You can’t think of any advantages at all? Well let’s see, as of right now marriage is relatively easy to acomplish, it’s cheap, and it has a couple hundred years of legal and cultural history behind it. I guess the biggest advantage I can see is that the system works pretty darn good right now. So if you’re advocating we scrap the way they do things I’m going to have to ask why. What are the real benefits to scrapping the way we currently handle marriage and going your rout? Because for the vast majority of us I see no reason to change.
Actually, if you take the state out of it entirely you are advocating a pretty radical change. I’m all for homosexual marriages I just think we should use the existing framework already put into place to accomodate it.
I realize that it is possible to get married by going to a county clerk and getting some stuff signed, MGibson. The question to me is “why should these judge-performed marriages also follow church doctrine about homosexuality?” Shouldn’t a secular marriage be more flexible than a religious one? We certainly wouldn’t permit government to tell the church that it must authorize a same-sex marriage; why should the church tell the government that it cannot?
As for whether religious figures have actual legal authority to hand out marriage certificates, yes, they do.
The license is obtained from the county in accordance with varying state laws but you will notice that the various states permit religious figures to officiate and send in the completed certificates.
Church law and “sacred” religious beliefs about types of approved marriage are nailed into our secular laws of marriage which govern taxes and property and other earthly stuff. Why a religious figure should be given preference for conducting these things is beyond me; California has the right idea in allowing anyone to do so if they fill out the right paperwork.
“You can’t think of any advantages at all? Well let’s see, as of right now Slave Ownership is relatively easy to acomplish, it’s cheap, and it has a couple hundred years of legal and cultural history behind it. I guess the biggest advantage I can see is that the system works pretty darn good right now. So if you’re advocating we scrap the way they do things I’m going to have to ask why. What are the real benefits to scrapping the way we currently handle Slave Ownership and going your route? Because for the vast majority of us I see no reason to change.”
Not that I’m accusing you of supporting slavery or anything - just of not thinking “outside the box”, as it were - just as many early Americans didn’t even consider the abolition of slavery as an option, because what was the alternative? Sometimes, the abolition of an entrenched cultural foundation - without attempting to replace or restructure it - is necessary!
Not that I necessarily think that this really applies to marriage - I really don’t know - but I think your argument-from-tradition just doesn’t hold water, as I hope my slight change demonstrated.
I’d be the first to agree that the argument from “Well, but we’ve always done it that way!” is pretty weak; however, it does trump the argument from “Let’s change things for no particularly good reason!” It’s not like people advocating the abolition of slavery didn’t have some good arguments against the institution. (And people arguing for gay marriage have some good arguments in favor of that change, too.)
Also, marriage isn’t just a contract between two people, because it involves various rights and obligations with respect to other people and institutions; all that stuff about the hospital having to respect your desire for your spouse to be your next of kin, spouses not being forced to testify against each other in a court of law under certain circumstances; etc. You could argue against any or all of those various rights and privileges accorded to marriage, but I think you do have to present some sort of argument if you want to change something.
In the abstract, I am fine with that. In fact, I think that’s a better way than having government get involved in handing out goodies to people who are observing religious teachings/ceremonies. As long as the government is not discriminating on the basis of gender or sexual orientation, I’m not sure why I could object.
On the other hand, at this point in history, gay marriage is clearly much more within grasp as to reaching equality with heterosexuals than the scenario in the OP, and so first will come gay marriage. After that, if people want to discuss eliminating marriage as a legal concept altogether, then we can have that discussion.
But as things are going, it’s premature to discuss eliminating marriage.
It would save the taxpayers money. Probably pocket change compared to the state budget, but it does cost money to have the personnel to issue the license, file and keep track of the paperwork post-wedding, keep tabs on the ministers to make sure they’re “real” ministers, etc. I’m sure this money could be spent in better ways than the governance of who can or cannot be married, who may or may not perform the ceremony, etc.
It would save the couples money. Again, not huge sums, but since the couple could hash out the terms of the marriage contract over the kitchen table, print it out on the computer, then have a “ceremony” that consisted of the couple reading it out loud and signing it in front of their friends, by not having to pay the fee for the marriage license or pay a minister, the actual starting the marriage part of the marriage would be free.
You know how there are occasionally blurbs on the news (more commonly heard if you get your news from the radio than the TV, or if you actually read newspapers) about how a bunch of couples found out they “aren’t really married” because the minister who performed the ceremony wasn’t licensed? This would never, ever, ever happen under my proposal. Got the contract? He signed it, she signed it, a witness or two signed it, in the eyes of the law, they’re hitched.
I"ve mentioned this before, but… It might reduce the divorce rate. First of all, in the drawing up of the contract, or, if they got a pre-printed one, the reading of it prior to signing, the couple would actually have to think through what they wanted, or expected from the marriage, and what would be expected of them. No fantasies of wedding with a white dress then happily ever after. These people would be aware that they were entering into a contract that would be legally binding on them for the rest of their lives. Especially in cases where the couple could afford and decided to go to the expense of having a lawyer draw up the contract which would then be signed in the office, this might bring a dose of reality into the wedding fantasy and if one or the other of the couple realized they weren’t ready for this, bailing would happen in the lawyer’s office, not at the altar, or after the wedding. Also, currently, the terms of the marriage contract are basiclly a verbal agreement. Yes, the minister signs a certificate saying he/she officiated at a ceremony, but it’s basically a piece of paper that says a ceremony took place. With my proposal, all those things that people vow to do in the wedding ceremony would be put in writing, in a legally binding contract, and in order to dissolve the marriage, the person who wanted out (and it does happen that one party of the couple wants to split and the other wants to stay together) would have to have a damn good reason, like, oh, the other was unfaithful, or abusive. Yes, some folks would be willing to make false accusations in order to dissolve the marriage contract, but most folks are more honest than that. They would have an incentive to stay and try to work through whatever problems they were having instead of just being able to file a petition with the court for permission to bail.
In the case of common-law marriage, one of the partners couldn’t just up and leave the other destitute. If the couple did decide to split up, they would actually have to go through the process of getting a divorce, and in a community property state, everything the couple had acquired after they had been living together, oh, let’s say a year and a half, would have to be divided down the middle. If one of the couple made more money than the other there would be no keeping separate accounts so one of the parties could just take theirs and run.
It would create new business opportunities. Here in Vegas, we have a huge wedding chapel industry. A few of the chapels have “theme weddings” available. Without the requirements that a minister be licensed by the state, enterprising individuals all across the country could, oh, study marriage customs of various cultures and. The couple that wanted a wedding, but not the typical American church wedding, could go to one of these wedding halls and have maybe an African ceremony, an ancient Greek pagan ceremony, or any of a variety of different types of ceremonies whether rooted in some cultural tradition or in pure fantasy. It might be a boon to the restaurant industry as well. Instead of having the marriage at the church/reception in the hall that is the norm currently, some couples might opt to save money by renting a banquet hall or just reserving a really, big table at the restaurant and taking their vows there, with dinner served immediately after.
Oh, and did I mention the whole getting government out of people’s private lives? Yes you did make the argument that marriage carries with it certain public advantages and responsibilities, but with the arrangement I have proposed, these things would not change. But who a person marries and under what terms would be a matter for the couple, not the state to decide. The whole debate over whether the state should allow same-sex couples to marry would be a moot point, because the couple wouldn’t be applying to the state for a license.
If you read what I wrote you would have seen that my arguement wasn’t strictly from tradition. Yes, I included our legal and social traditions as part of my arguement but I didn’t limit it to that alone.
You must be confusing me with someone who thinks homosexuals shouldn’t have the option of getting married. Right now the “church” (whoever that is) doesn’t tell the government that it cannot marry homosexuals. Do you think that the lack of legal and cultural tradition might be one of the many stepping stones to homosexual marriages?
Which the couple must get from the county. They can’t just go as Farther Dowling for the certificate, ergo, Father Dowling can’t hand them out.
How do religious figures have preference? Aren’t there other ways to be able to officiate weddings?
still looks pretty much like “If English was good enough for J. C., it’s good enough for me…”.
But that isn’t the point, in any case.
I didn’t choose slavery at random. Think of it - would you be willing to accept slavery in this day and age? How about if slaves were guaranteed living wages? How about if they could choose to take their freedom at any time, on a few months notice? How about if it were technically legal to have slaves of all races (and non-slaves of all races)? Would that be acceptable?
I dare say likely not. Yet this is basicly the definition of “A Job”. So - slavery was so abhorrent at some point, that it had to be abolished rather than reformed. Instead of two systems of labor - slave labor and salaried labor - suddenly there was only one option.
And marriage, in earlier times, was - to the woman - often quite like slavery. Up to and including considering the woman to be the property of the man.
So why was slavery abolished but marriage reformed? I don’t know. But I see no inherent reason why the abolition route could not have been taken - nor why, inherently, it should not be taken today.
I don’t even think that there is a “right” answer here - but there ARE two ways of going - either continuing to reform something we will, out of tradition, continue to call “marriage” long after it becomes unrecognizeable to a potential time-traveller from 1200, or create a similar framework, but give it a new name - as any WalMart employee will tell you has happened to slavery.
Bottom line - the institution of marriage is in for many changes. Whether these will or will not include a name change is, IMHO, largely immaterial.
A huge advantage to having the state involved in marriage is the simple “bright line” test it provides. A couple is married or not married based solely on the easily proven legal fact of whether or not the couple has obtained a marriage license and then had their wedding properly solemnized by an appropriate official, be it a religious official or a civil one. If the couple is married, then the unbiased objective proof of it is in the public record. If there is no solemized marriage license on file with the state, then there is no marriage. That is a big, big deal. Eliminating such a simple thing opens up marriage to all kinds of fraud and would make our society even more litigious than it already is.
A private contract for marriage will still have to be publicly recorded with the state somewhere, so there is no inherent advantage to have a private marriage contract rather than issuing a public license.
I’m totally missing the boat on why it is that heterosexuals feel so threatened by gay marriage. I’m not.
What are they going to do? breed? Start a gay training camp?
This whole argument that gays are somehow degrading anyones sanctity is bunk. It’s just another instance of certain groups of humans trying to control other groups of humans.
Huh? Which argument are you talking about? The subject of this thread? I don’t see how “scrapping the whole legal definition of marriage and family” would “restore equality to several million disenfranchised citizens”. If you’re talking about gay marriage, I’m in favor of that (and opposed to “Oh, well if gays want to get married we should just say to hell with the whole institution”). Though strictly speaking I’m not sure if gays are “disenfranchised”; but at any rate, I’m fully in favor of full legal and civil equality for gays and lesbians, including gay marriage–and I prefer simple gay marriage to “civil unions” or any other “separate but equal” solutions.
Or if you’re referring to the slavery tangent, then obviously there was many, many reasons to abolish slavery, nor was it something that could be “reformed”, and the analogy between slavery and modern marriage (or between slavery and “wage slavery”, or slavery and having to pay income tax) is silly and frankly a bit offensive.
I don’t see the advantage of this over being able to pull out a copy of the contract with the signatures of both spouses and the signature of a witness or two- I belive the norm for a marriage certificate in most states is two witnesses, this could translate to the private marriage contract.
But in a case like this, if some clerical schmuck loses the paperwork instead of filing it appropriately, then the couple is not married. And paperwork does get lost. Besides, the couple gets a copy of the marriage certificate, so except in the unusual case that the couple’s copy was lost or destroyed, anyone asking for proof of marrige would be taking a gander at the couple’s copy, not searching through the records at city hall. And again, why does the marriage need to be solemnized to be legally valid? In the case of the private contract, having a copy in the care of a lawyer, in a safe deposit box, or the custody of each of the witnesses would take care of any problems arising from the couple’s copy of the contract meeting with some accident.
I don’t see how. First of all, there is already plenty of fraud in the marriage contract. People marry for green cards, people marry when they really have no intention of keeping only unto their spouse, people marry knowing they have hot tempers and will be sending the contents of the china cabinet flying toward the spouse’s head whenever they have a disagreement about something. Having a piece of paper on file with the state does nothing to prevent this. Also, probably the vast majority of couples would have some kind of public ceremony, whether it was a full-blown Catholic or Orthodox wedding liturgy (actually, a religious ceremony would create a redundancy system because the church, synagogue, or pagan temple would have its own marriage certificte on file and the priest, rabbi or priestess could also serve as witness in the signing of the civil contract), jumping over a broom or ritually hitting one another in the face with a banana cream pie, so if push came to shove, there would probably be several people who could be rounded up who could say, “Yeah, I was at their wedding.” . I don’t see how a private contract signed by both the couple and by witnesses who have also read it and are aware of its terms would make fraud any more likely.
I don’t know much about contract law, but I didn’t think private contracts between individals had to be publicly recorded with the state.
The advantage is that the official public record is self proving, while the private contract is not. What does self proving mean? It means that the document is what it is, and says what it says, based on its existence in the public record and as such can literally be taken at face value. The document can be traced to a specific part of the public record and shown to be authentic. The document’s custodian, ie the county recorder or clerk of court, is impartial and subject to enough checks, balances and public scruntiny that he or she is very unlikely to lie. Although it is theoretically possible to tamper with public records, it ain’t very easy to do so, and public records are not lost at all frequently. With all due deference, it is highly unlikely that very many schmucks in the recorders’ office have lost all that many marriage licenses. If you say otherwise the burden of proof is on you. While it is true that couples usually keep their own copy of the marriage certificate as their own proof of marriage, and provide their own copy to others who need verification of the marriage, the reason that the others accept the couple’s copy is that it is quite easy to prove if the couple’s copy is fraudulent or not, and because it is so easy to doublecheck, as a result it isn’t very frequently forged. When it is easy to get caught, thieves don’t try too often.
Contrast this ease of proof and of verifiability with your private contract, which cannot necessarily be taken at face value because it can be so easily faked or forged. The document’s witnesses will each have to be cross-examined in order to verify that they did indeed signed the document, and that they signed it on the date that they said they did, and the witnesses’ stories will themselves have to be double-checked to make sure they’re credible. All it would take to forge such a document would be to have 4 friends, who are not impartial in the least, conspire to sign the document and agree to back date it. “Look we’ve got proof we’ve been married for 10 years. It says so right here on this piece of paper (that we printed up ourselves yesterday)! We’ve got witnesses (who are our friends).” People don’t have time to double check all the witnesses, so it is of great benefit to have the fact of the marriage be part of the independent, objective, verifiable public record.
The act of solemnization, be it by a civic official or by a religious one, is independent, objectively verificable proof that the couple went through with the wedding after applying for the license. I suppose society could skip this step, and just say the marriage was valid after the couple applied for and received paid the government license, but what fun is that? Right now marriage is two step process: (1) get the license and (2) have the wedding performed by a public or religious official in a public ceremony who solemnizes the marriage.
So all your proposal does is pass the record keeping responsibility off from an independent public official, whose only job is to keep track of such things and as a result can do so relatively cheaply and reliably, onto a lawyer or a bank or your friends, each of whom has better things to do, presumably, and each of whom is going to have to charge you for the recordkeeping service in order to make it worth their while to do so. County recorders keep track of millions of records effectively and relatively cheaply. Privatizing this function is a terrible idea.
So what? Your argument is a non sequitor. The fact that people marry for the wrong reasons or get married when they shouldn’t do so isn’t the question and wasn’t my point. My point was that putting the marriage license into the official government public record prevents 99.9% of fraud as to whether or not the couple really is married or not, which effectively eliminates fraud when it comes to the couple receiving the rights and benefits that come with marriage. To take your green card example, having the marriage be part of the public record means that the INS (or homeland security or whoever checks up on such things now) can verify the existence, or nonexistence, of the marriage quite easily by looking at the public record. A couple that testified to the INS “We’ve been married for 10 years” would have their story fact-checked, and either verified or disproven, quite easily. The INS officer has no reason to doubt the county recorder; he or she has plenty of reason to doubt your lawyer or your friends. And besides, people’s memories fade a lot quicker than you’d think. Rounding up people to verify stories is a big hassle; checking the public record is a very little hassle.
Just consider this example: “A” and “B” are friends. “A” works at a company that has great health insurance benefits. B doesn’t. B gets very sick. A and B sign a piece of paper - which Thea calls a private contract - that says they were married 5 years ago, and have their friends C and D back date it and sign it as witnesses . “A” takes the paper into the HR department. That’s pretty easy attempted fraud, and it isn’t easily vetted. The HR department is going to have to spend its time rigorously investigating before it allows B onto the rolls of those eligible for benefits. Contrast this with the case where A produces a copy of a public record. HR can doublecheck this quite easily, and thereby keep insurance costs down because it doesn’t have to rigorously investigate every spousal applicant.
OK, those are some excellent points. I hadn’t really considered the health insurance fraud angle. I was thinking more in terms of fraud between the couple.
Given those potential circumstances, then I’ll concede that a copy of the contract, or, if space and storage concerns forbid, a brief document stating that the couple has signed one (in other words, a marriage certificate) ,should be filed with the registrar’s office, ,but then filing a manila envelope under M would still be less of a public expense than the whole process of issuing licenses which then have to be brought back and filed.
Incidentally, the marriage certificate doesn’t really help with the INS verifying a marriage. It’s fairly common practice for a family to pay a U.S. Citizen to marry one of its offspring in order to gain them legal entry into the U.S. After living together for a brief period of time, the couple goes their separate ways. The paperwork is on file, but the marriage only exists on paper. There is no actual marital relationship.
My main gripe with this issue is the idea that a couple has to go to some gummint office to get a piece of paper that says that it’s OK with the state for them to get married.
What would happen to all the lawyers if we abolished marriage? Just think, that would automatically eliminate divorce.
Wouldn’t the net result be more happiness for everyone and fairness to those who can’t or don’t want to get married ? Why should there be special laws and benefits for those who get married?