A Gay-Marriage Solution: End Marriage?

[ABSTRUSE]

When a Jewish boy turns 13, he heads to a temple for a deeply meaningful rite of passage, his bar mitzvah. When a Catholic girl reaches about the same age, she stands in front of the local bishop, who touches her forehead with holy oil as she is confirmed into a 2,000-year-old faith tradition. But missing altogether in each of those cases — and in countless others of equal religious importance — is any role at all for government. There is no baptism certificate issued by the local courthouse, and no federal tax benefits attached to the confessional booth, the into-the-water-and-out born-again ceremony or any of the other sacraments that believers hold sacred.

Only marriage gets that treatment, and it's a tradition that some legal scholars have been arguing should be abandoned. Two law professors from Pepperdine University issued a call to re-examine the role the government plays in marriage in a paper published March 2 in the San Francisco Chronicle. The authors — one of who voted for and one against Prop 8, which successfully ended gay marriage in California — say the best way out of the intractable legal wars over gay marriage is to take marriage out of the hands of the government altogether.



Read full article.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1885190,00.html?xid=feed-yahoo-top-linkbox

 

[Selena_Kitt]

the best way out of the intractable legal wars over gay marriage is to take marriage out of the hands of the government altogether.

Puts too much power in the hands of the church. Any church. Also, the gov't uses marriage. The IRS would have a heart attack!

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Puts too much power in the hands of the church. Any church. Also, the gov't uses marriage. The IRS would have a heart attack!

And the down side of that would be . . . ?

 

[3113]

Puts too much power in the hands of the church. Any church. Also, the gov't uses marriage. The IRS would have a heart attack!

It doesn't put power in the hands of churches if "marriage" performed by a church has no contractual legality. If only a civil union license issued for two people by the state relates to property ownership, child custody or medical decisions, and the "spiritual" part of marriage (including who the church will and will not marry) is left up to religious institutions.

This would fit with divorce. It is legal to divorce and re-marry, but some churches will not perform wedding ceremonies between divorced people. This arrangement doesn't give any more or less power to the church the it already has over believers.

 

[Liar]

From what I understand, a marriage is, legally, a sort of three party contract between two consenting adults and the goverment. The two individuals grant each other certain rights and responsibilites, and the government in turn grant them both a bunch of rights and benefits.

There are supposedly some good reasons to do this. For the sake of the argument, let's assume there are. I can think of a few.

What there isn't good reason for, is dictating who those two consenting adults should be (or even if they shoud be two, although more than two might have practical complications rthat needs to be hammered out first), what gender they have, what their prior relation is or what their reason for entering into this contract is.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

From what I understand, a marriage is, legally, a sort of three party contract between two consenting adults and the goverment. The two individuals grant each other certain rights and responsibilites, and the government in turn grant them both a bunch of rights and benefits.

There are supposedly some good reasons to do this. For the sake of the argument, let's assume there are. I can think of a few.

What there isn't good reason for, is dictating who those two consenting adults should be (or even if they shoud be two, although more than two might have practical complications rthat needs to be hammered out first), what gender they have, what their prior relation is or what their reason for entering into this contract is.

Exactly.

 

[3113]

As for my opinion on it, given that it's as I'm assuming it is with no legality to church marriages...it is logical and the way it should have always been. HOWEVER, coming at a time like this, after Prop. 8, it looks like a half-assed way to mollify both sides, the religious nuts who want marriage to be heterosexual only, and the gays who insist the law is being unfair to them. Neither side likes this idea, and at this point, they shouldn't like this idea. It's comes across as a "trying to have the cake and eat it, too" idea.

My point being, it fails to address or correct the injustice and unfairness done to gays. Rather like the "separate-but-equal" argument back during the days of civil rights. What we learned or should have learned from that is that is that such "compromise" is usually just a way to put a nice face on discrimination.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

My understanding, and one that is supported by my pastor, is that "marriage" but law is a civil contract between two persons. All the church does is bless the union. Those who believe that it is a Sacrament are confused. It never was until the Vatican discovered that they could charge for it and increase their revenue to build St. Peter's. Before that, when a couple wanted to get married, all they did was announce the fact on the steps of the cathedral and the town said, "Okay, if you insist . . ."

It was different for the rich, of course. Whenever serious money changes hands, the terms can be very particular.

 

[R. Richard]

The idea of a formal marriage came with the transition from a hunter-gatherer economy to an agricultural economy. In a hunter-gatherer economy, formal mariage was counterproductive. The hunter-gatherer men hunted animals, sometimes the animals hunted back. The woman still needed someone to help feed her children. Thus, it was useful if the surviving men thought that maybe the child was theirs. In an agricultural economy, it suddenly becomes important to know who owns the land. Formal marriage nails down the issue of who owns the land.

It's well known that the polynesians had sex with anyone they pleased. The reason was that they dared not become inbred idiots on their little islands. In isolated areas in Europe, young girls frequently worked as temple prostitutes before they could marry. The girl couldn't marry until she became pregnant, so that there would be another generation to work the fields. Also, the infusion of new genes prevented inbreeding. When a girl did marry, the first child was the husband's child, by law.

It isn't so much a matter of marriage existing within our society, as our society existing around marriage.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

ABTRUSE

Ending gays would be a lot easier.

Elect me Emperor of America and I promise to make gays as rare as Canadians who bathe.

 

[Wyldfire]

In isolated areas in Europe, young girls frequently worked as temple prostitutes before they could marry. The girl couldn't marry until she became pregnant, so that there would be another generation to work the fields. Also, the infusiuon of new genes prevented inbreeding. When a girl did marry, the first child was the husband's child, by law.

Vialable, reliable documentation on this please? Sounds like B.S. to me.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Vialable, reliable documentation on this please? Sounds like B.S. to me.

There is none.
But it sounds so cool!

 

[Wyldfire]

There is none.
But it sounds so cool!

Like something you'd see in a Conan movie!

 

[amicus]

Crap, JBJ, that left me with coffee all over the place, damn you~! Hey, Canada's cold, those folks never get out of their clothes, they sleep in em for warmth, givem a break!

ami

 

[NomDeClavier]

Of course, the other option is to take it out of religion's hands. If you eliminate government's role, fine. But no religious marriage should then get public recognition (taxes, property succession, etc).

Separate is not equal.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Of course, the other option is to take it out of religion's hands. If you eliminate government's role, fine. But no religious marriage should then get public recognition (taxes, property succession, etc).

Separate is not equal.

I'm with you on that one. people should have the option; a religious marriage, which sanctifies the union in whatever deity's eyes the couple beleives in. AND a legal marriage which confers all of the current benefits.

Oddly enough, many gay couples can get religious marriages, depending on the church that they go to. It's the legal marriage that they can't get.

 

[3113]

The idea of a formal marriage came with the transition from a hunter-gatherer economy to an agricultural economy.

However it came about, and we agree that ownership of land/wealth as well as high position was part of that, the problem with it here and now is that a marriage license confers a certain legal status on couples regarding things like property, taxes, child custody, and who gets to make medical decisions.

So long as the word "marriage" is used on the contract that decides such legal matters, it will be a hot-potato. Now the idea here is to erase the word "marriage" from that license altogether. Leave the word to be used only in a religious ceremony that, in and of itself, has no legal standing, and you, presumably, defuse the argument that marriage can only be heterosexual. The answer becomes, "the State won't interfere in who can marry. Any two people can have this contract. Whether that's a marriage or not is up to them and their religion to decide."

Of course, the other option is to take it out of religion's hands. If you eliminate government's role, fine. But no religious marriage should then get public recognition (taxes, property succession, etc).

Agreed, it should not, but the thing is NO religious marriage gets public recognition. You cannot get married in the U.S. without a license from the state where you are marrying, and in most states there are only three qualifications for issuing that license: (1) you be of legal age, (2) you be unmarried to anyone else, (3) you be a man and a woman.

Once you have that license, you're married whether or not you ever have a religious ceremony. Without it, you are not married, even if you have a religious ceremony.

It's the legal marriage that they can't get.

The question is, would removal of the word "marriage" from the legal definition of such unions change anyone's opinion on the argument. Would the Mormons suddenly say, "Well, fine, gays can have such unions, they just can't be 'married.'"

I don't think the anti-gay forces will go for this any more than the gay forces will.

 

[amicus]

In the same manner that the pastoral life is a thing of the past, when most people lived on farms and were close to nature, there is a sad nostalgia of many for those past values and morals.

There is an equal but separate sadness that accompanies the collateral effects of the sexual revolution.

Gender definition has disolved into utter confusion with the emergence of the feminine imperatives voiced and gained in the past half century. With both extreme masculinity being as despised as is extreme femininity and a sort of unigender posited as the norm, it is not surprising to me that same gender relationships have mushroomed to a point of demanding equality under the law.

As the reality of the consequences of same gender relationships becomes more and more questionable in the mainstream of daily life, one might suspect it will retreat back into the closet in future times.

We shall see....

Amicus...

 

[JackLuis]

What is the Real Reason?

I have to think that there might be some reason that nobody talks about that is really driving this debate. Could it bee that there is a financial reason to block Gay marriage, like if two gays get married the taxes they'd pay would be in a different range, or would Social Security go up because of the Survivors rights or???

I can't see Republicans backing this issue without there being a financial aspect.

 

[R. Richard]

Vialable, reliable documentation on this please? Sounds like B.S. to me.

If you do a search on 'temple prostitute' you will find a wealth of information on the subject.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I have to think that there might be some reason that nobody talks about that is really driving this debate. Could it bee that there is a financial reason to block Gay marriage, like if two gays get married the taxes they'd pay would be in a different range, or would Social Security go up because of the Survivors rights or???

I can't see Republicans backing this issue without there being a financial aspect.

Financial profit, specifically. Because human worth is only peripheral.

I think this was addressed somewhere, and the results were inconclusive.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

JACKLUIS

Faggots are Democrats. If Republicans stopped opposing gay marriages faggots wouldnt stop wanting Republicans crucified. For the GOP there is no tit for tat with queers. Its like being humane to a rattlesnake...it earns you no good-will from the snake.

 

[ishtat]

JACKLUIS

Faggots are Democrats. If Republicans stopped opposing gay marriages faggots wouldnt stop wanting Republicans crucified. For the GOP there is no tit for tat with queers. Its like being humane to a rattlesnake...it earns you no good-will from the snake.

So J Edgar Hoover was an example of a democrat ?

 

[voluptuary_manque]

So J Edgar Hoover was an example of a democrat ?

Not to mention Pondoro Taylor?

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

So J Edgar Hoover was an example of a democrat ?

Bet on it.