In the face of controversy over what exactly constitutes marriage, why should the government provide any form of civil marriage at all for anyone? Why not just eliminate civil marriage completely, including any benefits and legal strings attached to it, and leave marriage and how it is defined up to the individual (taking the government out of the picture completely)? The government shouldn't have a role in personal relationships -- If somebody wants to devote their life to another person, that's their prerogative. Since things like inheritance and power of attorney can be arranged privately, what reasons are there for the government defining marriage (or any kind of personal union other than perhaps parent-child) at all?
Because things like inheritance and power of attorney involve fees, regulations, rights of family, etc. It's because the government recognizes my marriage to my husband that I can manage his financial affairs and force certain organizations to cough up information that they would easily withhold from me if the definition of marriage was left up strictly to the private sector. It gives me certain medical rights. It also gives me some pretty powerful weaponry to use when dealing with red tape. It gives me the legal ability to manage his personal affairs because his work schedule gives him too little time to do so himself. It forces a cold, unfeeling machine to recognize that I can act as my husband's agent and he can act as mine, all with the blessings and muscle of the almighty government. Marriage is a legal and binding contract between two people (I don't personally care if they're opposite sex or not), and legal and binding contracts fall squarely into the government's lap.
As does marriage. http://www.ilrg.com/forms/powatrny.html http://www.texmed.org/pmt/lel/legalmedurable.asp That, of course, is exactly what power of attorney is. That is only one possible definition of marriage -- there are others. Why should the government be the one to decide that marriage is a government-enforced contract? If you decide that's what you want marriage to be, there is nothing preventing you from signing a contract, but as disputed as the definition of marriage is right now, no single power, including the government, should be able to define what marriage is for hundreds of millions of people.
Taxes. That and marriage is something people insist on. And since we don't believe in child brides in the US ... well, we have to have some way of defining things. Otherwise people will have the option of selling their daughters into slavery (marriage). ("Step it out, Mary, my fine daughter, Mary if you can! Step it out, Mary, my fine daughter, show your legs to the wealthy man."°) _____________________ ° Step it Out Mary - traditional, I believe; performed in this case by Boiled in Lead. See http://www.lyricsfind.com/b/boiled-in-lead/from-the-ladle-to-the-grave/step-it-out-mary.php
There's also the issue of legal protection in the event the marriage goes sour. "Yeah, sorry you're stuck with all the kids and no way to feed/clothe/house them all, but that's the breaks, baby." (Now, granted this protection is supposed to go both ways, but if you live in California and you're a guy, you're gonna lose.) There once was a time when all you had to do to get married (if you were of the peasant class) was to get a bunch of friends together and declare your marriage in front of them all and hope nobody objected. Of course, towns were much smaller then and anonymity therefore harder to come by. Basically, now the whole town knows about your agreement. As towns got larger, you'd get some of your friends together, declare your marriage, then post it somewhere to publicize it. It was more for the benefit of silencing tongue-wagging gossip artists. If you were ruling class, marriage was done as a business transaction. You married someone as a financial move. Love rarely entered the picture. Often, the couple kept paramours to satisfy sexual and emotional needs. Nobody thought this scandalous unless the couple couldn't produce a suitable heir between themselves. Marriage moved into the church because churches were pretty much the heart of the community, and it was a good place to make sure there were plenty of witnesses. At first, the whole blessing from God thing was just a nice touch. I don't know when it became mandatory, probably about the same time holy men found out they could get money for blessing a marriage. (This, unfortunately happened before the separation of church and state.) When church and state allegedly separated, who got marriage? The church swore they did because marriage had to have the blessing of God and the state couldn't bestow that blessing. The state swore they had the right to it because marriage was a socially binding contract that affected the community as a whole regardless of religious orientation. Either way, as communities grew and people became a lot more mobile, there had to be some uniform way of defining who was married and who was not, especially in regards to estates and taxes. Since there were so many different churches and only one government, the government was the one who came up with a uniform definition of marriage ("But it's not blessed by our god!" "So? It's blessed by ours, so you go piss up a rope.") Since marriage is ultimately a social contract (everyone we know considers our marriage perfectly valid, even though it was completely secular and there were no signs of gods anywhere), the government had to define it to protect the rights of all involved. Now I hear rumor that the Constitution clearly defines marriage as being between a man and a woman. I've got a copy of that document, and I don't see it anywhere. Can someone point me to this passage?
Child custody is a sticking point with the idea of abolishing civil marriage, but I think it's workable. I personally favor holding both parents fully responsible for all of the kids they have together, but of course there are infinite solutions (just look at the multitude of divorce arrangements). Basically the elimination of civil marriage would require the government to come up with a blanket child custody agreement (of course if the two parents live together this is a non-issue) and hold any two people who have a child together to that. The entire premise on which I proposed the elimination of civil marriage is that we don't need a uniform way of defining marriage, and as interesting as your history of the idea of marriage is, I have yet to see a convincing argument as to why this is necessary. Either way, we don't have a uniform way of defining marriage (in fact, there is a federal law to the contraty), and given the political climate, I don't think there will be one for the foreseeable future, whether marriage is government-legislated or not. Inheritance and taxes don't necessarily need to be tied to marriage -- although if you prefer to include inheritance in your definition of marriage, that can be arranged. And IMO in the interest of fairness, taxes should never be tied to marriage. Wait, in your previous post you said it was a contract between two people, and now it's a contract with all of society? Which is it? Where does society come into it, and why does it matter if they even know about it if you don't want them to? Nope, the constitution never defines marriage. It does, however, prevent states from interfering with contracts, which I think a government mandated definition of marriage certainly does.
I never said it was a contract will "all of society". I said it was a social contract. In this case, then, aren't you essentially defining marriage as having children together? Inheritance needs to be tied to marriage by default. It should only be untied by specific instruction from the party involved. Most people don't have wills saying what they want done with their personal property when they kick off. So aside from inheritance tax (which I believe is a crock of crap), the government generally lets a family work it out on their own. So on this issue, how would your idea sort this out: Mr. A moves in with Ms. B and they have kids C and D. Mr. A decides to leave Ms. B for whatever reason and takes up with Ms. E. They have kids F and G, but Mr. A still kicks some money down to C and D because, after all, they're still his kids. Mr. A gets killed in a horrible wreck and both women find out the Mr. A had been sitting on a fortune in cold, hard cash that they hadn't known about. What happens to the money? In a perfect world, both women would split the money evenly (yeah right! cat fight!). But human nature being what it is, you just know that Ms. B is going to want it because "He was with me first!". Ms. E is going to want it because "He was with me last!" With no will present, how does this get resolved without the government stepping in and applying something to determine who has the right to the money? (Not that the government wouldn't lay its own claws into a good chunk of it...) BTW, it isn't necessary to paste a whole post into a reply. We can just refer back to it if it's a large section.
Marriage is a contract. The towns grew up around the church because it was a center, but that isn't why marriages became a religious issue. Back then religion was government. Not only was there no separation, but they were one and the same. This is why we ended up with the whole Catholic/Protestant issue in England and various other Western European countries at various times. Because of this fact, marriage had to be sanctified by the church(whatever one that may have been at the time) by law because otherwise the monarchy would not recognize it. If you were a peasant, this didn't much matter. Mostly you were trying to get by without having to hear about it from the townspeople, and so that if you were a man there would be a son, and if you were a woman you would be fed and clothed and not named a witch. Which (no pun intended) brings me to the middle and upper classes where as someone so aptly put it in an earlier post, love rarely entered into the picture. It was about maintaining or gaining social status, and producing an heir. This legal purchase also aided in the gain or transfer of land, property, and/or money. Not only is the custom of a religious marriage still with us today, but consider if you will the other seemingly antiquated customs still in practice in truly traditional weddings. 1. The Bride's family is expected to pay for the wedding...while most couples choose to pay for it themselves, or accept help from both families, the concept still exists. 2. Most Brides still wear white, once a symbol of the purity of the grooms purchase (this was never a standard tradition for the groom though, huh, I wonder why...) 3. The father of the bride usually walks her down the isle, therefore ensuring the transfer of goods safely from one male owner to another. With the rise of a political, rather that religious government, equal rights beween the sexes and races, and mass travel, the reasons, and consequently the customs of marriage have changed. This is why you now have to have a ceremony performed in fron tof two witnesses, but you must also have a legal binding license from the government. This new compromise effectively married so to speak, new and old ideals. As we move on, and there is marriage between different nationalities, races, and the same sex (soon god willing) marriage is changing once again. On 'Friends' Joey married Monica and Chandler, eliminating religion all together. I have been to Jewish weddings, Catholic, Reformed, Inter-faith, Lutheran, Quaker weddings and hand-fastings. Some of these had no traditional religious basis whatsoever. Have faith (haha) we're phasing it out. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Acctualy the religious right has a beef with the fact that it doesn't say that. That's why they're trying to get their Amendment to pass. There are hearings in washington about it right now. Go sign up with HRC to learn more, and fight back!
I think the separation between church and state has always been there. The semblance of them being one and the same seems to be an artifical unity achieved by one side overpowering the other. Ok, this raises an interesting point. If marriage is to have any meaning whatsoever, secular or religious, it's meaning cannot change beyond the normal sequence of things. Basically, certain individuals should not being trying to convince others of a drastically different meaning of the term. Since current marriages seem aptly more faithless than those times, I'm not too sure if you can make that comment. The image of romantic love, the knight saving the damstel in distress, the troubadours, etc. came some time around 1400.
Eh... not exactly. In English law, if I recall, marriage was secular for a long time. A marriage only required (requires?) a sufficient number of witnesses to be legitimate - no priest necessary. I understand that similar laws held in France, according to The Return of Martin Guerre. There has been a seperation between the church and state for a long time - that's why they had three estates: The royalty/nobility, the church, and everybody else. The noble Mandate from God was political, for the most part. The Christian Churches have always tried to make the marriage into religious property, but it's been a secular institution for a very long time.
