I figured you didn’t mean it like I responded, but I just wanted to fully clarify that thought out.
I’ll talk to the paralegal I assigned to look at your post. They will be written up accordingly.
Which, in fact, Vermont did in 2009. Same sex couples could enter into “civil unions” that had the same legal standing as marriages, but didn’t have the “marriage” and “spouse” words.
As things rolled out, those words seemed to be the primary sticking point on legislation. I think there was a time when a majority of voters in many states would have said okay to civil unions, but proponents of same sex marriage said that getting all the same legal rights as opposite sex couples wasn’t good enough. It was about “respect” not legal rights.
Uh-oh, I did not mean to make you waste potential billable hours! I was hoping someone had a ready answer based on their own knowledge of their own jurisdiction.
Thanks, I forgot Vermont did this. The point about “civil unions” being for same-sex individuals while “marriage” was specifically reserved for opposite-sex individuals, I recall being a real hot-button topic. It was all about preserving the “sanctity of marriage” as being between a man and a woman.
Because, you know, the fact that about 38% of all marriages end in divorce, that’s OK - that doesn’t harm the “sanctity of marriage.” Or the fact that divorce rates are higher in the traditional Bible Belt states. Allow two same-sex, consenting adults to marry, though, … 
[total jerk post]
Thanks, I’ll keep this in my metaphorical back pocket in case anyone ever claims “it was only about” equal legal rights.
I wish I could make legislation to get more respect. Because heterosexual men who can’t readily pick up women get very little of it.
[/total jerk post]
I almost started a thread in Careers about talking to past underlings of managers you want to bring in, because I was going to channel a past (lousy) boss with “well, I’ve been a lot of places, I’ve done a lot of things, I know a whole lot of stuff” and display a “no one should dare question me” attitude, and I always wondered what their past underlings would say of them and whether that would have changed the hiring decision. However, that would be a really arrogant attitude, and I’d prefer not to be lumped in with that person. [I might yet make that thread at some point, though.]
I’ll just say that Hoffman & Associates strives to be a world-class law firm, ready to provide the highest level of professionalism in the industry and give you best information available to answer any legal question you may have. That said, you get what you pay for and I haven’t seen a check come across yet for the retainer.
Most nations refer to that as “marriage”. There are civil marriages and church ceremonies solemnizing civil marriages. Heck, i think every state in the US offers a civil marriage.
But, the issue seemed to be that both the religious and the civil ceremonies used the word “marriage”.
Yes, they do. That doesn’t mean the churches can co-opt the whole idea of marriage. Or at least, it shouldn’t.
1 Like
Only certain states offer a “civil union” of some sort. A lot of states don’t. A number of states still have statutes that prohibit same-sex marriage, but under past SCOTUS decisions those statutes are unconstitutional. [Cue discussion of laws which states still have on the books that are unenforceable per SCOTUS decisions.]
Marriage has traditionally been performed as a service associated with some religion. Even with attendance in churches declining, I believe the vast majority of marriages still take place in a church and/or utilizing some kind of religious ceremony. Religions, especially certain Christianity-based sects in the U.S. at the present time, are … noted for their desire to amass power and their extreme reluctance to release control over anything in society.
I don’t expect that to change … ever.
“Ever” is a long time.
It’ll still be a while in the US, but 100 years ago people in some of these countries would have said that they wouldn’t have expected it to change … ever.
1 Like
My comments about where marriages take place was in reference to marriage in the U.S. and not worldwide. Additionally, my “ever” was in reference to the desire for organized religion to gain and wield as much power as possible, in order to compel everyone - especially the non-believers - to do what the religion decrees is the “Word of God.”
My apologies for not being clear on both of those.
1 Like
I think the real problem is not religious or government involvement in marriage. Religion must be involved because religious people will want it. And government must be involved because there is a civil component.
The bigger issue is a breakdown in the truce between secularism and religion in the US. They used to be seen as far more complimentary, for example with major religious leaders lobbied against school prayer in the 1960s. The separation between the secular and the religious allowed people to make more genuinely free choices of conscience.
That truce broke down first with abortion. And now it is broken down with marriage too (although i still think that will fix itself with time.)
Simply letting local communities decide how to strike this balance is not really a solution.
How would our gay couple have gone about getting married. At that time there were no churches performing gay marriages. Would it simply be a matter of signing a contract although according to you even that shouldn’t be a requirement. Would marriage be something like going steady as they used to say in the 1950’s where you give some visible token of your affection and ask for it back when you want to break up.
Religion is free. Make their own church.
That’s actually not true. Reform Jews, Unitarians, and I’m sure some other religious organizations were doing same sex commitment ceremonies. They didn’t call them “marriages” because they weren’t legally recognized as such, but they were intended to serve the same social and community goals.
The real problem with this is that it forces everyone to deal with some religion to exercise a basic human right. Non-religious people have babies, come of age, get married, and die. They shouldn’t need to find a religious group that will record these fundamental human rites of passage. The state should accommodate them.
2 Likes
I sometimes think this would be best. Like, what if we had no gay marriage in the South and no guns in the North? Would this reduce the hate in the US or increase it? My guess is increase it, if for no other reason than that people aren’t well-spaced geographically. But I don’t know.
I wouldn’t call it a religious ceremony (as others have noted), but I agree it shouldn’t be a legal ceremony either. But it’s all kind of moot anyway.
The gay marriage/union debacle wasn’t caused by the government mysteriously being too large. It was caused by people wanting to stop other people from being gay.
In other words, ours is a government of the people. When it comes to social issues, the government is just as large as the people are intolerant. Since people are intolerant, they make the government large. If you want the government to be smaller, you need to make people tolerant.
2 Likes
Power dynamics or not, organized religion is dying quickly in America.
I don’t think we need a legal ceremony, but I do think we need the state to register marriages.
The point of contention is whether government should play any role at all in marriage such as restricting who can get married such as prohibitions against close relatives, multiple spouses and children entering into marriage. It seems that some here would sanction such marriages if they could find a religion willing to perform the ceremony or if not creating such a church for such a purpose. .