Gay Marriage, Again.

[tongodeon]

This morning matrushkaka and I were talking about my post about Prop 8. She mentioned that a conservative friend of hers from Georgia whose brother came out a while back, and the family dealt with it OK. "He's still our brother and we still love him." Then, recently, he announced that he wanted to get married to his boyfriend of 12 years and the family had

Comments

[tensegritydan]

And if churches and other religious institutions refuse to do gay marriages, or marriages between jews and none jews ect, that should be there right.

I agree with that in theory. The Catholic church is pretty strict about who can get married there. In that case, I think it is okay for them to refuse gay marriage just as they can refuse divorcees. They are acting as a private religious institution.

The problem is churches that allow anyone to come in and get married even if you are not a member of the congregation or religion if you pay them. At that point, the church is not functioning as a religious institution, it is selling a service to the public. The problem is that churches are even allowed to sanction a civil union, and then some of them turn around and sell that service to the public.

The solutions: 1) any institution that can grant a legal union must make that available to anyone who is legally allowed one 2) all churches are stripped of the right to grant legal unions. They can do whatever religious ceremonies they want to or don't want to but EVERYONE must go to a civil authority to be granted a legal union. 3) churches must prove they only grant unions to members of their religion based on a clearly established doctrinal guidelines

[matrygg]

This is a good point. I had always been under the impression that the marriage license is what actually legally marries a couple, and the church ceremony was window dressing, until my sister got married and they had to have the minister sign the license to make it official. I'm not sure, when silversunshadow and I get married, where it would be, but they don't really have Deist churches so it won't be at my local church.

[tongodeon]

You need an officiant to sign the license, and that can be a lot of people (not just a priest).

[flwyd]

Marriage requirements vary from state to state. On the lax end of the scale: in Colorado, the couple can act as their own Officiants. In many (most? all?) states, there is generally someone on hand in the county courthouse who can perform marriages -- judges, county clerks, etc.

Some folks who want a religious element to their marriage but whose religion doesn't have a church structure. One option is to have a friend (who may or may not serve the couple in a priest-like role) get a free ordination from Universal Life Church.

There are also 12 (13 if you count Texas which is a little weird) states which honor Common Law marriage. Essentially, if a couple lives as if they were married then they're married. The requirements for "living as if they were married" vary a little from state to state, but elements include living together, using a shared last name, keeping a shared bank account, referring to each other as husband and wife, etc. (Any single thing isn't sufficient and the lack of one thing doesn't discount it.) This form of marriage does not involve any paperwork, though people who care about the couple's marital status (e.g., an insurance company) can request a copy of a notarized recorded document. All states recognize common law marriages from other states.

[rimrunner]

They can do whatever religious ceremonies they want to or don't want to but EVERYONE must go to a civil authority to be granted a legal union.

This seems to be the rule in at least parts of Europe, since both family weddings I attended there had a civil ceremony as well as a religious one. The civil ceremony was the legally binding one; the church ceremony seemed to be primarily to make certain people happy.

I think it would be a good idea to do this in the States, although it would have made my own wedding day more complicated. (In my state, basically any minister can perform a legal wedding, and the definition of "minister" is so loose that I could have had rwx's cat officiate.)