Why can't the feds AND the states get out of Marriage?

[MalPearce]

Hi

I don't post on here much anymore but in the wake of this decision I thought I might as well.

Civil partnership is not a religious marriage, and a religious marriage is not a civil contract. They are not, and never EVER should've been, merged and confused in the first place.

Half the mess the world is in now, and the reason marriage is so under threat, is because even on the freedom loving Christian right of politics, too many people don't seem to grasp that ANY regulation of marriage at ANY level (states or federal) is an intrusion too far.

Take the politics out of marriage!

[bgill]

Marriage is a holy sacrament. It was never supposed to be about the government but the government saw $$$$.

[ansel12]

Do whatever you want, if you don’t care for making your marriage legal, then don’t, no one is forcing you to.

Do you understand that? The “state” doesn’t care if you seek to make your marriage have legal status.

[usconservative]

Any attempt to get the state out of marriage will be attacked by homosexuals. I guarantee it. It was never about marriage to them. It was about control and the state is the only tool they have.

Homosexual marriage is about more than control and the state: it is expressly about destroying faith and religion in this country. Their target: Christians specifically.

Were that not true, they would'nt have sued a small chapel in the west for not "marrying" a homosexual couple, and they certainly wouldn't have sued a small Christian owned bakery named Sweet Cakes by Melissa out of business and into bankruptcy either.

Homosexual marriages are all about destroying Christianity. The facts prove that.

[ansel12]

Two words: tax advantages. Two more words: Social Security.

THOMAS JEFFERSON
Bond for Marriage License
[23 December 1771]
Know all men by these presents that we Thomas Jefferson and Francis Eppes are held and firmly bound to our sovereign lord the king his heirs and successors in the sum of fifty pounds current money of Virginia, to the paiment of which, well and truly to be made we bind ourselves jointly and severally, our joint and several heirs executors and administrators in witness whereof we have hereto set our hands and seals this twenty third day of December in the year of our lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy one.
The condition of the above obligation is such that if there be no lawful cause to obstruct a marriage intended to be had and solemnized between the abovebound Thomas Jefferson and Martha Skelton of the county of Charles city, Widow,1 for which a license is desired, then this obligation is to be null and void; otherwise to remain in full force.
th: jefferson
francis eppes

GEORGE WASHINGTON

[Laserman]

Let the State icertify civil union contracts while the churches perform marriages. Then let the people see which churches are willing to marry same sex couples. It won’t be long until threesomes and more will be applying for civil union contracts and some churches will be performing multi-person “marriages”.

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

You are certainly right but nobody resists.

[usconservative]

You cannot ignore the fact that the legal institution of marriage has one purpose: to protect the children resulting from that marriage. There is a whole body of law existing for that purpose, consisting of laws to ensure the legal distribution of property among the surviving spouse and progeny of that marriage, to ensure that property stays within the biological family, to ensure that the children are cared for, etc., in the case of the death of one spouse.

Exactly correct!!! A State Marriage License is the entrance of a contract between a man, a woman, and the State it was issued in. That license exists for the sole purpose of entering into the contract with the State, which then defines what happens according to State Law, when a married couple divorces.

That is ALL a Marriage License is for.

I've long lobbied for the end of "State Marriage Licenses" and for Christians to enter into the Holy Union of Marriage with the blessing of their Priest/Pastor/Deacon presiding over the ceremony and completely skipping getting a State License.

The Church would certainly recognize the marriage as existing, the State on the other hand would not, and the State would be deprived of the "Marriage License" revenues from Christian Heterosexual couples.

There are also income tax implications in this scenario, which I'll skip for the time being.

[usconservative]

It won’t be long until threesomes and more will be applying for civil union contracts and some churches will be performing multi-person “marriages”.

Any church that performs a religious ceremony to "marry" anything other than one man and one woman should be abandoned as quickly as possible by its congregation as that will be a "church" that has aligned itself with evil.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

A similar idea is for Christian businesses who do not want to be forced to provide goods or services to homosexual rites.

That is, churches can legally discriminate. So these businesses make an “exclusive” contract with a large group of Orthodox and conservative churches to *only* provide their goods and services to sacramental weddings carried out by those churches.

This means that part of their business is no longer public, so is not vulnerable to state or federal laws. And all the rest of their business can remain public.

If a state tries an end around to break these contracts, there is a huge amount of judicial precedent supporting them, and business would fight it tooth and nail, because contracts are so essential to business.

[ansel12]

I've long lobbied for the end of "State Marriage Licenses" and for Christians to enter into the Holy Union of Marriage with the blessing of their Priest/Pastor/Deacon presiding over the ceremony and completely skipping getting a State License.

You are lobbying for something that already exists, and always has in America.

No one requires you to get a marriage license, people do it all the time.

[Laserman]

Agreed

[ansel12]

Warren Jeff's wives.

[MalPearce]

It’s very difficult to authenticate due to the way records were kept prior to Hardwicke’s act codifying the way things could be done, but actually there are lots of instances where women married women and men married men using the “by declaration” method, all the way through British history.

Hardwicke’s act - a political law - ensured ALL marriages not involving Anglican, Quaker or Jewish ministerial oversight had to be conducted in Anglican parish churches / chapels, by an Anglican minister.

In fact it was mainly because unorthodox, “clandestine” marriages, bigamous marriages, forced marriages, marriage for financial fraud, and YES EVEN same sex marriages were going on, that Hardwicke was motivated into drafting that Act.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and this was a classic example of that. Hardwicke gave the State the unprecedented ability to impose all kinds of restrictions on marriage that had NEVER existed before - such as imposing an age restriction that said people had to be over 21 to marry without parental consent.

And that set a dangerous precedent because from then on, in the UK and in America, politicians have thought it’s their business to define the parameters for who can and can’t marry.

Of course, what happened in the 18th Century after the Act came in was, people who were minded to do stuff without state interference - including 18 year old couples - did one of two things:

1. They eloped to Gretna Green, across the border in Scotland, to get married in the old way of marriage by declaration.

http://www.gretnagreen.com/lord-hardwicke-1754-marriage-act-a746

2. They sailed across the Atlantic, to the New World, and endured decades of hardship, and participated in the long struggles that eventually led to American independence and a Constitution with a First Amendment that ought to ensure there is no government interference EVER in religious matters, or promoting one Christian denomination’s opinions over any other’s.

So here’s the issue.

1. SCOTUS has basically said that there really shouldn’t be any barriers to anyone getting married to anyone else in any part of the USA (which in any practical sense is no different to enshrining the Scottish “marriage by declaration” principle in federal law)

Bizarrely,

2. The Christian right is arguing that doing this at the federal level is wrong, and it would be more constitutional to have Hardwicke Acts at the states level

But Chancellor Hardwicke’s mistake was thinking it’s the job of ANY politician to not just be seen to observe a certain set of religious principles and canon laws in his own own private life, but legislate to promote them so that all other people with different Christian beliefs have to abide by them also.

I would not want to live in any state that thought the least statist thing to do is have politicians have ANY role in telling churches who it must marry, so no pro-gay politician should ever have a mandate to tell any church it must wed gays.

But equally I would not want to live in a state where a crowd-pleasing Baptist politician thinks he has a mandate to tell a small Quaker church who CANNOT get married in it.

Statism is statism, and I don’t give a hoot if statism for the evangelicals at the states level sounds like a good idea while statism for the commies at the federal level is a bad idea. They’re both wrong.

It should be up to a church to decide who it can and can’t marry, nobody else. That’s what the constitution says. That’s what the Pilgrim Fathers sailed for. The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom hit the nail on the head:

“That the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time”

[The Great RJ]

I agree that civil contracts are not equivalent to marriage, but getting states totally out of the marriage contract is likely the only way to salvage this mess. If states would just eliminate the word marriage from their statutes substituting civil union then any gay couple can get their government approved union. However, churches would then be the keepers of covenant marriage and could decide who they will or will not marry.

I would expect that churches will be challenged in court that they are interfering with a civil right. I don't think even this loony court will challenge the first amendment right of churches. Imagine the conundrum of the ACLU if the government seeks to impose religious doctrine

[ex-snook]

Quite well said, thank you for the effort.

[MalPearce]

Any church that performs a religious ceremony to "marry" anything other than one man and one woman should be abandoned as quickly as possible by its congregation as that will be a "church" that has aligned itself with evil.

I have no problem with that, but I just do not believe it's the job of any elected politicians to decide if any denomination of church has the ability to marry people that way.

The state is perfectly able to legislate on matters of child protection, financial conduct and to some extent the welfare of all its citizens, without saying to ANY church minister that it is legally prevented from witnessing an exchange of vows between two consenting adults.

Something else to consider, were a state to attempt to do this, it's a bit pointless if the exact same two people can simply cross a state line and do the exact same thing in the same denomination of church just like English people were able to bypass Hardwicke's restrictions by travelling to Scotland.

[Lurker]

Two more words. “Common law”.

[MalPearce]

It won’t be long until threesomes and more will be applying for civil union contracts and some churches will be performing multi-person “marriages”.

Again, the only real reason that's an issue is because the state has appropriated marriage as a basis for policies in social, finance and other areas.

Consider polygamy: setting aside of all the religious objections to it which we all know and understand, from an entirely civil perspective the problem is how do you combine the assets and spread the responsibilities when the marriage takes place, how do you get equal consent from all partners, and how do you resolve the situation if any one person in an ostensibly unequal relationship wants out.Oddly enough, if ten business folk or even ten atheists wrote up a completely secular contract then the state wouldn't see any reason to think this is anything remotely complicated about understanding their relationship because it'd presuppose they're all equal unless the contract says different.

The easy way round this overcomplication in any situation is to just not get married from the civic point of view. Write a legal contract to cover the division of assets. Live in sin; unless ISIS get a foothold and the Jihadis find out you're unwed it's not going to kill you. Polygamists - don't say you're ten people who're married and living under one roof, say you're a community of ten cohabitees. It's semantics. As they'd say in Game of Thrones, political regulation of marriage is a mummer's farce really.

[ravenwolf]

Homosexual marriages are all about destroying Christianity.

---

That is true, but the Majority of Americans is either queer oriented or the homo`s have a lot of help from God haters who are not homosexual.

Other wise we would not have the politicians in office who would even think about going for such a thing.

Can any one see an admitted anti homosexual win a senate or house seat or the presidency? I can`t.

The only way a good man can win an election is to lie or cover up and be dam good at it.

The People are the enemy of God.

[logi_cal869]

After seeing the comments, I’m thinking the hypocrites are staying silent on this one.

For too long all I’ve heard from one side is “separation of church and state” and, from the other, the converse.

Sane discussions such as this unfortunately achieve little without the vitriol of either of the extremes...