Stephanie Coontz, a professor of history at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington and the author of “Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage,” offers a concise summary of several thousand years of history in a New York Times piece today. Her conclusion, phrased as tentative but which I suppose she endorses:
Perhaps it’s time to revert to a much older marital tradition. Let churches decide which marriages they deem “licit.” But let couples – gay or straight – decide if they want the legal protections and obligations of a committed relationship.
Here is her argument:
Why do people – gay or straight – need the state’s permission to marry? For most of Western history, they didn’t, because marriage was a private contract between two families. The parents’ agreement to the match, not the approval of church or state, was what confirmed its validity.
For 16 centuries, Christianity also defined the validity of a marriage on the basis of a couple’s wishes. If two people claimed they had exchanged marital vows – even out alone by the haystack – the Catholic Church accepted that they were validly married.
Is it possible that what we think of today as progressive is really just trying to revert to a custom in keeping with the period between the Roman empire and the Englightenment? Were loving couples better off under, for example, Charlemagne and William the Conqueror than today?
The issue is not “permission”. It’s the recognition of marriage by the state and the rights that one obtains thereby that matter.
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p>It’s “married” tax filing status.
It’s custody of children.
It’s survivorship issues.
It’s rights in medical issues.
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p>This is where the interface with the state comes in. The state can control all these things.
We don’t give siblings permission to marry, or any of the relations in MGL 207 sec 1 and 2. We also don’t give permission to marry to people already married, to minors.
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p>Those marriages are declared void without judgement of divorce.
….that gay marriage is just the same thing as siblings getting hitched or a forty year old man marrying three fourteen year old girls. In a twisted way there is a valid point being made…the law discriminates and lines are and must be drawn. It seems however, that They believes that consenting, loving, same sex, non-related adult couples should be on the proscribed side of the line. Not really an argument that need be dealt with. It’s moronic bigotry masquerading as rational thought. And it is also lazy and disingenuous to use the Mass. General Laws to prove that gay marriage could be proscribed since the laws of Massachusetts allow gay marriage. The line has been drawn already, and it seems someone just can’t handle reality very well.
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The opposite of polygamy (not polyandry, but simply two spouses married to each other and only to each other) has quite a bit of elegance that goes away with polygamy, even if it’s mutually embraced with all parties.
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p>Disagree with your spouse? Work it out. Disagree with your spouses? You get outvoted 2-1 and the dynamic is much different than a 1-1 tie. A polygamy marriage has a dramatically different and far more complex dynamic, and that in and of itself is so different that the state could be [and I think, is] justified in restricting marriages to two people.
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p>Fourteen year old girls can’t get married for the same reason that dogs and potted plants can’t get married — they don’t have the legal right to give consent.
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p>Siblings is actually far more complex. Heterosexual marriage presents the opportunity for severely deformed offspring. But, what if the couple can’t reproduce for medical reasons? Then, in terms of reproductivity, they’re more like a homosexual couple: love each other, can’t produce offspring together (John Howard notwithstanding). Why shouldn’t they be allowed to marry? For that matter, why shouldn’t same-sex relatives be allowed to marry? Perhaps there’s a reason in addition to offspring that’s sufficiently compelling, psychological problems perhaps? Dunno.
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p>Bottom line: it’s worth considering any and all restrictions on marriage, questioning whether or not the state has a legitimate interest in restriction where public welfare is more important than personal liberty. For me, prohibiting polygamy and polyandry as well as prohibiting minors from marrying is obvious. As for marrying relatives, that’s not quite so clear to me, as I don’t fully understand the genetic in the case of offspring-capable couples or the psychological ramifications in the case of any blood-related couples.
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p>Gay marriage? Seems OK by me — no evidence that gays are better or worse parents than straights. No evidence that there’ll be a detrimental population change or genetic problem. No evidence that crime will increase, the economy will falter, or global warming will increase. No worries.
It seems however, that They believes that consenting, loving, same sex, non-related adult couples should be on the proscribed side of the line.
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p>Not in any of the respects that Steve Stein mentioned! I believe all those things (and any other rights of marriage you would mention) should be available to same-sex couples through civil unions, but not marriage. But please don’t press this point, it’ll go off topic and be a distraction. This thread is about the difference between church and state marriage. I just mention civil unions for the record, because I couldn’t let your assessment of my beliefs stand uncorrected: you imply I disagree with Steve, when I don’t. Those things should be available to same-sex couples, and they should be made available immediately.
…unions are not marriage and for you to suggest that this would somehow not be germaine to a discussion about marriage that expressly considers gay marriage is, frankly, silly.
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p>Separate but equal is not equal.
Marriage as a custom existed before the Church did. If you think of the Church as an organization/bureaucracy with a need to justify its collection of money from people as well as a need to perpetuate itself, it makes sense that the Church would try to insert itself into marriages. Why let two people just declare themselves “married” when you can sell them on the idea of having the ceremony in a big, echoing church with stained glass. Oh, by the way, the Church will need a small fee to compensate for the use of its space.
Maybe she’d like us to return to the thrilling marriages of Biblical times — wives as property, rich men marrying and wearing out many wives, no marriages at all, stealing others’ women in raids, and taking deceased relatives’ women?
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p>The English folk who set the tone for our 13 colonies had different ideas. They distrusted the corrupt church and its intimate relationship with government. Here in the Bay Colony, the governors forbade ministers (there were no priests) from conducting marriages. Instead, they established it as it was in much of Europe, a civil contract. That has always been so in Massachusetts.
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p>Those who wanted religious trappings on top of the legal contract could do that, as they still can. Yet, the reason the government is involved is for those messy matters of consistency, record keeping, and clarity of both issue, financial responsibility and divorce. It makes vastly more sense for the government machine to handle that than a dispersed and heterogeneous set of clerics and churches. Plus the government has the authority and resources to enforce judgments.
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p>Here, clerics got the right to solemnize marriages when it became obvious that we had too few literate sorts to sign the paperwork. Yet, even there, the minister, priest, rabbi or other cleric does not marry the couple legally. That remains the state. The cleric signs the state license, as can a judge, governor, justice of the peace, or designated solemnizer.
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p>I, as a private citizen, have solemnized two marriages. We did not hear blessings nor objections from anyone’s God for either. The two couples are legally married.
Marriage is a sacrament in many Christian churches. But not in the Puritan church of the Mass Bay Colony. There, as now, it was a civil contract.
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p>This is the historic source of property rights for women in America, who had to be able to own property (themselves) to enter into a contract about it. It informs the idea of a separation between church and state.
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p>It is no coincidence that the John Adams constitution and the legal tradition from which he came provides (thank goodness) for marriage rights based on equality rather than religious dogma.
Very interesting. Whether we call it ‘post-modernism’ or ‘globalization’ -it is clear that we are entering a period when the institutions of modernity (such as marriage and the nation-state government)are losing their authority over our lives in favor of new ethics that respond to a more flexible and diverse world. I say embrace this – let the church decide what is right for the church, but get government out of the marriage business.
The state’s got to oversee the legal union, since so many legal rights are involved.
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p>The church’s got to oversee the marriage, since it’s a religious term and tradition.
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p>So… why do them on the same day? Simply separating the two [civil union and religious marriage] solves most of these problems. Want to share assets, parenting decisions, health access rights, etc? Get a civil union. Want to be together forever in heaven? Get a religious marriage. Want both? Do both.
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p>It also allows the compassionate side of religious conservatives to come out. Why should the state prevent two people who love each other and have made a lifetime commitment from 24 hour hospital visitation? The ability for either of them to pick up their kids at school? Fifth amendment protections?
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p>An elegant way to do this? Do not allow priests the legal authority to marry — restrict that to a Justice of the Peace, judge, town clerk, etc.
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p>Coontz has the right idea; she merely forgets that the state must play a role in ensuring that the civil contract is legal and binding — that both parties are legal adults, etc.
That seems a rather capricious insult to not allow priests the state authority to marry a couple, which is something that any person can obtain. What is special about a justice of the peace or town clerk that the authority cannot be given to anyone, like a brother or family friend?
Not to get too picayune, but priests don’t marry anyone. The state does. There is a large set of folk who are authorized to act as agents for the state in being able to sign the marriage license. That’s a state document.
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p>It is the state which has the authority to marry couples here.It has never been otherwise in Massachusetts. People are free to have all many of ritual ceremonies, but those have not effect in law.
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p>There is no insult to clerics. If someone choses to believe that their minister or priest “marries” them, they are free to do so. However, if they need proof of marriage or to get a divorce, they go back to the state, who authorized the marriage, keeps the records, and legally creates or dissolves the marriage.
you or anyone (subject to age limits I would guess) can get a one-time permit from the state as a “Solemnizer” to perform a legal marriage.
Is the issue that they should have to keep getting one-time permits, and should not have an automatic vesting of authority? Religions recognize the legitimacy of government authority to marry, and that is what they are consecrating in the ceremony – that, by the authority vested in them by the state, the couple is now legally married and allowed to “kiss” and everything. The same thing that a justice of the peace would solemnize. The whole point is that they witness and bless the civil legal moment of becoming legally wed.
… I don’t think priests should be automatic. It shows a legal preference by the state toward religious officiants over non-religious ones. Exactly the kind of thing that the state isn’t supposed to endorse.
…are also non-religious officiants automatically endorsed by the state so it is not really fair to say a legal preference is being shown. And out of state clergy need to get authorization to officiate a marriage in mass just as anyone who is not a justice of the peace or in state clergy must.
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…of the Peace.
Basically, people of public stature and wisdom. The idea is that everyone respects the officialness of the marriage, so they don’t keep wooing the bride. If a couple is married by their own word, people might not take it very seriously, and will treat it more like an illicit temporary fling that they can split up. It’s the police, the state, that binds people together, and the police only do that if the wedding was properly conducted, with an authorized solemnizer. Otherwise, it’s just a breakup, like what happens everyday (unless its a common law marriage, which the state can impose on couples even if they don’t both consent to it).
….not ships captains. Read the law, they aren’t included. At common law ships captains have been permitted to perform marriages in international waters. If massachusetts recognizes such marriages it does so by virtue of a liberal tendency to recognize extra-jurisdictional marriages, not because ship captains are viewed by the legislature as people of stature and wisdom.
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p>And there are states that require no officiation. All you need to do is file the signed paperwork and you are married. Colorado is such a state, so most of the rest of your point is not entirely accurate.
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p>And the wooing the bride crap is just that. I know a lot of married women who wish that their wedding ring meant that they would no longer subject to the advances of men who aren’t their husbands. But we all know, it ain’t so.
… preferences for other classes of people are permissible as long as they aren’t religious preferences. If other non-religious officiants are available, how can a preference to automatically empower priests be anything other than religious? How can such an empowerment be anything other than an expression of preference for religious ceremony.
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p>Non-religious preferences, of course, can be a capricious as the state desires I suppose. There are, however, certain preferences that the stat is not permitted.
….religious officiates are not per se unallowable because it is not, as you say, a state preference in a manner that would be unconstitutional. What would be unallowable is permitting only priests but not rabbis, that would be showing a religious preference, but by providing a full blanket for all ordained clerics and a comprable allowance for secular officiates then there is no preference, both secular and religious get coverage with no preference for any particular religion – fair and balanced.
…some people may be granted certain powers by the state and others are granted such powers automatically, and one set of such people are defined by their religious characteristics, the state must show that such grants are not because of a religious preference. How can they show that when the class is defined religiously without showing that its a religious preference? The state shouldn’t show preference for religious anything, by specific type or in general. To do so is to ignore the non-state and private nature of adhering or not adhering to religion in general… something the state should not do. Of course if there are non-religious parameters for such grants and religious classes happen to qualify, then that’d be different.
The reason the state automatically gives priests authority to solemnize weddings is because they take it really seriously, it’s part of their training. They are very solemn about it, whereas one-time officiants are probably only solemn about their one time officiating because they know the couple personally. I don’t think the governor is obligated to grant authority to every clown who asks for it, they take the requests seriously and want to make sure the solemnizer is going to be properly solemn about it. Priests (of every religion) are trained to be. They do a valuable state service of giving the legal transition into marriage a very meaningful significance, both to the public but especially to the couple they are marrying. That significance is in the state’s interest, and it’s usually pretty similar from one religion to another – they all say that the couple is now one, till death do they part, etc. Civil clerks might just fill out the form and make the experience less than awe inspiring, perhaps to the detriment of the marriage’s commitment and value.
My commitment to my wife and our marriage’s value is entirely irrelevant of the location of our marriage [in a church, by a RC priest]. I think you’d have a hard time finding anyone who would agree that their marriage would be somehow more or less valuable/committed based on who performed the ceremony or where it took place.
Though your marriage may be an exception, there is a function to the solemnity. It is similar to the solemn circumstance in the courts: if someone is legally deprived of their liberty or property and the proceedings are held at the rec room at the Y, they are less likely to be considered legitimate by the loser. Same reason you don’t hold services in the church parking lot.
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p>In Vegas, you can meet someone at 10:00 pm and be married by 10:10. As is evident by the ever-exciting exploits of Britney Spears, et al., these marriages, though legal, lack legitimacy, and often last only until the anullment paperwork goes through.
…BS. People get married and divorced in less than a year all the time, even peole who marry in churches. And whether you marry in a church or a parking lot you still need to get divorced to break up. Same as if you lost your court case in a rec room you would still be liable for any judgement against you. The essential factor is the legal import, not the location.
…is perfectly able to define ‘seriousness’ (whatever that means) into whatever qualifications they want to for officiating a legal marriage. It is not allowed to define ‘religious’ into or out of those qualifications. Since priests are defined by the latter and not necessarily by the former, there is a problem with giving priests a default pass.
that they are religious. The key is that lots of people think their priest or minister is the appropriate serious person to give their marriage legitimacy, which is in the state’s interest in going along with. So given their revered status, the law gives them blanket authority. If car dealers or baseball players had the same status to significant portions of the population, and they truly took them seriously as giving legitimacy, the state would include them too, no doubt.
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p>Check out the list – it’s based on them being taken seriously, not their theology. For example: “a leader of an Ethical Culture Society which is duly established in the commonwealth and recognized by the American Ethical Union and who is duly appointed and in good and regular standing with the American Ethical Union”
Define a priest without invoking religion then. Write the qualification for ‘who gets a pass’ without mentioning the word ‘priest’ or equivalent ‘religious officiant’ and the State can go along its merry way. Invoking the word ‘priest’ necessarily invokes religion.
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p>If you want to say that class X is qualified because they also happen to be Y, then you are saying Y is the criterion not X. As such then, priests need not be explicitly mentioned in whatever qualifications the state wants drawn up. Indeed they can’t be because you cant define the class irreligiously.
That’s the Y. If there are enough people who take a religion seriously, or any group seriously (like the “Ethical Culture Society”), the legislature gives them the “automatic pass” to solemnize weddings. Otherwise, they have to apply for a one-time pass. The key is what the participants believe – they just have to take it seriously, that they have been solemnly, legally married by someone authorized to do it, and the more meaningful it is to them, within their faith, the better.
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…there is not. I suggest you spend a little time familiariIng yourself with Supreme Court decisions regarding the State and religion because you are not really in the ballpark.
…simply have not descrbed a “preference” that would amount to a constitutional violation. Respectfully, the core logic of your assertion is flawed.
Not my intention to get even more picayune here, but at least in the Catholic Church priests can’t marry anyone (at least they couldn’t when I was in the church). The man and woman, as ministers of Christ, confer upon each other the sacrament of marriage. The priest, like the two witnesses, is just there to make sure it happens. In areas where there is a shortage of priests a lay person can be delegated the task. Thats why marriages were (are) valid if the couple exchanged vows alone out by the haystack.
… assume that the reason for allowing just about anyone who wants to to officiate a marriage has more to do with keeping it available to anyone of any particular set of religious sensibilities. This is necessary exactly because the civil marriage isn’t legally separate from the religiously officiated marriage. Separating the two eliminates this need. Then, if it is seen as desirable or necessary, restrictions on who can legally endorse a legal marriage can be restricted to a narrow few who have a more official legal capacity in government (town clerks or their officers for example), or opened up to be as ubiquitous as notaries.
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p>Personally, if a law were to be enacted that established a clear distinction between legal and civil marriage, I’d prefer leaning toward restriction, at least initially, because it would give emphasis to the distinction and I suspect that as soon as such a law was enacted there would be those who would seek to blur the lines almost immediately.
is that they’re trained to be government agents. Oaths, etc. I confess that I don’t how much training and oathing goes in to it, nor do I know if priests must do the same.
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p>My interest is in dis-allowing “2 for 1s”. By making the two ceremonies separate, it reinforces the idea that the state union and the religious marriage aren’t the same thing, and that one without the other is perfectly acceptable to the state.
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p>Maybe instead just require that they be two separate ceremonies or somesuch… or make the requirement for being a solemnizer a bit higher in terms of oaths, training, background check, etc since it is such a major legally binding contract.
and they aren’t separate. The church commemorates the legal wedding, they don’t do it without the license, and they don’t like to do what they call “sham” ceremonies, where the couple is already married. They find that very offensive, to be asked to do that. And the participants want to see the real legal wedding, too.
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p>There is no “religious marriage”, there is only a state marriage, and the priests DO make that clear, when they say they are acting by the authority vested in them by the state of Massachusetts, and now pronounce them man and wife.
you may think it doesn;t exist in the RCC, but it does. you need to look beyond the american borders perhaps to understand this. in other countries where one must, by law, first obtain a legal marriage via the state, the priests seem all too happy to perform a religious marriage ceremony after the civil fact.
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p>i’m sorry, but i can’t feel too bad for the tender feelings of the priests in this matter. thought they may like to have more influence on civil governmnet, they are not civil government and their tender feelings are not the hinge upon which governmental decisions depend.
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p>also, please remember that RCatholicism isn’t the only religion in the united states. there most certainly is “religious marriage” in other religions, such as the one i was bron into: baptist.
You remind me of a long-term chum, who has been a minister for 70 years. He has taken me to task several times for the two marriages I performed as a designated one-day solemnizer under Massachusetts law.
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p>He considers it poaching. He acknowledges that most couples get a civil ceremony. However, those who want a formal wedding of any type should damn well go to the cleric for counseling and pay for the ritual as well. he says. He also reminds me that many ministers and priests make significant income from weddings. Hurt wallets as well as hurt feelings, Laurel.
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p>A few weeks ago, he and his wife visited. I had them to dinner along with one of the couples whose marriage I performed. We had all been members of the same church, the one where my minister friend was the interim. He had counseled the woman on another matter. We almost finished the evening without a mention, but finally he couldn’t stand it any longer. He said to her that he was glad they had married and seemed happy, but that he had been available to perform that wedding.
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p>The couple asked me because we had been long-term friends. That is another kind of meaningful, and something that Massachusetts makes possible through its delightfully quirky law.
i wonder if your friend has ever considered that he too could become a jp. there is no reason clergy can’t. that way he can clean up on both sides of the church-state divide. although, your friend’s mercenary approach is sadly out of step with jesusy ways imo. jesus exhorted people to give away their worldly goods, leave their parents and spouses, and follow him. he said nothing along the lines of “charge them for a blessing in my name”. in fact, scenes of jesus-money interactions in the new testament rarely ever went well for Our Lord and Savior (betrayed for silver coin, etc.). best to stay away from the stuff if you can. not much of a capitalist, that jesus.
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Well my chum will be 91 next week. In his specific case, he”s being loyal to his profession. The only weddings he’s been doing are his grandkids’.
and special oaths and ceremonies, but the wedding that they are blessing is the legal wedding. There is only one moment when a couple becomes wed. It’s one thing to want to get the church out of the state, but it’s really strange that people want to get the state out of church. Churches should and usually do respect the state’s (Caesar’s) authority on marriage. It is the fact that the police will now enforce the couple’s vows and that they couple is now legally bound together that makes the wedding important to the church. If it wasn’t going to be in force outside the church walls, everywhere the couple goes, the church is just pretending that a wedding has occurred, no wedding has occurred. They can bless the relationship anyway, but they aren’t blessing a marriage.
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are too stale for a priest to stomach? makes me laugh! believe me, clergy will accept money for blessing a marriage whether the marriage happened this minute or last year. see massmarrier’s comment above. he is quite correct that the church will still happily perform their blessings. there are financial and control incentives that assure this outcome. not to mention tons of actual precedent set by clergy in other countries where civil marriage is conduced separately from and often days before religious marriage. but you seem to not want to acknowledge that.
It is not a wedding though, not even a religious wedding. It is just a blessing of a two day old marriage. Priests definitely don’t like to take part in things like that. Their scorn for couples that are already living together, let alone already married, shows through and embarrasses everyone in the church. They really can’t stand being used to provide a little tradition after the fact.
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p>And as a member of the audience, I certainly want to see the moment when they become legally wed, when they do the actual consenting to becoming married to each other. I don’t want to hear any boring sermon or vows, or look at nice flowers and pretty dresses, I want to witness the moment that they actually say I Do and are pronounced legally married.
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p>My guess is that European countries that require a civil marriage first do so out of long-standing anti-papist resentment. I noticed that Italy doesn’t require a civil ceremony first. There, the Priest is authorized to perform the wedding and he’ll report back to the state that the wedding took place, like here. But other countries do seem to insist that a church wedding take second place to their civil authority. I think that is rather obnoxious and reflects Europe’s antagonistic ambivalence to religion. It is no coincidence that when I googled “europe marriage” the top hits were about Europe’s “marriage crisis”.
The european country I am familiar with that has this system is the netherlands. you will be delighted to learn that they have an official, state-sponsored christian religion. they also have marriage equality. see? something for everyone! 🙂
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p>as to your assertions about what priests feel and think, why should we believe that they are authentic and not just your personal imaginings? and you have not provided a compelling reason why we should care about their tender emotions, failing institutions and power/money grabs. it is not they who are getting married, after all.
That’s actually what i meant by them being anti-papist, they all formed their own state churches, like Henry the 8th, and over marriage. so when you get a “civil” marriage license there, it comes pre-loaded with full religious significance and meaning, unless your a Catholic or a Jew or Muslim or something, then you first get the state’s Christian one and then get some meaningless ceremonial hoodad thing. Pretty offensive, really. It’s better to have the civil act (becoming legally married and allowed to have sex) be drenched in the participant’s full religious meaning, not the state’s, and that’s what we have here. By allowing the Priest, Iman, Rabbi, and Buddhist Priest, Quaker, Ethical Society guy, etc, to do the civil act, the couple walk out the church into the streets legally married just like they would if their religion was the state religion, because here there is no state religion.
A civil marriage is basically a state-religion marriage, like in Europe. Isn’t it nice that here, there is no trumping of the participant’s religion, and everyone’s religious ceremony can have full legal meaning, taking the couple from unmarried to legally married?
It is unfortunate that this practice leads to people conflating the two things, such that the state is viewed as conferring a sacrament.
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p>In reality, if a church doesn’t want to recognize a marriage, it need not. But this should prevent that couple only from being married in the church, and nothing more. It has worked that way with little muss or fuss regarding divorce, which is recognized by the state but rejected by at least some religions.
If they knowingly officiate over an illegal marriage they get in trouble, like if they know that the groom is already legally married, they can’t say “oh, but that wasn’t a Catholic marriage, therefore we can ignore it.”
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p>Divorce ends the legal marriage, and if a Church doesn’t recognize it and still considers the couple married, it doesn’t translate into anything meaningful – it doesn’t mean they can’t get married again, etc.
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p>But thanks for the “yes”, even if you had to add a “but” about something. I hope we can put to rest the idea that there are two marriages, and that a civil marriage should be separated from a religious ceremony. The religious ceremony should confer the civil status.
The divorcee can get married again, but not in the church. Because the church still recognizes the first marriage as legitimately in existence. Because, with certain exceptions, the church does not recognize the divorce. So the divorcee can be remarried by a JoP. But the church will consider the seond marriage to be adulterous, because the church considers the second marriage to be void.
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p>So if there weren’t two separate institutions in play, a Catholic divorcee would have no need to seek an anulment, as the divorce would suffice.
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p>But this is not so.
I note it because of personal experience. It is not the only church whose concept of marriage does not overlap with state law.
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p>Indeed, in Massachusetts that is now true of many, perhaps most, churches and similar religious institutions.
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p>If there were absolutely no distinction, then any church in Massachusetts would be obligated to conduct any marriage that is legal in Massachusetts– a specious argument made against legalizing gay marriage because such a requirement would be a plain violation of religious liberty.
to perform marriages except civil servants, and maybe even they have some leeway if they don’t think the marriage smells right (maybe the clerk susses out that the woman is being intimidated or is under the influence or something like that).
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p>But eventually, if everything is legal, only civil authorities would be obligated to perform a wedding. Everyone else can refuse to officiate any wedding they want to, no questions asked, or at least they should be able to.
It is not the only church whose concept of marriage does not overlap with state law.
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p>Sure, but police and tax accountants and attorneys don’t really care about what any church thinks. Churches can declare people married in the church (witness the strange polygamist and the teenager he forced to marry some guy on the news last week) but it has no legal meaning, the cops can come and arrest you, the tax accountants can laugh at you, the attorneys can ask for your money up front. Legally, the state says when you are married, in terms of the legal meaning, whether you’re married when you walk down the street and sleep in your bed and file your taxes. It doesn’t matter what church anyone belongs to, marriage brings certain legal rights and benefits. It is noteworthy that all religions – yes ALL religions – consider marriage to mean that the couple will immediately commence having sex together, conceiving children, exclusively with each other. That is the part that overlaps with state law, which also throws in all those thousand benefits and protections. The definition of marriage is left out of state law because it was and is so universal to all religions, that’s where the separation of church and state meet – at fucking.
From the top I haven’t read the article mentioned at the top, but I’ll mention E. J. Graf’s book What Is Marriage For?
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p>On several items
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p>Re they @ Mon Nov 26, 2007 at 16:27:42 PM EST largely irrelevant. Siblings, etc., are generally presumed to have priority on custody of children and survivorship issues (depending on the degree of consanguinity). Siblings, etc., don’t require marriage to establish familial reltions in that regard.
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p>Siblings, etc., can’t file joint income tax returns. Siblings aren’t viewed as a single economic entity, whereas married couples are. Do a little history about the joint income tax filings.
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p>Siblings don’t have rights in medical issues, but that is a misnomer. Neither does the spouse, for that matter. The issue in medical treatment (or cessation thereof) is what the patient would have wanted. That was the sole issue in, for example, the Terry Schiavo case: it wasn’t what the husband wanted, or what the parents wanted, it was what Terry Schiavo indicated that she would have wanted.
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p>Regarding We also don’t give permission to marry to people already married, to minors. I’m not exactly sure what you mean by this. We also don’t give permission to people to commit bigamy, whether or not they are minors. But some states allow otherwise underage children to marry with parents’ permission.
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p>Re joeltpatterson @ Mon Nov 26, 2007 at 15:06:05 PM EST:
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p> Marriage as a custom existed before the Church did. Yes, it did. Apparently, the Romans had basically the equivalent of what was referred to as common law marriage. The problem arose that, since there was no central registry, it was difficult to prove that a marriage existed after one of the partners had died. More on this later.
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p>According to some things that I have read, the RCCi (Roman Catholic Church, Inc) did not try to wrest control of marriage until after the 10th century CE. That was a part of the Leviathan’s (the RCCi’s) struggle against the secular government. For a while, the Leviathan won, but in recent centuries, countries in Western Europe regained control of marriage. I don’t know how it is in France, but in Germany, in order to be considered married, the couple has to mount their bans on the city hall door three days in advance, and appear before a government official. At that point they are married. They can choose to have a church ceremony, but the church ceremony does not a marriage make. Given the aniti-clericism in France, I would be surprised if it was not similar.
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p>Regarding the US states allowing clergypersons to conduct marriage ceremonies, it would probably be a violation of the 1st amendment if they did not, if they allowed secular justices of the peace do the same. The clergy persons should, of course, have to be required to satisfy the same requirements of secular justices of the peace in order to do so, otherwise that would be a violation of the 1st amendment.
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p>Regarding polygamy, I’ll merely point out two things. One that has no relationship whatsoever to same-sex marriage. (I’ll avoid discussion of the “rational basis” test that some here will recognize.) Specifically regarding polygamy, I’ll point out that the US Supreme Court addressed the issue in the 1879 (or 1880) case of Reynolds vs. US. It’s available over the Internet. Near the end of the opinion, the Court goes through what is essentially a “rational basis” analysis, although they don’t call it such. It’s only a couple of sentences.
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p>Another note on common law marriages. One of the reasons that some (although not all) states have outlawed common law marriages is, as I mentioned, the difficulty of proving that a marriage existed after one of the partners had died. Hence the desire for a central registry. People are married, until they are not.
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p>Another point. Someone suggested that the state get out of the marriage business altogether, in favor of something referred to as “civil unions.” That would not be possible. At the very least, there are more than a few international agreements related to “marriage.” None of them refer to “civil unions.”
… that the Romans actually had seven different ‘levels’ of marriage. I don’t know what all the variations were, but I think one of the characteristics was variation in the particulars about divorce (what was allowable and how severe).
…I’ve never seen anything to that effect, and I’ve never seen anything to contradict it either.
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p>One point that I should have made, but obviously didn’t (and I apologize for not having done so), is that marriage under Roman law established two things. One, a right of support from the spouse. And two, a right of inheritance. And that has basically carried through in the Western tradition.
A civil marriage is basically a state-religion marriage, like in Europe.
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p>I do believe that you are conflating two issues. Just because a country in Europe has a “state religion,” that does not suggest that everyone is expected to be a member of that relgion. The most obvious example is the UK, which has the Anglican church as the (nominal) state religion, but which also has adherents to the Roman Catholic Church, various Protestant sects and Islam.
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p>Moreover, at least one country, France, is so anti-clerical–because of the excesses of the clerics prior to the French Revolution–that they want to wipe all religious symbolism out of the public sphere.
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p>Regarding marriage, as I’m mentioned here before, in (at least) Germany, marriage is entirely civil; there is no religious component whatsoever. If a couple does not present themselves before a government official, they are not married. And that is true even if they have a ceremony in a church–which the are permitted, but not required, to do. Unlike in the US, Germany has not delegated the ability to marry to persons who are not government employees, including clerics.