Some Guy: "We should replace marriage with a civil license."

[garbon]

Right...it has no legal standing.

I am not sure how that makes it a joke though.

:nelson

[Eddie Teach]

There's deliberate bias (which I think is what Fox and MSNBC) go in for and then there's the almost inevitable bias which groups guard against and try and rectify approaching, however imperfectly, a closer approximation of impartiality.  In the latter camp I'd put the BBC at the staid end of things and at the more sensationalist side CNN (though I believe CNN International is different) and Sky News.

I'm not sure that CNN is more impartial but they're certainly more subtle. On Fox you'll hear conservative blowhards like Sean Hannity or Fred Barnes who don't even attempt to give the opposing arguments a fair shake. They're pretty easy to tune out. On CNN you get light condescension and dismissiveness and sometimes even omission which is a lot harder to adjust for.

But really, I usually watch Fox over CNN because it's more entertaining. Larry King and Wolf Blitzer put me to sleep.

[MadImmortalMan]

Speaking from the perspective of having grown up in a religious home---Marriage is most definitely considered a religious institution there. The paper you sign at the courthouse means jack shit. You aren't married until you say your vows before God and the pastor pronounces you married.

It's probably the most important religious ceremony of your life. Trying to separate marriage from religion is a completely and utterly foreign concept for a large part of the population. Why does the bad guy in Robin Hood try so hard to get that priest to declare him married before Kevin Costner can arrive? Who gives a crap, if marriage isn't a religious thing in the first place?

I think it's just so ingrained in western culture as a religious institution that these odd compromises and different ways of looking at it are worth looking at.

I know my religious family members have no problem with getting the government out of marriage, but they are vehemently against gay marriage. Even if I tell them that getting the state out means they can't ban gay marriage. They just want to make sure no gays can get married in their church. Hateful? Yeah, but not oppressive. And that's pretty good from where we are now.

[Alatriste]

IMHO the problem is, we have two very different things under the 'marriage' label

1. A legal contract between two persons, granting rights and imposing duties on the contracting parties. In addition, states all over the world grant certain rights to people binded by such contracts. Fiscal advantages, pensions, etc, etc...

2. A religious rite. Nuff said.

This pretty much says it all. I don't think the Law should forbid two persons signing a marriage contract just because they are men or women (and incidentally, that disposes of the ridiculous 'soon someone will want to marry a dog' objection; wake me up the day dogs can read and sign... )

If churches don't want to perform their marriage rites on man-man or woman-woman combinations, that's strictly their business and no one is talking about forcing them to do so. Indeed it is amazing that some of our transatlantic fellows in Languish think otherwise... Rather, the opposite is happening: Churches are trying to force state and law to obey their dogmas on marriage, even when brides and grooms aren't Christians (or Muslims, or whatever)!

And I can see why this guy wants to decouple 'marriage' (the contract) from 'marriage' (the rite) but I don't see it happening any day soon. What is happening, in my opinion, is that civil marriages are becoming a rite on their own.

[Faeelin]

I know my religious family members have no problem with getting the government out of marriage, but they are vehemently against gay marriage. Even if I tell them that getting the state out means they can't ban gay marriage. They just want to make sure no gays can get married in their church. Hateful? Yeah, but not oppressive. And that's pretty good from where we are now.

Ya know, I've never gotten a clear answer from people with this stance about how they feel about stopping the Quakers, a bunch of bomb throwing radicals, from marrying who they please.

But I tend to have a cynical view, raised in a prosper household of Presbytarian Atheists.

[Ed Anger]

If they let me have my polygamy, I'll throw my vital support to the homos.

Martinus-lover.

You wound me sir. 

[Valmy]

I know my religious family members have no problem with getting the government out of marriage, but they are vehemently against gay marriage. Even if I tell them that getting the state out means they can't ban gay marriage. They just want to make sure no gays can get married in their church. Hateful? Yeah, but not oppressive. And that's pretty good from where we are now.

Ok that is insane.  Their church can marry or not marry anybody they want now.  Why do they think this will change?  Separation of Church and State anyone?  It protects both the church and the state.

Tell them to stop smoking crack and understand the point of the debate.

[PDH]

The only good thing about gay marriage is that gays have to marry gays.  Really, they deserve it.

[pimpicus]

And don't get me started on "religious marriage". Religious marriage is a joke.

Right...it has no legal standing.

I am not sure how that makes it a joke though.

In the sense that religious marriage and state marriage are two different institutions. State marriage has nothing to do with love, sex, commitment, or even God. It has everything to do with two people's legal standing. There are churches perfectly willing to marry homosexual couples, but these marriages do nothing without civil marriage.
A same sex couple legally married in a church in Canada has no marriage as far as most state governments of the US are concerned. This doesn't change their religious vows, however.

I don't really have a problem with people defending marriage as "traditionally" between a man and a woman as much as bringing religious defenses for marriage. The Bible's rules on marriage include such wonderful passages as "if a woman claims she is a virgin and she is not, take her outside the city and stone her to death" and "if your brother-in-law dies, you now have a second wife."

[DontSayBanana]

I'm amazed that this guy had the balls to do this; I've been on the record for a few years now that I believe the problem is that the state recognizes marriage in the first place, but I've also always added a disclaimer that I don't think efforts to remove it as a legal principle would be successful.

The term "marriage" is so loaded and entrenched in family and civil law that I believe we should just get the courts to recognize that the religious and legal definitions of the word are and should be kept separated, and grant legal "marriage" to couples, regardless of sexuality.

[The Brain]

Can't be bothered to read the article or the thread but the idea of getting government out of the marriage business has been around a long time. I for one think that it is unclear why government should be involved at all.

[DontSayBanana]

Can't be bothered to read the article or the thread but the idea of getting government out of the marriage business has been around a long time. I for one think that it is unclear why government should be involved at all.

As are many of us. The author's pointing out (correctly) that the issue is entirely vocabulary and could be redefined away. But caving to religious insistence that legal recognition of homosexual household dynamics is a slight against the church is as much a crumbling of the church/state separation as the arbitrary decisions to refuse marriage licenses.

Actually, speaking of arbitrary, there's another problem present: how states are permitted to make arbitrary decisions about grouping that severely affects federal recognition status. On that count, it's questionable why the feds would have authority to issue across-the-board status to groups that are generally accepted to be permitted different statuses from state to state, and that's where the "getting government out of the marriage business" comes in.

[DontSayBanana]

Why do we care so much about gay marriage?

Because your being awarded with tax exemptions and the like based on awards given by your church is illegal, you stupid fuck. So is discrimination based on gender.

It's an issue because we need to keep your Zionist conspiracy out of Washington so that Iran won't be right.