That would only be true if the contracts had no legal standing. In which case, what is the point? You can right now, make up any non-binding contract you want and the government won’t care what is in it. If that satisfies you and the other party, go for it. Just don’t expect the government to require their health insurance to cover you, make sure you inherit all the joint property, or not be forced to testify against each others.
It is in the government interest to define certain common types of contracts to simplify things such as taxes, property rules, and breach of contract resolution. This is not limited to marriages. Corporations, partnerships (LLPs and others) are all regulated by the government.
I knew of my first religious marriage ceremony between two gay people 25 years ago. Of course, being married in a religious sense gave them no civil rights in this state then (and still doesn’t in this state) but religions have been performing marriages between gay people for decades. What they don’t get is the marriage license and marriage certificate my husband and I got.
Some countries (Spain) allow for both marriages to be done in one shot - but you can also do it separate if you want; the civil marriage doesn’t automatically confer a religious marriage and vice versa, but both can be performed together so long as the religious officiant has done appropriate paperwork to be recognized as a civil officiant and the couple do wish to have the religious ceremony double up as a civil one. As for the “community of property”, whether the default is community or separation varies by regions but in all of them you must choose one in your civil paperwork, it’s not a separate step.
Do you mean a culture where people don’t pair-bond? Because such a thing doesn’t exist. Do you mean a culture where the government just ignores the fact that people pair-bond? I think it would really, really strain in-law relationships because the law would forever recognize your parents as your closest relative, minus any specific situations you exempted by contract. I think it would be farce and tragedy, where a judges had to make rulings based on explicitly ignoring the the fundamental relationships between people.
How do you think it would change society if the law didn’t recognize a special relationship between children and their parents?
Right, but the law still recognizes that the parents have a different relationship to the child than does a random adult. The fact that the law does not recognize such a relationship between the parents may well reflect that there is not one: the parents do not see each other as being each other’s closest relative.
I can’t read French. Did they do a demographic breakdown of those having children out of wedlock? Race, religion, national origin, income and that kind of thing?
Why would you think that the law wouldn’t recognize such a relationship between the parent and the child? Perhaps I’ve missed it but has someone suggested that without marriage the law wouldn’t recognize a different relationship between the parents and the child than a random adult? I’ve certainly never said anything about the recognition of a particular relationship between the parent and the child.
Why do you keep bringing up the legal recognition of the relationship between the parent and the child in a discussion about marriage? Marriage is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition to the recognition of anything between a parent and a child. A marriage isn’t a relationship between a parent and a child. What marriage may do in some jurisdictions is likely trigger some legal/factual presumptions concerning paternity/maternity.
Not that I know but I can take a guess:
Race: white.
Religion: Secular/lapsed Catholic.
National origin: Quebecer.
Income: No particularly strong trend.
Of course it is, and that’s one reason why homosexual couples want marriage. It means if something happens to their partner, they get the kids instead of having their dead partner’s homophobic family drag them off and raise them to hate the living partner.
I thought that courts looked at the best interest of the child. The best interest does not depend on whether or not the dead parent and the dead parent’s partner went into a marriage contract.
This here says: “Courts generally award custody to the surviving biological parent when the custodial parent dies”
John and Jane get married. Jane has a child, Peter.
Does John have a marriage relationship with Peter?
Perhaps the term “marriage” should be defined. It keeps being used in a filial sense, an emotional sense, an economic and a legal one. I think OP was referring to the legal type.
Also Trihs, I’d like you to tell me more about how Quebec has more violence because of the number of children born out of wedlock.
I see that you want to axe grind when it comes to gay marriage and the way courts handle custody cases (lemme guess, your biggest problem is discrimination against men?). While I may agree with you on some points, it still remains that a marriage is a relationship between partners, not between a parent and a child.
I mention that Quebec has a majority of parents who are unwed and Manda replies that the relationship between the parent and the child is still recognized. Yeah, sure, but you can have marriage with or without children and you can have children with or without marriage. So why bring up that the relationship between parent and child is the same in a place like Quebec where most babies are illegitimate bastards like me?
A religious wedding, in and of itself, does not create a legal marriage.
The exact steps vary by state, but the basic outline is:
The couple gets a marriage license from the government. They may then have an officiant such as a clergy member, a justice of the peace, their best friend who obtained a license from the state, whoever, perform a ceremony (short or long, it can be as straightforward as asking the two to state that they are intentionally getting married), then the officiant signs the paperwork to register the marriage with the state.
When a clergy member performs a wedding they are acting as an agent of the state. No authority granted by the state and no paperwork to the state = not legally married.
What leads you to the conclusion that marriage is about the relationship between a parent and a child? It can certainly affect the relationship between an adult and a child so as to make that adult a parent of the child but that isn’t the same as saying that marriage is a relationship between a parent and a child.
The children are not party to the marriage contract, they do not divorce the parent. They are not married to the parent. If the marriage ends, the parent/child relationship can continue and the parent/child relationship ends, the marriage can continue. On the other hand, if the partners sever the marriage contract, there is no more marriage.
You can have a parent/child relationship without marriage and you can have a marriage without a parent/child relationship. On the other hand, you cannot have a marriage without partners.
I am still waiting for you to show me how Quebec (and Iceland) are societies with"Plenty of anger and at least some violence" regarding this matter. Would you mind backing up what you say?
I know next to nothing about Quebec or Iceland, so can’t really comment on them. Nor do they seem to be applicable examples; a higher rate of unmarried relationships isn’t the same as none at all, with the government outright refusing to acknowledge they exist.
I asked:
"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?"
Notice that I said “most” and never said none at all or the gov’t refusing to acknowledge they exist. To which you replied:
“Plenty of anger and at least some violence, most likely”
I asked about a society where most children are born of unwed parents and you three predicted plenty of anger, violence, anarchy, farce and tragedy. If it can work when 60% of children are born out of wedlock, what would be so catastrophic about 100%? I’m not sure if it would be a good idea but you three don’t even seem to be able to fathom such a thing.
You never showed that marriage is also about a relationship between a parent and a child. You showed that marriage can impact a relationship between a parent and a child which it most certainly can.
You misunderstand me. I am saying that the relationship between spouses is as real and as fundamental as the relationship between parents and children. Can you see that it would be asinine for the law to willfully ignore that a child–even an adult child–and their parent have a different relationship than two random adults? In the same way, it would be asinine for the law to ignore the fact that some adults–whether or not they have children together or separately–have a relationship that is familial in nature.
You are using the fact that not everyone is in such a relationship–in fact, a lot of people are not in such a relationship-as proof that such relationships are not real or that they do not need to be acknowledged by the government. Again, by analogy, plenty of people have neither parents nor children, but that doesn’t mean the law doesn’t need to recognize the relationships among those that do.
I am using the fact that plenty of people manage quite fine without being recognized as married as evidence that no sky will fall on our heads if we don’t have gov’t marriage. There seems to be an underlying assumption that marriage and family are synonyms which is false. Please show me the anarchy and the large amount of anger and violence linked to this in Quebec and Iceland.
Manda, the analogy you give is an improper one. A proper analogy would be a society where the majority of children and their adult caretakers are not recognized as having a parent/child relationship. That would pose major problems.
You want to talk about the necessity of gov’t marriage, do that and stop muddying the waters with the parent/child relationship.