumes that not all states will immediately legalize SSM, or adolescent or first-cousin marriages for that matter, and says that the law of your state of legal residence governs. That you’re in school, or own a vacation home, or whatever, in another state, is not relevant; where you maintain your legal residence is what counts. But it says that, just as a driver’s license from your state of residence is valid in all 50 states, a marriage is too – if you’re married in New Hampshire, and happen to be vacationing in Florida when the question comes up, the NH marriage governs. But if you _ **move** _ to Florida, then the Florida law applies. The idea is to prevent the injustices of one state refusing next-of-kin rights to the spouse lawfully wedded in the state of their residence, e.g., in authorizing hospital treatment, governing probatem and so on. If Tom is the next of kin of Sam by their New York marriage, and they have an accident in Georgia hospitalizing Sam, Georgia is obliged to regard Tom as next of kin. If Silas and Rufus are a couple farming in Iowa who own investment property in Texas, Silas’s will leaving everything to his husband Rufus, probated in Iowa, means the Iowa probate law governs who owns the Texas property, not Texas’s law that doesn’t recognize them as married. AND it’s intended not as half-a-loaf but as something that can be reached more easily than nationwide SSM, as an interim measure. And the two proposals are completely separate; I just proposed both in one thread to save menu real estate. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marriage-two-hypotheticals/656765/64 "2013-04-29T02:28:36Z")
> [@cosmosdan](#): > > Is expanded really a redefinition? A change for sure, but it doesn’t seem to be a redefintion since the change {expansion} still leaves the traditional definition completely intact. > [@IvoryTowerDenizen](#): > > I agree- take the word “waiter”. Most older definitions have as one listing “a male server”. We now use waiter to be more gender neutral. Was waiter _re-defined_ to remove reference to specific gender, or simply expanded to remove the gender language? If you would rather say “change in definition” rather than “redefinition,” that is fine. I am not sure that it is a significant difference, but I suppose that it avoids accusations that the actions that the word previously indicated are, in some way, compromised. The “waiter/waitress” analogy does not quite work. We have been dropping special suffixes for female gender for years, first eliminating “Jewess” and “Negress” as insulting, later dropping “aviatrix” and “executrix” as unnecessary, most recently beginning to drop the “actor/actress” distinction. However, these are purely grammatical changes. Women were always part of various ethnic groups, they have been flying airplanes for nearly as long as men have, and have been the executors of estates for many years, and they have provided table service at restaurants and played roles on the stage and in movies for a very long time. (Dominatrix might still be around, but I am not into that scene to know for sure.) There is no change to the actions they perform, only to a grammatical phoneme we use to indicate gender in speech. The recognition that two people of the same sex could engage in marriage to each other is a very recent idea, historically. Recognizing and admitting that fact does not change the arguments in its favor, (such as the argument that **IvoryTowerDenizen** submitted in Post #55). Pretending that there has been no change, however, makes advocates for SSM appear to be disconnected from reality. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marriage-two-hypotheticals/656765/65 "2013-04-29T02:34:08Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > The essence of the proposal is to restore a right to being a right rather than a privilege for which the state grants permits. People have always been able to do that. But if you want to use the rights granted to married couples by the state (inheritance, medical, benefits, taxes) you need to show the state you’re married. At some point, the state gets to decide if it recognizes that you’re married or not. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marriage-two-hypotheticals/656765/66 "2013-04-29T02:38:13Z")
> [@kayT](#): > > Why is it so hard for so many to understand that there is a difference between a contract and a religious ceremony? And the government should only have an interest in the contract part? I agree. > [@TriPolar](#): > > Why does the IRS need to know if someone is married? Are we to base our marriage laws, or lack of them, on tax law? Um… yes? A marriage is a package of contracts. As far as the government is concerned, its status affects visitation rights, tax rates, spousal support requirements etc. So the government needs to know whether somebody is married or not. Also, if the government wants to regulate bigamy, it needs a means to do so. There may be methods other than licensure; I’d like to know how they work. For example, I see from wikipedia that there’s something called a Self-uniting marriage. So I’m really just trying to work out the proposal. [Self-uniting marriage - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-uniting_marriage) ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marriage-two-hypotheticals/656765/67 "2013-05-01T00:07:17Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > Simple. There are a number of people, raised in the period when homosexuality was deemed variously as either a choice for deviant behavior or a mental illness, who believe that a homosexual relationship must be based on nothing more than a desire to engage in various sexual acts, independent of genuine love. > Those people are wrong, but **jtgain** was simply noting that fact and not defending it. Pretending that no one actually holds those beliefs is silly. We have had at least one poster argue that position on the SDMB within the last couple of weeks. What I meant was that the belief is not necessarily that same sex couples are perverts who are incapable of commitment (although that belief is still prevalent) but that the very definition of the word marriage, the union of a man and a woman, precludes two people of the same sex from entering into it. As you said, that represents a fundamental change in the definition of the word, not an evolving, grammatical type of change. Waiters/waitresses were always people who waited on tables regardless of sex. Marriage was always the union of two people of different genders. The capacity to procreate was always at the very heart of it, even if people didn’t feel the need to write extensively on the subject. And further, why would they? No scholars five hundred years ago wrote about restricting marriage between opposite sex couples because nobody ever challenged the notion, and therefore no need to defend it. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marriage-two-hypotheticals/656765/68 "2013-05-01T11:58:39Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > People have always been able to do that. But if you want to use the rights granted to married couples by the state (inheritance, medical, benefits, taxes) you need to show the state you’re married. At some point, the state gets to decide if it recognizes that you’re married or not. No, all it gets to decide is if the marriage I and my spouse have contracted is a valif vontract at law (a quite different standard, the key points of which are the ‘meeting of minds’ and the absence of fraud). If I retain a willing **Bricker** as my attorney, I don’t need a lawyering-up license. If I buy a TV on installment contract from The Electronics Barn, I don’t need a TV-purchase license. The original purpose of a marriage license was to demonstrate that the couple had gone for VD tests at least three days before the wedding, as a public health measure. That hasn’t been the case for years. Now it’s merely interest groups among the electorate using their political power to achieve results they prefer. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marriage-two-hypotheticals/656765/69 "2013-05-01T12:25:34Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > No, all it gets to decide is if the marriage I and my spouse have contracted is a valif vontract at law (a quite different standard, the key points of which are the ‘meeting of minds’ and the absence of fraud). If I retain a willing **Bricker** as my attorney, I don’t need a lawyering-up license. If I buy a TV on installment contract from The Electronics Barn, I don’t need a TV-purchase license. > > The original purpose of a marriage license was to demonstrate that the couple had gone for VD tests at least three days before the wedding, as a public health measure. That hasn’t been the case for years. Now it’s merely interest groups among the electorate using their political power to achieve results they prefer. I’m still unsure how the marriage licensing laws relate to the underlying law regarding who may marry. A marriage license is simply a permit from the state. Whether that is good, bad or otherwise doesn’t change the underlying law about who may marry. When your grandfather got married the day before the licensing law, you could not marry your sister, someone under age, a same sex member, etc. The day after the licensing law you still couldn’t marry your sister, someone under age, a same sex member, etc. I’m not seeing the unveiling of some higher purpose by the state repealing marriage licensing laws. ---
**Author:** ![ctnguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@ctnguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ctnguy)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marriage-two-hypotheticals/656765/70 "2013-05-01T12:45:09Z")
Yeah. Lots of countries have no requirement for pre-licensing of marriages (or of “reading the banns”, either); they’re just registered after the fact. That doesn’t imply that same-sex marriage is automatically legal; a marriage between two people of the same sex would simply be held to be void. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marriage-two-hypotheticals/656765/71 "2013-05-01T12:56:44Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > Now it’s merely interest groups among the electorate using their political power to achieve results they prefer. I’m not sure how this follows (or even relates) to the licensing issue. If the state isn’t going to recognize a brother-sister marriage then the contract isn’t valid. The license or lack there of doesn’t really enter into it. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marriage-two-hypotheticals/656765/72 "2013-05-01T13:06:55Z")
No change of definition is necessary for same-sex marriage. If, a century ago, I were to speak of two men marrying each other, my meaning would be understood. The people of that time might think the concept absurd, but they would know what I mean. How is this possible, if the word has a different definition in that context? ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marriage-two-hypotheticals/656765/73 "2013-05-01T14:46:51Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > No change of definition is necessary for same-sex marriage. If, a century ago, I were to speak of two men marrying each other, my meaning would be understood. The people of that time might think the concept absurd, but they would know what I mean. How is this possible, if the word has a different definition in that context? They would think the concept absurd because it doesn’t fit the definition of marriage. I could say that, as a man, I wish to suckle my young. Everyone understands that and would think it absurd because, by definition and by nature, a man cannot suckle his young. To make it to where a man could suckle his young (and I’ve never typed that before, let alone three times) one would have to change the definition of “suckle.” Perhaps, feeding a baby breast milk that has previously been pumped from a woman would now be considered “suckling.” But it’s a change, not a realization of a long known idea that men can feed babies breast milk pumped from a breast. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marriage-two-hypotheticals/656765/74 "2013-05-01T16:29:27Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > Everyone understands that and would think it absurd because, by definition and by nature, a man cannot suckle his young. It’s rare, but it can happen - [Male lactation - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_lactation) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marriage-two-hypotheticals/656765.md?page=3)