Heard this idea expressed in a debate about same sex marriage:
Because marriage is so often regarded as sacred, it ought not be administered by the state. Governments should be able to perform civil unions, which carry the full weight of law in all the ways marriage does today. And, because governments are obligated to give all their citizens equal opportunity before the law, these civil unions would be granted to same-sex and mixed-sex couples in exactly the same way. States should not try to administer sacred rites, leaving this to churches.
Churches could have any ceremonies they wanted, sacred or otherwise, as long as they didn’t do anything that was otherwise illegal, like sacrifice (I’m not counting marriage as a form of sacrifice, by the way). Churches could accord their ceremonies any significance they liked, but they would have no legal meaning.
So, what’s wrong with this plan?
If you want to hold same-sex couples down, make them second class citizens, you could argue that the weight of history makes marriage both sacred and legal, and obligates us all to follow the teachings of some branches of the religious tree. So many voters would go along with this that I think this view would prevail. You don’t even have to let me down gently; I don’t think this is going to fly.
But is there any better reason not to separate church marriage and legal civil union contracts? Or is keeping the upper hand in our current repressive system the only argument?
It’s already possible, and has been for decades, to obtain a nonreligious civil marriage. Once this governmental form-filling is open to same-gender couples, the need to go further evaporates.
That’s the best option. Private parties can call their civil unions marriage or holy bonds of freakiness or gotothekitchenandbakemeapieage for all it matters.
That’s the solution I’ve supported for some time. Get the government out of marriages entirely. If people want to tie the knot, regardless of gender, they fill out a form and that’s it. If they want to have a ceremony in a church and call it a marriage, or do something else and call it by a different name, that shouldn’t make any difference. And there shouldn’t be any discrimination based on the genders of the people involved.
At the very least, I would love to hear the reaction if a nationally known politician said “How about we just offer civil unions to everyone?” There would be some amusing freakouts, I’m sure.
That is very close to the idea that I’d been pushing as a “solution” for some time, but rather than be a good solution to both sides, it looks like it ends up pissing everyone off instead.
FTR, the only way in which my version differed was not it a civil union or anything, as it would simply be a legal contract between two consenting adults, one that would likely have a high degree of standardization, but nothing more or less in the eyes of the law. Second, the religious marriage may or may not be performed by whomever they wanted and any such religious group that wished may or may not recognize that as they see fit.
That said, here’s some of the objections that I’ve gotten. From the pro-gay marriage side, it seems part of the issue is recognition of their union by society as a whole, it’s a matter of acceptance and tollerance, not simply a matter of legal standing. From the anti-gay marriage side, there’s a number of arguments about family, costs, tradition, etc. And I just don’t see how legislating and preventing them from entering into what is essentially nothing more than a contract legally has any effect on it, since they’re still living together as a couple anyway. And, of course, it somehow devalues marriage where I’m left confused how anyone else has any bearing on how important my own marriage means to me and my wife (were I married, that is).
The bottom line, from my perspective, is it appears that one side is trying to effect societal change through legislation and the other is trying to enforce morality through legislation. IMO, attempting to cause cultural changes or enforce morality through legislation is the best way to cause opposition to your cause. But these aren’t even opposing ideas, they’re orthogonal so, unfortunately, I’m not sure any sort of compromise is possible, no matter how reasonable it seems to those of us who don’t have a dog in the fight.
While semantically establishing gays as somehow second-class, inferior persons, that is.
The OP does not seem aware that civil and religious marriages are *already * different institutions, albeit with the ceremonies commonly being performed simultaneously. Each can exist separately already.
So what’s the point? Not letting gays think they’re just as good as “normal people”? Or is it something more?
I thought the point was that people who desire to have religious ceremonies can do so, but they would have no legal status and that such couples would therefore also have to fill out the governmental paperwork which would not in any fashion distinguish between folks who did and folks who did not have a religious ceremony somewhere.
Which puts everyone on an equal footing before the government, while leaving consecrated marriage to the religious (and leaving the debate over whether to extent religious marriage to gay folks to the internal affairs of each church, with the government keeping its hands out)
Given that the solution takes away government marriage from everyone, it does nothing to establish anyone as a second-class citizen.
The point of it is twofold:
-First, the government has no business, IMO, in my love life. None whatsoever. My marriage was validated by myself, my wife, my friends, and my family, NOT by the government. The government license shouldn’t be talking about my marriage, it should be talking about my relationship to the government. This is a pretty small point, but it’s there.
-Second, it’d be a solution to the issue that neatly bypasses the homophobes.
This article argues cogently in favor of this. She bases her argument in part on the changing nature of relationships over the last several decades.
I support this solution slightly more than the solution of allowing SSM, because I think it achieves more, not less. I’d be thrilled if SSM were allowed, but even more thrilled if marriage were no longer a government institution.
This seems like the not only the best “solution” but actually the only constitutional way to proceed. A marriage is a contract, as many have stated before this, and you can call it whatever you want. My husband and I were married on the USS Enterprise in Las Vegas, and we had to get a person who was certified to perform the marriage - a priest. It was kinda funny to see a backwards collar under a blue shirt from TOS.
Re: the semantics - my aunt, who I love very much, who is intelligent and has a gay brother in law, has stated that she has no problem with gay marriage. “They just have to call it something else”… :smack:
How on earth does changing the name of civil marriages to civil unions have any impact on government involvement of your love life? The government is still involved to the exact same extent. It’s still basing child custody issues on your marriage/union, still resolving inheritance disputes based on existing principles recognizing spouses as next of kin, etc, etc, etc. Civil marriage is probably the most important legal institution in our society in terms of its everyday impact on everyday life. We could rename the institution without any significant ill effect, but it can hardly be abandoned without radically restructuring society.
In a very small way, as I stated. I view “marriage” as something involving a person’s love life. “Union” is not necessarily a relationship of intimacy. A civil union ought to be available to any two adults who wish to enter into the relationship with one another for purposes of their relationship to the government, be they lovers, parents, siblings, co-workers, or whatever. The government has no business caring about whether I love my spouse.
The government doesn’t give a shit if you love the person you’re married to. (Unless you’re married to a foreigner who’s trying to immigrate, but that’s not going to change if marriages get labeled unions.) Why would they? I don’t see how this is a real concern at all.
If you’re going to open these unions up to “siblings, co-workers, or whatever” then you are changing the legal institution with potential ramifications I don’t care to predict. What impact do you foresee this having on child custody, inheritance, etc?
Yeah, seems like we have to rehash this in GD every couple of months.
If you want to get the government out the marriage business, you have to get the government out of the marriage business, not just rename “marriage”. Everyone who wants to form some type of union would have to draft a contract covering those areas they want the union to consist of: Child support, inheritance, etc. Or, you can get married in your church (or wherever) and have it mean absolutely nothing wrt the state. But just changing the name to “civil unions” isn’t going to trick anyone into suddenly being OK with gay unions-- it’s just going to piss more people off because you “took” marriage away from them.
Well, uh, people do marry co-workers, don’t they? Anyway, why shouldn’t siblings be able to enter into a legal contract, possibly highly standardized, with most of the same legal consequences as are currently associated with the legal institution of marriage?
It’s a rational solution to the problem. Which is why it would never work, because if people were thinking about the situation rationally, we wouldn’t be having this debate in the first place.
The number one argument against gay marriage is that it’s a threat to traditional marriage. This argument has been extremely persuasive for conservative voters, even ones who are not opposed to the idea of allowing gays to have civil unions, despite the fact that’s it’s completly ridiculous: giving gays the same rights as straights takes absolutely nothing away from straights. But if the gay rights movement adopts the OP’s idea, we’ll be playing directly into the hands of our opposition. We will be changing marriage for everyone, and that will be spun as an attack on traditional marriage. And that’s not going to get gays equal rights. That’s going to get us the Bush ammendment to the Constitution that will guarantee that we get nothing at all.
I’ve got other objections to the idea, for both emotional and philosophical reasons, but they’re largely irrelevant, because the entire scheme is already a disaster as a political strategy. The way to get equality is to emphasize at every turn that giving gays the right to marry will change nothing for straight marriage. It is absolutely not a good idea to introduce a sweeping redefinition of the term for everyone, regardless of the gender makeup of their pairing.
>The OP does not seem aware that civil and religious marriages are already different institutions…
No, I wasn’t aware of this. I, and all the married people with whom I’ve had any of this conversation, think we are just married. None of us is legally married without being religiously married, and none of us is religiously married without being legally married.
I was married in Maryland, where state law requires that the wedding ceremony be performed by a representative of a church, unless it is performed in a courtroom. Since we planned a wedding at our home, we had to get a church representative.
My daughter married in Pennsylvania. Since she’s an athiest, and Pennsylvania law (unlike Maryland) allows a Judge to perform the ceremony at a house, when she got married at somebody’s house she planned to have a Judge do it. But the State insisted the ceremony be performed by one specific Judge, who insisted on making it what he called “a deeply religious ceremony”, at the last minute she got a church representative instead, who was willing to make the ceremony nonreligious.
Seems like everybody I know who doesn’t like religion in their wedding has some sort of story like this about trying to keep it out.
And I don’t know anybody who had a religious wedding without any legal standing.
Please, how do you get a legally married without religion involved? and how do you get religiously married without law involved?
Well, it’s not uncommon here in CA for gays to get married at a gay-friendly church, even though the state doesn’t recognize the marriage. You get a priest, pastor or rabbi to perform the ceremony, exchange vows and rings (or whatever), and you’re married, in the eyes of your church and your firends. Why is that hard to understand…?
OTOH, gays can get legally married in MA, but if they belong to a church that disapproves of that type of union (like most do), then they aren’t married in their church. Again, why is that hard to understand…?
