Put me in the “Government has no gosh-darned business deciding what is or is not a valid marriage except to protect children from sexual exploitation” camp.
Marriage should be merely a contract between consenting adults. The state should not solemnize it at all, by which I mean justices of the peace and so forth should not be involved. The maximum involvement the state should have is
[ul]
[li]providing sample or standard contracts for persons who wish enter into the commitment;[/li][li]ensuring that both parties are competent to enter into a contract; and[/li][li]keeping public records of said contracts.[/li][/ul]
The contracts should be treated like any other contracts. Apart from the criteria I listed, the state has no involvement. Anybody the bride & groom agree on can perform the ceremony; any venue whose owners are amenable can host the ceremony. Or, if you wish, you can skip the ceremony entirely; instead you fill out the standard contract (or a custom one drawn up by your attorneys) and file it with the county registrar.
Absolutely the state should be involved with giving people licenses to marry. Marriage is not just a regular contract. It changes the way in which you interact with the government, especially when it comes to things like taxes.
I think it’s a good idea, but it would take a lot of work to put it into practice. Marital status is currently intertwined with many different aspects of law, and it would have to be de-entwined from each of them very painstakingly. When a person dies without a will, who gets how much share of the estate? Who can and cannot be compelled to bear witness as to another’s actions in court? If a marriage breaks up, who gets what property? Who gets custody of the children? If someone is imprisoned, who has the right to visit the prisoner, and in what ways? Can an immigrant family be broken up, if one partner’s visa expires? And what about all of the currently-married people, during the transition-- Are they just assumed to implicitly have one of the standard contracts? It’s a royal mess.
That isn’t the case now? We got married (the first time) in our apartment.
For the most part, I agree. Marriage is too useful a legal tool to be dispensed with entirely, and the requirement for a ‘certified’ officiant can open some weird holes in things. Marriage is by definition between two people–aside from a witness or two I don’t see what else is really necessary for a legal marriage.
The main problem is this would separate the legal and religious meanings of marriage, and good luck getting the religious nutbars to agree to that.
There are non-religious people who argue against this as well. For separating marriage from the government seems to leave those who want to get married with no way to solemnize their marriage. For many people, no non-religious organization other than the government has the right kind of connection with tradition to make any purported act of “solemnization” genuine.
A legal institution like marriage is the equivalent of a default contract. It sets up default legal rules about how the marriage will function and how the marriage interacts with 3rd parties (like creditors and the government).
In most states, you are free to contract around the default rules, if you want (there are certain exceptions on public policy grounds).
Now, it’s true most states require some type of witnessed ceremony (the solemnization). I suppose we could get rid of this requirement, but I don’t see the purpose of getting rid of the default rules governing marriage. We have the same situation in any number of ways. For example, if you and I decide to form a business partnership, there will be a default set of rules governing the business, which we can contract around if we choose to. But I never see anyone proposing getting government out of business partnerships (or any number of other legal institutions which function in a similar manner).
The state should provide a standard “personal partnership” contract that covers liabilities, inheritance, joint property, incrimination, etc. These personal partnerships can have as many people as you like in them, but benefits are divided based on the number of partners (trying to keep from increasing the cost of social programs like Social Security survivor benefits).
If you wish to solemnize your relationship - have whatever ceremony you desire.
I say this as a religious person who rolls his eyes (secretly, quietly and to himself I promise) at atheists who insist on church weddings for traditional / cultural reasons.
No, I think it works best with two people. Beyond that the permutations and legal complexities are just too much of a hassle to get involved in. When you have multiple people, dissolving the relationship is just a mess unless everyone agrees on everything.
Marriages need to be kept around, but the only officiant or witness that should be legally necessary or recognized should be the county clerk or whoever who files the marriage liscence. If a couple signs such a thing and turns it in to the government, that should be it - what more could they need?
Not to say that people who want to should be unable to have a grand old church wedding with a priest officiating should be prevented in any way from doing so - it’s just, none of that has a place in the government’s view of marriage . To them, it’s a contract, and there’s no point in them bothering about whether the person who ‘officiated’ was wearing a clerical collar, a yalmuka, a t-shirt or a wookie costume - or if there was nobody there at all other than the couple getting married.
So what? Like I said in the other thread, if two people show up and say “yo we’re hitched” who’s the government to disagree and not do the necessary paperwork on it’s end?
I agree with you on the complexity, but would still enjoy trying to figure it out. I think there is a place in society for group marriages - but I don’t know how to work out partial divorces properly.
Give me a a room with several whiteboards, a few computers, and lots of alcohol and Dopers and we could lick it!
Every time one of these threads come up I think to myself that marriage don’t seem to be broken so why is there such a vocal minority on the SDMB that want to see it changed?
Probably because that vocal minority that keeps passing controversial laws about it has brought our attention to it and made us want to take the whole mess out of the public forum of manipulatability by vocal minorities.
Neither was it broken at the time that inter-racial marriages were not allowed. It left a vocal minority without the option to marry the person they love but it was definitely not broken for the majority who do not marry out of their race.
You’re correct, marriage isn’t broken, it’s simply being denied to some people.
I’m in the camp that the state should be out of it except for recording the contract, and any two or more people who want to can work up a contract and get married.
However, there is so much existing law that presumes marriage involves two and only two people, that it is probably unreasonable to rework it to that extent very quickly.
So I basically echo begbert2’s sentiment, a marriage license become the standard contract, and the law says if you sign that piece of paper and file it, you fall under the laws that apply to marriage. The state’s handles everything pretty much the way they do know, except they don’t care who the two parties are except that they are legally able to enter into contracts.
If you want a religious ceremony, or any other ceremony, have at it. Judges, JPs, etc., could still officiate if you want to go that route, but the legal part of it is getting the license and getting it signed, witnessed, and filed.
Which is pretty much the case now, I think. Isn’t it true that in most states just about anyone can perform the ceremony, with only the flimsiest pretext at being ordained by some church somewhere?
It seems to me that much could be done very quickly. It unfortunately leaves out the poly marriages, but that law would have to be worked out over time in each state.
Well, and they’d probably better not either of them already be in other marriage contracts, of course, lest we end up thrust back into poly-territory. (A minor but relevent detail.)
Very true. I should have said ‘they are legally able to enter into this particular contract.”
But even so, we have that problem already. If it later turns out that one person or the other was not eligible, the marriage becomes void and it all gets dealt with however it gets dealt with now.
The difference, I think, is that those advocating for inter-racial marriages weren’t interested in scrapping the current way we do things. They just wanted to be more inclusive. I’m all for being more inclusive but I don’t really see any purpose to throwing the whole system out and starting from scratch.
I’m not sure I even get the point of what the OP wants. If the state gets out of the marriage business, who steps in? The only viable alternative is churches and other religious groups. I don’t see any benefit to allowing the local clergy to decide who can get married.
But then the OP describes how a couple wishing to get married would do so by filling out a form at their local county registrar’s office. Isn’t that a marriage by the state?