Posted on 06/29/2015 3:57:32 AM PDT by markomalley
6. State control
The Clandestine Marriage Act of 1753, popularly known as Lord Hardwicke's Act, marked the beginning of state involvement in marriage, says sociologist Carol Smart of the University of Manchester. "You've got these parallel strands going on of the secular and the religious sides, and that clearly hasn't gone away," Smart adds.
The act required couples to get married in a church or chapel by a minister, otherwise the union was void. Couples also had to issue a formal marriage announcement, called banns, or obtain a licence.
Most prospective newlyweds were already following these directives, which were enshrined in canon law. But with the act, "the penalty for not complying became much, much harsher," Probert says.
"You can see it as the state increasing its control - this is almost too important just to leave to canon law, this needs a statute scheme and specific penalties if you don't comply," she says. "[It] put the formalities required for a valid marriage on a statutory footing for the first time."
7. Civil marriages
The Marriage Act of 1836 allowed for non-religious civil marriages to be held in register offices. These were set up in towns and cities across England and Wales. The act also meant nonconformists and Catholic couples could marry in their own places of worship, according to their own rites. Apart from a brief period during the 17th Century, marriages had been overseen by the Church of England - even if the couples weren't members.
"If you were Baptist, you might not want to get married in the Church of England but that was what you had to do," Probert says. "There's no point in going through a ceremony that didn't give you the status of a married couple."
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
The above-referenced post shows a pre-revolutionary license issued to Thomas and Martha Jefferson.
This article, and specifically the parts extracted above, gives a good history of it and is applicable since that was the law of the land here "in the colonies" prior to the Revolution.
So, apparently, prior to 1753, all English marriages were solely controlled by the established religion. Between 1753 and 1836, all marriages had to be solemnized by the established religion, but established those canon law requirements into civil law.
You will note that the license was not a requirement, but was an alternative to calling the banns (formal announcment in the parish church).
It does not appear that civil marriages were not legalized in England until 1836...and it was at that time that the government started collecting vital statistics.
While the 1836 Act is just a matter of interest to us here in the States, the 1753 law is relevant to our history as it was the law of the land prior to the Revolution. Does anybody have a timeframe when marriage licenses became mandatory in the US? I've tried to look, but can't really get anything more specific than the late 19th Century.
since I mentioned your post above, thought it would polite to give you the ping...
The basis of civil marriage laws is property. Specifically, could a man divorce a woman and keep all of the property that she brought to the marriage? And how were the children to be cared for? On that basis, we could easily separate civil contract law from what happens in churches. We could, but that’s not the goal of the Left. They will not be satisfied by the latest SCOTUS ruling. They would also not be satisfied by the destruction of every religious congregation in this country, because evil is never satisfied with its last meal. As I told friends last night - If I have to go to jail to defend my religious rights, I’ll do so.
I agree-it’s just like abortion- it wasn’t enough to legalize it, they want it to be as brutal as possible it seems.
We always rely on Washington and Jefferson to prove that marriage licenses existed all along but they really weren’t typical. They were wealthy people with lots of property and lots of debts and their legal documentation of marriage was largely a means of protecting the spouse from the collection of debts acquired prior to the marriage.
When George Washington died, his slaves were freed but Martha Washington’s slaves weren’t. They were collateral on debts owed as were her husband’s. Much of George Washington’s vast landholding was used to repay debts still owed upon his death which allowed the slaves to be freed.
People on the frontier were a whole different ball game. They were generally poor, held only a couple acres of land, and didn’t see government representatives for years at a time. In my ancestry research, I found lots of people who lived together for years before a traveling preacher came along and made it official. He might write on a slip of paper for the couple that they are married and record their names in a book that might be recorded with the state when and if the preacher returned to civilization.
In post Napoleonic Austria, under the rigid rule of Metternich, a man had to get a license to marry. He had to show that he was financially able to support a wife and family, i.e. have a regular job. Franz Schubert was basically a freelance composer and was refused a license because he didn’t have a specific employer. It’s conjectured that he contracted his fatal syphilis at a brothel in part due to the fact that he was denied a spouse.
Exactly! Get gov’t out of marriage!
The first ceremonies under the Civil Partnerships Act took place in Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales in December 2005. At the time, campaigners said the law ended inequalities for same-sex couples. Meg Munn, minister for equality, said: "It accords people in same-sex relationships the same sort of rights and responsibilities that are available to married couples."
Smart calls the event a "milestone" that "is marriage by any other name, essentially".
She adds: "Legally speaking, there's only a tiny difference. "The actual allowing of same-sex couples to enter into a state-recognised, basically marriage, with all the same obligations, the same safeguards and so on is really, really significant."
To many Christians, however, while a civil partnership confers all the legal rights of marriage, a church wedding is seen as a mystical event, the making of promises before God in a sacred setting, endowing the relationship with a special "blessed" quality.
Marriage "obligations, safegaurds, and so on..." is deliberately vague.
Traditionally marriage consummated a relationship, creating a bond welded by God. This is the "Holy Matrimony" provided by the church.
A preponderance of citizens are living together and raising children outside legal marriage and generally without the blessing of the church.
This current homosexual marriage debacle will force the church to address marriage as a holy sacrament.
I foresee holy matrimony without state legal contract as vital to the role of the church in society. In this way the church and the couple are able to achieve a condition of relationship outside the constraints of the state. Legal entanglements have been, I believe, the primary motivation for couples living together outside state controlled marriage.
In fact, I am considering creating a "Holy Matrimony Chapel" to allow couples to sanctify their love for each other and their commitment to raise children as a purely sacred act without benefit of government licensure. The state may no more control Holy Matrimony than they can control baptism, communion, burial or any other rite of the church. Indeed, let them try.
Incrementalism!
The disease that all forms of government has. It is impossible to stop for it “baits” the voting public masses to just give a little bit of their freedoms away and they will stop there.
Fools the stupid and ignorant public every time without fail and now we find ourselves with the latest generation of adult Americans who are gladly handing every freedom they had to the government for “the good life” they now think they live in.
Orwell’s 1984 has truly come to life. The worst part is that his book clearly defined to the very minuscule point what today would be.
It will never turn back for the very fact that us older, more responsible and law abiding citizens are far outnumbered by those who came after us.
It will also force changes in the way married couples are taxed and will force changes in things like social security.
I don’t think that is true. I think most would prefer that it occur very early and be done chemically (like a pill that prevents the zygote/fetus from attaching or detaches it if it’s already attached).
Otherwise abortion clinics would encourage women to wait to make a decision until they are at the last legal moment.
Yes and no. I think it would basically make everything be like a pre-nuptial agreement. So if you wanted to share your SS with a significant other you could. If you die and have kids and no contract is in place the kids get it (just as it is today).
It does get more complicated if I want to “marry” 3 people and give them each a portion of my spouse benefit. But it can be done. There is a value attached to that benefit, so I can split it in 3 and then assign it accordingly via will or contract. After all SS should be my insurance policy to spend as I see fit. This could actually drive beneficial changes to SS and help get gov’t out of our SS $$$ too.
This is the same progression you can see in the law regarding Church tax-exempt status.
Churches aren’t tax-exempt because of 501c(3). The Church predates the state and the state recognized from its founding that it had no authority over religious matters. When 501c(3) came around, this part of the IRS code was merely going to formalize the relationship in addition to codifying how other organizations may be tax-exempt.
Come to today and this formalized relationship has become the hammer of control. Instead of having no authority in matters of the Church, 501c(3) has put the government squarely into Church business.
You don’t want to give the government control or allow them to codify things over which they have no jurisdiction. They will use their new code as authority. That was the argument against a Bill of Rights—regardless of the wording of the 9th and 10th Amendments, the enumerated rights would become the only rights respected by government... if that.
bttt
Most oppression starts with gradual infringement of freedom. Then when a person or group recognizes the opportunity to exert power and control, it accelerates rapidly.
To see how this starts, look at a typical homeowners’ association. Regardless of how minimal or oppressive they start out, eventually someone wants to control what his neighbor does or doesn’t do, so they get a new rule passed. Eventually, they become ever more oppressive. I don’t like my neighbor’s fence - Ban fences of that type. I don’t like my neighbor’s yard. Make a rule to force him to mow more often. I don’t like the noise my neighbor makes at 10 pm when he hauls his trash to the curb. Make a rule that trash cans have to be moved to the curb before 9 pm. I don’t like the unsightly trash cans sitting in the street all day. Make a rule that trash cans can be moved to the curb until 8 pm. ..... and on it goes......
Sound silly? Yes. But this is what happens. And those who get drunk on power are never satisfied with the amount of control they have. It always has to be more. Now we are at the point where those who are drunk on power are not merely restricting our actions to conform to their standards, they are forcing us to condone their perverted actions to make them feel good about themselves. (Hint: They never will.)
It depends on the state, marriage licenses became mandatory in 1639, in Massachusetts.
From THE COLONIAL FAMILY IN AMERICA “While we think of the early New England settlers as very religious, they actually viewed marriage as a civil contract, not a religious contract. Consequently, marriage was a function of the magistrates more than the clergy.”
From LEGISLATIVE GUIDE TO MARRIAGE LAW Iowa.gov “They (Puritans founders of Massachusetts) believed that marriage was not a religious ceremony but a civil contract. They required that this covenant must be “agreed” or “executed” (not “performed” or “solemnized”) before a magistrate, and not a minister. They also insisted that if the terms of the marriage covenant were broken, then the union could be ended by divorce. These attitudes became the basis of regional marriage customs throughout New England.”
People do that by the millions today, you can get married without being legal today, or a 100 years ago, or 200 years ago NO ONE CARES, the government doesn't seek you out to make your marriage legal, you have to seek out what is required to make your marriage legal, if that is what you want, and the vast majority of normal people DO want their marriage to be legal and recognized by the state and institutions and places of employment, and by the community, as legal, before God and man.
Now if one of those pioneers you mentioned who were shacking up, enlisted in the military in 1780, or 1880, or 1980, and wanted his marriage to be recognized as legal, then we have to assume that he had to show some proof of legality to the feds.
We are fighting to save marriage in America.
Why this silly pretension that we can suddenly send our republican politicians out to convince 2015 America that we should end marriage as they know it, and totally change everything, with an entirely new world of Mosques and gay churches, and Mormon and Hindu Temples and Cults, adding polygamy to the gay marriage problem, and making up whatever they want as marriage, and atheists and the non-religious with a whole new collection of contract laws, and the family courts and divorce courts all thrown out and total chaos and confusion basically saying that there is no such thing as marriage at all.
Do you really see this as a winning issue that will be winning elections and having America eager to vote for?
We would have a better chance of getting the public to love the metric system, which is far less baffling than this ridiculous nonsense that is being offered by people, (largely anti-Christian libertarians pushing this “religion” angle) trying to drag conservatives out of the political arena, and into the shadows of total irrelevancy, allowing the rest of society to continue moving past us, as we drop out of the fight.
Now is not the time to be dropping out into fantasy and escapism.
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