Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Alabama Senate Passes Bill to Effectively Nullify All Sides on Marriage
TenthAmendmentCenter ^

Posted on 05/29/2015 6:48:25 AM PDT by shove_it

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (May 23, 2015) – This week, the Alabama state Senate passed a bill that would end the practice of licensing marriages in the state, effectively nullifying both major sides of the contentious national debate over government-sanctioned marriage.

Introduced by Sen. Greg Albritton (R-Bay Minette), Senate Bill 377 (SB377) would end state issued marriage licenses, while providing marriage contracts as an alternative. It passed through the Alabama state Senate by a 22-3 margin on May 19.

“When you invite the state into those matters of personal or religious import, it creates difficulties,” Sen. Albritton said about his bill in April. “Go back long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away. Early twentieth century, if you go back and look and try to find marriage licenses for your grandparents or great grandparents, you won’t find it. What you will find instead is where people have come in and recorded when a marriage has occurred.”

The bill would replace all references to marriages “licenses” in state law with “contracts.” The legislation would not invalidate any marriage licenses issued prior to the bill being passed...

(Excerpt) Read more at blog.tenthamendmentcenter.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events; US: Alabama
KEYWORDS: homosexualagenda; ssm
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-8081-90 next last
To: Mrs. Don-o

“Legal” marriage is always defined by the government or authority, and always has been, and in all societies.

Rome, Greece, Europe after the Catholic church gained the power to be the authority deciding what was legal marriage, Indian tribes, Islam, they all have to define legal marriage.

In America if you don’t care if your marriage is legal or not, then don’t bother with the law, many Mormons and atheists, and Muslims, already do that.

You can also get legally married in some states, without a license, but you still have to be able to prove that it is legal, IF, you want it to be legal.


41 posted on 05/29/2015 9:53:36 AM PDT by ansel12
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 37 | View Replies]

To: ansel12
There's a difference between some previously-existing, independent entity which is recognized by law, and something which is defined or regulated by law.

The word "legal" is used ambiguously to cover both.

By way of analogy, there are the Christian schools in Israel, which were founded decades,and in some cases, centuries before the State of Israel. The Israeli Ministry of Education calls them "recognized but not official."

The comparison is not exact on every point, but the points of similarity are these: Christian schooling, like Christian marriage, predates the State, is not defined or redefined, established, certified or controlled by the State. Its existence is not established, not subject to remodeling, or termination by the State. It is, however, recognized as existing, and accommodated as it functions according to its own recognized, pre-existing structure.

42 posted on 05/29/2015 10:26:42 AM PDT by Mrs. Don-o ("This is like deja vu all over again." - Yogi Berra)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 41 | View Replies]

To: ansel12
There has never been a time in America where you were forced to seek to make your marriage “legal”, if you didn’t want to.

At all these Places I’ve been at, I read the King’s Proclamation against Vice and Immorality, which has had very good Effects. For thro’ want of Ministers to marry and thro’ the licentiousness of the People, many hundreds live in Concubinage -- swopping their Wives as Cattel, and living in a State of nature, more irregularly and unchastely than the Indians -- I therefore made Public Notice ev’ry be given, that whoever did not attend to be legally married, I would prosecute them at the Sessions -- and that all who had liv’d in a State of Concubinage on application to me, I would marry Gratis -- Numbers accepted of my Offer, and were married, and then I baptize’d their Children…--Charles Woodmason, diary and sermon notes February 7, 1767

43 posted on 05/29/2015 10:30:32 AM PDT by Bubba Ho-Tep
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 30 | View Replies]

To: Vigilanteman; Mrs. Don-o
But, of course, the government had use of the bond money all that time and returned only the face value of that bond.

My understanding of the marriage bond is that no money was involved. It was a guarantee that no impediments existed. Was seen as prudent when men went fat afield to find wives.

From http://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog/2012/01/25/the-ties-that-bond/

What that bond actually was, then, was a form of guarantee that there wasn’t any legal bar to the marriage. Enforcing the guarantee was a pledge by the groom and a bondsman — usually a relative — to pay a sum of money, usually to the Governor of the State (or colony if earlier, or to the Crown if in Canada6), if and only if it actually turned out that there was some reason the marriage wasn’t legal. The bond shown here, for example, for the marriage of my fourth great grandparents in Wilkes County, North Carolina, in 1816, was a promise by the groom Boston Shew and his brother Simon to pay the Governor of North Carolina five hundred pounds, but it provided that it was “Void on condition that there be no just cause to Obstruct Boston Shew — Intermarriage with Elizabeth Brewer.”7 The use of marriage bonds was common, particularly in southern and mid-Atlantic states, well into the 19th century,8 when most jurisdictions started relying on what the couple said in a written application for a marriage license. And the laws about those… well… that’s a tale for another day…

44 posted on 05/29/2015 10:38:38 AM PDT by don-o (He will not share His glory and He will NOT be mocked! Blessed be the name of the Lord forever!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 23 | View Replies]

To: Mrs. Don-o

No it doesn’t, states and marriage law existed before Christianity, so did schools, and what does that have to do with the United States, where Christianity is not mandatory?

Why are you going off into the ozone land on this, try to stay focused on the law and politics here and protecting marriage.


45 posted on 05/29/2015 10:40:48 AM PDT by ansel12
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 42 | View Replies]

To: Bubba Ho-Tep

America has never had a King, that quote evidently predates us, and it covers more than marriage.


46 posted on 05/29/2015 10:43:10 AM PDT by ansel12
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 43 | View Replies]

To: Mrs. Don-o
Your post makes complete sense. If some choose to be thick headed about it....well...It's best to move on.
47 posted on 05/29/2015 10:43:44 AM PDT by wintertime (Stop treating government teachers like they are reincarnated Mother Teresas!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 42 | View Replies]

To: ansel12

You listed 1760 in your dates.


48 posted on 05/29/2015 10:52:27 AM PDT by Bubba Ho-Tep
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 46 | View Replies]

To: ansel12
Catholic Christianity, for existence, recognizes Natural Marriage but did not institute it. As for Civil Marriage, it has not existed in most of history, and does not exist in some countries to this day.

Neither Sacramental Marriage nor Natural Marriage were established by the State, nor licensed by States until quite recently. Historically, marriages were often contracts between the families regarding the exchange and distribution of property and the recognized paternity or legitimacy of children. They were enforced by family and friends: that's what "Bridesmaids" and "Groomsmen" were all about.

49 posted on 05/29/2015 10:55:32 AM PDT by Mrs. Don-o ("This is like deja vu all over again." - Yogi Berra)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 45 | View Replies]

To: wintertime

Thank you. I often write for the sake of lurkers and others who peruse with adequate reading comprehension. :o)


50 posted on 05/29/2015 10:59:15 AM PDT by Mrs. Don-o ("This is like deja vu all over again." - Yogi Berra)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 47 | View Replies]

To: LibFreeUSA

“Might as well go all the way and eliminate the word ‘Marriage’ from the term, and just call it ‘Partnership Contract’.”

There is nothing wrong in what you suggest. A legal incorporation of assets can occur, which makes everything a matter of civil law.

The word ‘marriage’ then contracts back to its original definition - a sacrament - instituted specifically and carefully by Christ Himself.

It’s going to wreak havoc on the family court system, which was due for an overhaul anyway.

I listed to Rush today for all of five minutes. What a great show he’s got - he was on a point about how some foaming feminzzi was upset about how Elton John’s spouse(?) indicated he was white on a birth certificate.

How this ties in was due to the fact this person is claiming that somehow men are taking motherhood over, and away, from women.

What struck me was how I’d never thought about all of this ‘liberation’ in that context. I believe men can’t do what women can do in raising kids, and vice versa.

However, perhaps all of this robotics bodes ill more for women than men. If you can grow people in artificial wombs, then why would you need women?

Our children are about to enter a very confusing, perhaps inhuman, phase.


51 posted on 05/29/2015 11:08:57 AM PDT by RinaseaofDs
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: wintertime

No, it didn’t make sense and won’t help preserve marriage in America.

Why are you guys so interested in getting off into the tall grass on this?

Libertarians and pro-gay marriage people do that as well, they want to get off of us fighting this as conservatives and republicans, as quickly as they can, and they try to divert the discussion into the tall grass of just another philosophical discussion.


52 posted on 05/29/2015 11:13:40 AM PDT by ansel12
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 47 | View Replies]

To: All

If you get married by a minister/rabbi/etc, it can be called a marriage?


53 posted on 05/29/2015 11:15:30 AM PDT by ncpatriot
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: Mrs. Don-o

Who cares?

Are you interested in fighting for marriage and the United States, or are you trying to divert a political discussion?

Do you do conservative politics anywhere, at any time?


54 posted on 05/29/2015 11:16:05 AM PDT by ansel12
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 49 | View Replies]

To: Mrs. Don-o

To: Mrs. Don-o
So you want Muslim clerics and gay clergy, and Mormons, along with priests to decide what is a legal marriage?

27 posted on 5/29/2015, 9:05:36 AM by ansel12


55 posted on 05/29/2015 11:17:19 AM PDT by ansel12
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 49 | View Replies]

To: Bubba Ho-Tep

That quote from a clergyman out on the frontier is a good history trivia catch, but I’m not convinced that it is enough to refute post 30, and it sure isn’t enough to refute the overall purpose of the mention in post 30.


56 posted on 05/29/2015 11:23:36 AM PDT by ansel12
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 48 | View Replies]

To: Vigilanteman

Here is some writing on that expensive bond.

“Many white people in North Carolina never formally legalized their marriages. One reason was because it cost a lot of money to purchase a marriage certificate in the colonial period, about £50. This was beyond the means of most people in North Carolina. (See “The value of money in colonial America.”)
Instead, some couples simply posted banns when they chose to marry, which was a tradition practiced by poor people in England. Banns were an announcement informing the community of a couple’s plans to wed. They had to be read three weeks in a row, which allowed time for anyone to object to the match (for example, if the bride or groom was already married). It also allowed the couple time to change their minds.

In England, a minister read the banns, but in North Carolina, there were few ministers, so couples would simply make the announcement to families or friends. Once the couple had made the announcement three times, the community considered them to be married. Until the mid-eighteenth century, though, the posting of banns was simply a ceremony without legal weight. In 1741, the Colonial Assembly, recognizing that most people could not afford a marriage license, passed a bill that made the posting of banns the legal equivalent of a marriage ceremony. To be legal, though, the banns had to be read by a government official or by a clergyman from the Church of England.

Even after the posting of banns became a legal form of marriage, some couples still did not make their unions official. One reason was that colonial society was disorderly, and it was often difficult to find a religious or government official to read the banns. In these cases, the community would simply accept a couple and treat them as though they were married. This meant that the community expected a couple to be faithful to each other and that the man would be responsible for educating and providing for his children, even though there was no legal contract.

Another reason some people did not legally marry was that only Church of England ministers could perform marriages. There were many different religious groups in North Carolina and so people who belonged to a different church, such as the Quakers, would participate in a religious ceremony with their church community. Quakers did not have clergymen and a couple would simply stand before the congregation three times and announce their intent to marry, at which point they were married.

An advantage of an informal marriage was that it allowed a couple to separate on their own terms. Colonial society was often chaotic, and people were constantly moving and relocating, especially men. If a woman was abandoned by her husband, she would most likely want to remarry. With more men than women in North Carolina, an abandoned wife would have many opportunities to form a new union. Without a formal marriage, she did not need a formal divorce, and she could take a new husband with little difficulty.”


57 posted on 05/29/2015 11:30:57 AM PDT by ansel12
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 23 | View Replies]

To: ansel12

Do you do reading comprehension anywhere, at any time?


58 posted on 05/29/2015 11:37:17 AM PDT by don-o (He will not share His glory and He will NOT be mocked! Blessed be the name of the Lord forever!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 54 | View Replies]

To: don-o

Are you disagreeing with me about how to stop gay marriage, agreeing, what?

Your post doesn’t make sense.


59 posted on 05/29/2015 11:40:51 AM PDT by ansel12
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 58 | View Replies]

To: Vigilanteman
Of course, the state will give up a little revenue from the licensing fee.

Seems like they would make it up by not having the marriage deduction.

60 posted on 05/29/2015 11:44:21 AM PDT by Know et al (Keep on Freepin'!!!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-8081-90 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson