What I run into among libertarians is a corollary to the false “marriage-is-religious” meme, which is that the state should entirely get out of the marriage business and leave it to the churches. I guess there is always more than one way to turn the clock back and keep building the perfect American dystopia.
But as the article shows, it’s not actually people who are long dead that are being fought with. It’s primarily the baby boomers. Basically their parents are the definition of “how marriage should be” despite the fact that they were probably the only generation in human history that had marriages like the ones they had.
Sadly unless someone can crack the puzzle that is young people and voting, we are going to be at the mercy of living bigots for a while yet.
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Good point. Forget about history: we can’t even all agree on what “marriage” means today.
Marriage means different things to different people. For some people marriage is a primarily religious sacrament. For others it’s a legal arrangement, a purely symbolic public commitment to another person, or a foundation for raising children.
We will never all agree on what marriage means, we can only ensure that the law treats all those who would pursue marriage the same way.
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Welcome to the 21st century. I hope that your SC dumps the DOMA soon.
The vitriol on this issue in the US just makes me proud to be a Canadian. Sure, we have a few people hyperventilating about SSM still, but they are mostly ignored (even though some of them are in government). Barring the dissolution of our Supreme Court and some descent into tyranny, the ‘who can get married’ debate has been over for a decade here.
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There was fair swath of time, in the middle ages, when The Church really got busy establishing on exactly which days and under what circumstances sex was permissible. I can’t search for the chart right now but I’ll add it later as an edit when I can find it.
Basically, it was a giant flowchart, most of whose branches pointed to a box in the middle of the page that said in all caps “STOP! SIN!”
If someone following that advice managed to pass all the gates to allow sex, they were advised “Okay, but make it quick, keep your eyes closed, and try not to enjoy it too much.”
I specifically do remember that, for that chart, sex during pregnancy was a no go.
As far as the marriage of Mary and Joseph goes, there is a passionate (hurr, hurr) debate amongst various Christian groups as to whether or not Mary and Joseph ever consummated their marriage.
EDIT: chgoliz, using consumate search skills, found the chart based only on the description.
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Another great source is EJ Graff’s What Is Marriage For?: The Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution, published 2004.
That really should be the only point to make here, but I guess the reason to make it is that everyone has their own story to tell, and our history doesn’t always bear the weight of the rhetoric from religious and political movements. The other side convinced themselves that they owned the syntactic arguments, but the law is a social tool of blind adjudication, not a machine of politically-directed, blind destruction.
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I really don’t care about the preferences, race or gender of any random couple that want to marry and adopt, their lives, their problem.
What arises my interest on the subject is how many people seem to perceive themselves as directly affected by the private life of somebody else.
I don’t get it, I already have enough problems to solve in my own life to be wasting my time trying to “fix” the lives of everyone else.
TL:DR get a life
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How would that contribute to a dystopia? Years ago I thought this was a great compromise. Leave marriage a strictly “religious” ceremony, which would be more or less a moot point as anyone can make a “church” with their own rules, but those who wanted to keep it “sacred” could do so.
Then for all the legal ramifications and intricacies the state assigns people who are married, just have a “civil union” or something that is blind to gender.
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If you want to read literally thousands of words explaining why same-sex marriage is right and good read the Federal District Court decision in California’s Perry v. Schwarzenegger case and the Federal District Court decision in Michgan’s Deboer v. Snyder case. Both of those decisions were written after an actual trial where expert testimony was heard. Then for good measure read Justice Kennedy’s decision in U.S. v. Windsor, paying special attention to the part where Kennedy notes how the children of these couples are currently being harmed and how recognition of their marriages will be right and good for the children.
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You want to try convincing the millions of people who were married in civil ceremonies to refer to their relationships as “civil unions?” I didn’t get hitched in a church but I’m not about to start referring to my wife as my “civil partner.” Religion doesn’t own the “M” word.
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It puts too much power into the hands of the dominant (richer) partner. Without an administrative framework that levels the playing field for most marital issues, the rich/connected partner ends up winning in any dispute. That still happens to some degree, but nothing like it did 200 years ago. I look at that kind of society as dystopic, especially when social engineers try to bring it back.
I’ve never understood this ass-backward element of the civil union “compromise”. Are you saying that a subset of religions should have a monopoly on who gets to use the word “marriage”? How un-American.
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[quote=“Mister44, post:29, topic:37484”]
Leave marriage a strictly “religious” ceremony, which would be more or less a moot point as anyone can make a “church” with their own rules, but those who wanted to keep it “sacred” could do so.[/quote]
You could have the same sort of compromise by leaving marriage as a civil institution, and then have “religious union” or something when you want to emphasize its churchy character.
This has the advantage that it doesn’t require any changes, unlike “leaving” it religious, which as pointed out needs everyone else to abandon the word.
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An added part of that is the assumption that all cultures, everywhere are actually identical to what Americans experience. An attitude in evidence with those people who get tattoos of their initials… “in Chinese characters.” For that to make any sense at all, they must be assuming that Chinese characters are just elaborate cyphers for Roman characters, specifically the alphabet used by English.
An F in Reading Comprehension for you. Back to the eighth grade. Sadly, I doubt a second attempt will produce different results.
What is wrong is the majority denying the minority legal rights and protections that have been given to the majority. Doing so is a violation of the Constitution. That you do not understand this basic concept indicates you are not only a failure at Reading Comprehension but also a failure at Basic U.S. Civics.
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And, just to complicate the issue, let’s bring in the concept of “Covenant marriage” which is a dog whistle if I ever heard one. The Wikipedia article is a mess, but kind of gives some background.
I suppose what’s most amusing to me is that, notionally, this is supposed to make marriage more meaningful by getting the state more involved with it. But what the proponents of the idea don’t seem to realize is that they’re basically recreating the requirements for the Sacrament of Marriage in the Catholic Church.
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That’s not true at all. Maybe your perception, but that’s your problem.
I have a question for you - Why should you or anyone else care if two men or two ladies get married?
At the house on the corner down the street from us there are two very nice young ladies living there. I’m not sure if they are “married” or not, but they are partners.
Let’s assume they are married. I’d love for someone to explain to me how that is any of my business OR even better, how that isn’t a good thing.
EDIT
Note the crickets. Like always.
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Marriage is so clearly an institution of the state that I’ve never understood that idea. What is marriage? It’s a legal contract that impacts taxes, benefits, child custody, legal rights, etc. None of that has anything to do with churches and their sphere of control - it’s nothing but a civil institution. Anything going on in the church is obviously merely a social/religious recognition of that marriage. (And if that marriage is against church teachings, then obviously they don’t recognize it.) The problem with separate “civil unions” is that the existing laws talk about marriages. “Civil unions” are therefore (unless we re-write all marriage laws to replace the word “marriage” with “civil unions”), by default, “marriage-lite,” and benefits could be withheld from those who “merely” have civil unions (as has already been done on the state level and down), as the people who object to gay marriage aren’t any happier about gay civil unions.
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It’s almost as if @votdephuque is a straw man creation of gay marriage advocates designed to to make their conservative opponents look stupid
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Poe’s law is a hell of a thing. (And it pretty much applies to every opponent of gay marriage I’ve ever heard, so…)
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