As many of you may already know, I support gay civil unions, reasonning they can have all the rights and privileges so-called married couples do. This has led some of you to believe that means I am against gay marriage. Actually, I think I am against government involvement in marriage period.
Think about it. Why do we need the government involved in a religious ceremony? I was baptized into the RC Church when I was still an infant. The government wasn’t notified of that. No special certificate was issued by my state when this event occurred. So why do we need government involvement in the marriage trade? As I said, if there is any need to solemnize a union (like insurance rights or hospital visitation rights), it can be done with a civil union for all, I think.
In most of europe (except the UK), the religious marriage and the civil union ceremonies are separate. You can conceiveably, then, just get a civil union, without a religious one. Why can’t we have that here?
(Actually, my views [for this issue at least] are very much like that of the Libertarian party, if any of you need a further point of reference.)
Baptism doesn’t confer any special financial circumstances on the recipient.
Since married couples tend to live together and pool their finances, our society has gradually developed a body of law relating to the legal rights and priveliges of married couples as far as communal property, inheritance, power of attorney, custody of children, etc.
“Marriage” as we understand it today is a civil institution, not a religious one. You don’t need the permission of any priest, parson, minister, reverend, rabbi, imam, guru, or voodoo guy to get married. The state of being married occurs when the marriage license is signed. There’s no compelling reason to change the name of the institution just to soothe the hurt feelings of a few troglodytes who don’t even support civil unions for gay couples in the first place.
I am just referring to something a read a long time ago, so I don’t have a cite. But I guess you’re right, whether it’s a separate ceremony or not, they still call it “marriage”.
I’m fine with separating the two concepts completely, though. Perhaps people should be legally married as soon as they get the marriage license. But the best word (the term “civil union” was invented to denigrate unions that were considered inferior) should be for everybody to use, and the institutions that exist for all of us should reflect that.
See, in most of Europe, “marriage” isn’t (exclusively) a religious ceremony/institution. Neither French nor Spanish nor German nor the other languages of Spain nor Italian call what you call “civil unions” a “civil union”: we call them “civil marriages”. I don’t know what are they called in other languages but wouldn’t be surprised if English is the outlier.
The problem is that you guys can’t tell which parts of a contract are civil, which are common law and which are religious.
Because as said, it isn’t a religious ceremony; it’s a civil contract. The fact is, it’s the government that matters here; religious ceremonies are meaningless outside of that particular religion. Empty posturing; which is why homosexuals want civil, government recognized marriages despite some churches being willing to marry them for years; while a nice gesture, a church marriage with no government marriage to give it reality is ultimately an empty gesture.
Because a baptism ceremony is meaningless outside of that particular religion. A marriage is of great significance in the wider world. Most of the benefits and obligations of a marriage are gained from or enforced by the government.
Because people don’t want to live with the deliberate insult of being told that their marriages aren’t real marriages. That’s much of the point of calling them civil unions and not marriage; as an insult. The other reason of course is to create a separate, inferior institution.
Governments have to recognize marriages because they exist. It’s not just a little thing like “insurance or hospital rights”, it’s the fundamental structural unit of our society. A married couple is a family, a household: an economic and social unit. It’s the most fundamental type of corporation. In our legal system, your closest relative plays a tremendous role: they are the ones that speak for you when you cannot speak, the one assumed to have the best understanding of you and your best interests at heart. Marriage is the formal process by which we switch our closest relative.
We need marriage for the same reason we need adoption: it matters if someone is taking care of a child or is becoming their parent. It matters if two people are just lovers or roommates or good friends, or if they have elected to become a single social and economic unit. When I first lived with my now-husband, he was my boyfriend. I loved him, I admired him, I liked him, but he wasn’t my family. When that changed, we married so that the world could see that we were a family unit.
“Civil Union” doesn’t have the same connotations. I could live with “civil marriage”, but I completely reject the idea that marriage is a religious thing. Churches (and the state) have to recognize it, but it’s more fundamental than that.
The State has a legitimate interest in registering and regulating the primary social institution under its jurisdiction. We could simply abolish state involvement marriage and let people do what they want to do without any formalities. Good luck with that.
What do you two think would happen in a society where most people don’t enter a marriage contract and where common law marriage doesn’t exist?
What do you two think would happen in a soxiety where most children are born of parents who have not entered a marriage contract and where common law marriage doesn’t exist?
Plenty of anger and at least some violence, most likely. People would be inclined to take matters into their own hands if the law refuses to address the matter. You’d probably have people manufacturing their own improvised version of marriage. Refusing to acknowledge relationships doesn’t make them go away.
You can’t call it something different and pretend it’s equal. If it’s equal, it’s the same. Hence it’s a marriage.
You can keep slicing and dicing and qualifying your view but your ‘support’ does not really mean equality, it seems. That’s what people see and you fail to, I believe.
It would at the least have to not be a society of the type currently seen in North America, South America, Europe, Middle East, South Asia, Far East, most of Africa, Oceania etc. Our society is built around the family (both nuclear and and extended). Even today, with all our civilization and laws, Court dockets are filled to the brim with disputes over property, inheritance, division of assets, child custody, child access, marital rights. If we did not have that and an established mechanism for recognizing and enforcing rights and obligations, with our social structure there would be anarchy.
I have no idea of why you think marriage is fundamentally religious. I got married with absolutely no religion. My daughter got married by a judge with absolutely no mention of religion. Marriage predates all modern religions and perhaps all religions period.
Marriage involves two separate entities becoming one in many ways. Once we finally allow gay marriage, I’m in favor of dumping civil unions. If employers want to give benefits to partners they can and they can define who qualifies. But let’s have a slight barrier to entering and leaving partnerships getting official benefits. Others can freely enter and leave partnerships with no barrier, but with none of the benefits and penalties. Getting married costs almost nothing if you don’t have a party.
I don’t think government should be in the marriage business at all. Any two people should be able to enter into contracts regarding property rights and other special privileges like who gets to visit someone in the hospital. You could even call those marriage contracts if you want. But the state should have no say in whether any two people can join or sever those contracts or change the terms of them.
We don’t. As I said in a recent thread, the great states of New York, Texas and California do not care whether you are married by a Roman Catholic Priest, a Rabbi, or a Justice of the Peace. Your marriage ceremony can be as religious or as secular as you want it to be. A wedding at St. Patrick’s Cathedral officiated by the Archbishop of NYC is no more valid than a Star Trek themed ceremony performed in Central Park and officiated by a guy who looks like Captain Kirk.
You got a birth certificate. The government doesn’t really care what you do after that.
You can do that here. You do not have to get married via a religious organization here in the United States.
Judging by how often this topic comes up on the SDMB I think a lot of people are confused about how marriage works in the United States.
So when I race to the hospital to see my wife right after her car accident, I need to show up with my bespoke partnership contract so the hospital lawyers can review it to make sure that it actually contains the appropriate provisions authorizing the visit. Yeah, that’s a BIG improvement over just confirming that I’m her husband. :rolleyes:
There’s nothing preventing a couple from drawing up a bespoke partnership contract RIGHT NOW instead of getting married. But the convenience of having a standard, well-defined legal definition of a spouse generally trumps the flexibility of having a specialized one-off contract.
In the same countries couples have to marry twice, because the law doesn’t allow the religious ceremony without the civil marriage (it’s called so indeed). If a couple wants to marry out of community of property, they have to go three times: the contract first, then the civil marriage, then the religious marriage. I would say: if there is a contract, it’s a contract.
There could be a reason for government to stay involved though. Suppose a couple doesn’t want anything special, but the government does nothing for them, so they have to go to the lawyer or notary anyway. Big business! The government kan keep the standard contracts affordable.
They don’t do anything worthwhile to confirm it now. They probably wouldn’t ask at all because you are a man and your wife is a woman. This whole issue was made up to discriminate against same-sex couples. This was never an issue until it was made one.
No, this predates same sex couples mostly admitting they are same sex couples. I think hospitals can usefully make the distinction between opposite sex couples who are married and those who have dated a few times. How are they going to tell? How about if five guys want access to a woman’s bedside?
The problem today is that opposite sex couples who want that kind of access can get married, and in most place same sex couples cannot.
ETA: when I visited my wife there was not a paperwork check but ISTR they did ask. And except for the one emergency I did the insurance paperwork. I suppose people can lie, but for
non-emergencies there is prior history with the admitting doctor, etc.