Resolved, The status and benefits of historical marriage between a man and a woman be extended as much as practical to the legal union of any two humans of legal age, without regard to the sex of either.
If you do not agree with this premise, please limit your participation in this thread or at least reveal your bias. I am not insisting that this should happen, just asking what would be best to do if the premise is beyond argument.
So, should the union be called “marriage” or go by some other term like “civil union”? Do we need a whole new category of relationship law, or can we use the existing framework of marriage, merely redefining or loosening it to include gay marriage?
It seems to me that the best arrangement would be the latter, to redefine marriage or broaden the definition. We already have a large infrastructure of law, contract practice, and labor negotiation to handle that, not as much for civil union. Sure, actuarial tables will have to be revised, some minor wording changed (SF is now using “applicant #1” and “applicant #2” instead of bride and groom), but I don’t think it would require a major upheaval. In contrast, civil union would have to be defined nearly from scratch, it could take a hundred years for the courts to settle on what it means, and it might vary significantly from state to state even then.
And the new category might never approach the ideal, but make a second-class status of some unions, with less than the full benefits of traditional union.
As a Christian couple, my wife and I invest a great deal more emotional and self-identity validity in the relationship which we vowed to hold for a lifetime on April 12, 1975, than would be the case if we viewed it as a contractual obligation under the terms of law.
Insofar as I can tell, the gay couples we know either in real life or on the Internet feel about each other and about their relationship very much similarly to how we feel about ours.
To insist that their relationship be relegated to a contractual status while ours is a sacramental covenant is to insult the feelings and commitment that they evidently and obviously invest in their relationship.
To my mind, it smacks very much of the attitude that says, “As a black person, you cannot feel the same sense of idealism, honor, and loyalty that I feel as a white person.” And that’s clearly a racist, ignorant remark. IMO, the “civil union” expectation is very much the same thing.
Just so I’m sure of your position, Poycarp, you are in favor of expanding the def of marriage rather than creating a separate but equal category of civil union?
It seems like we may have to divide this debate into two parts. One, the legal rights conferred by the state, and two, any rights concepts as viewed by a church. I can envision them as being quite different.
Personally, I hope that any church’s policies, ideas or religious concepts do not get encoded in law. They are free to handle the situation any way they want, just don’t force it on non-members. The law should be designed to be as religion-neutral as possible – in the US, sometimes more ideal than actually realized, of course.
And to reveal my bias, I don’t think the resolution as stated should arbitrarily limit the number of participants, any more so than it should limit gender. Historical marriage did not, although I will grant that recent tradition does.
I vote for civil union over marriage in part simply to include other longterm partnerships that arise whether the relationship is of a sexual nature or not.
Absolutely! Just as we dropped “of the same race” from the definition (at least in some places) after Loving, we should drop “of opposite sexes” now.
I completely agree. I was speaking of internal feelings, based in our beliefs, not of legislating a church’s viewpoint.
As things stand now, a person who has been divorced from a person who remains alive is not entitled to a Church wedding in the Catholic Church and many Protestant denominations, at least without receiving the church’s endorsement that the previous marriage was in fact no marriage at all in its eyes – an annulment, in other words. A state-ordered divorce or annulment is not valid for them; it must be something on which their canon lawyers have passed.
This view, however, does not bind what the state may or may not do in terms of licensing a person whom it decides it has dissolved the marriage of – and that is as it should be.
Likewise, no church should ever be required to perform a marriage ceremony for a couple whom it considers are marrying contrary to its views on who may marry – nor should it be prohibited from joining a willing couple whom it agrees may enter into the married state. (One of the things that irks me greatly is that the RCC, SBC, et al. are attempting to tell my church whom it is legal and moral to join in the bonds of matrimony. If the shoe were on the other foot, you can bet they’d be outraged!)
Whoops, I didn’t mean to misspell your name, Polycarp, but it doesn’t get flagged by most spelling checkers!
Absolutely. But is there any such movement to force churches to adhere to the legal definition at all costs? Of course, what the church marries might not be legally married in the eyes of the law; so be it.
I don’t think polygamy or polyandry should be illegal, either, but I think the proponents of gay marriage and/or union will lose many supporters if that is included in the equation. In fact, the suggested possibility of such is often used as a slippery slope argument for NOT allowing any redefinition of marriage. That’s why I left it out of the resolution.
I don’t see how. What kind of “other” long-term partnerships do you anticipate? Dogs and cats? And is sexual union required by law to take place? I realize marriages have been annulled when it hasn’t, but since when does the court post a monitor in the honeymoon bedroom? I happen to know a (male-female) couple that got married for tax, property and financial reasons; their marriage is entirely non-sexual by one party’s admission. Should they be prohibited from legal uniting?
No – but there is a fear among opponents of gay marriage that if it is made legal, their churches will be obliged to deal with it. Matt_mcl and I discussed this a few months ago on here, and I’m pleased to say that what this board had to say on the topic was presented to the committee of the Canadian Parliament studying the gay marriage issue in that country. We do make a difference!!
As for your last sentence, I’m acquainted with two women, one a devout Episcopalian and the other an equally devout Reform Jew, who believe that sex outside of marriage is sinful. So they had a marriage ceremony co-officiated by our priest and a rabbi, totally extralegal insofar as the views of the sovereign state of North Carolina is concerned, but meaningful to them, and IMHO to the God who blessed them and their union through His ministers.
At the rate things are going, they certainly will have to deal with it. But their method may be to not recognize state-sanctioned unions or accept them; I think that’s their right. The only certainty is they will offend one group or the other either way.
Quite right, but for some, polygamy is so radical a concept that reason is bypassed for tradition and emotions. One step at a time.
If I can venture an analogy, the concept of blacks & whites sitting at the same lunch counter was easier to accept than miscegenation, and the slippery slope argument (IIRC) was once used to prohibit the former. The consent factor, which should have been involved, rarely was.
The 1st step being a civil union that is recognized by the legal community and all government bodies. This 1st step can then be followed up by an optional 2nd step consisting of a religious ceremony. Whether or not a particular union is recognized by a religious sect should be up to the worshipers, not the government.
I don’t see any advantage to making it a two step process. I can understand changing things to include same sex couples but I don’t see any advantages to any of the other suggested changes.
In other words, just like it is now, except that your maid of honor and best man could no longer sign off on your license after the religious ceremony but would have to also be a part of a civil ceremony of some kind, therefore adding a step to the process for the religiously inclined amongst us?
My suggestions would be to have both. A marriage should be a union between two people that has been blessed by a religious official. It would have no legal rights associated. A civil union would be the government portion of it, which would confer all the legal rights and be available for any two people who wanted it. They would also be mutually exclusive.
Two different institutions, even if they start out with the same rights, have no guarantee of equal treatment as time goes on. In fact, given the dislike of gay couples, they are very likely to recieve different treatment whenever possible. A single solution is, thus, preferable. Call it whatever you want.
I’ve made the portability argument ad nauseum on this board, so I’ll just reiterate briefly: one country will generally recognize a marriage performed in another, so long as the marriage is legal in both. Civil unions carry no such weight. A same-sex marriage will be likely be legal in any country that allows same-sex marriage, but there’s no guarantee a civil union will be, even if both countries have same-sex civil union.
Secondly, it’s a little obnoxious that so many people, who are generally receptive to these issues, are so ready to compromise with the religious right on this issue. Why should we play this semantics shell game? If someone came on these boards suggesting that the old miscegenation laws be ressurected, that person we be yelled at and laughed at. No one would be suggesting that we change the word for mixed-race couples.
I’m in Canada, and my rights to freedom of religion are guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The United States goes a step further, as I understand it, with a formal separation of church and state. There is no reason for anyone in either country to take the objections of the gay-marriage opponants seriously if they cannot provide any rational justification for a discriminatory law that isn’t steeped in their own religious assumptions.
