this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2024
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I’d like to see all laws referencing marriage deleted. Don’t let the government specify what it it’s at all. Get out of the church’s business. But also assign zero rights to it.
If people want to form a union for property ownership or raising children, don’t attach that to the religious concept at all. Just let them do it. This way religious people wouldn’t feel the need to weigh in on who is allowed.
And then we’re not discussing who the government is allowing to marry. Let each church decide which ones they’ll recognize.
Marriage was political before it was religious. Don't cede aspects of civil life to religious bigots.
Marriage does not have to be religious, and it's not exclusively religious in origin. Many millions of married yet irreligious people who had zero church involvement would take issue with that assertion.
I don't see the point in doing this even if it was. It's just semantics. We'd still need a legal shorthand for all the rights and responsibilities currently attached to marriage, as people would still want that. Then it's just marriage by another name.
Also, I'm not sure any of these countries "force" any church to recognize a marriage they don't agree with. That wouldn't change, since I'm sure different churches would still disagree on which marriages count.
The problem is that "keeping the government out of the church's business" is not the goal of the religious right when it comes to gay marriage. They want theocratic rule and the criminalization of what they see as sin. If both sides agreed on the principle of separation of church and state, most battles over LGBTQ rights would've been over long ago.
Separating the legal concept of unions between individuals and the religious institution of marriage would be almost as unpalatable to many evangelicals as fully legal gay marriage, because they'd rather outlaw homosexuality altogether.
I mean marriage is essentially a standard contract where the goverment allows any clergy to act as notaries for some reason. prenups are just modifications to the standard contract.
In some countries maybe, but in other countries you need a civil mariage first before you can do an optional church mariage ceremony.
Doesn't that mean that the church won't marry you if the government hasn't made it official?
That just follows the argument that the religious aspect is simply a voluntary add-on to the actual institution of marriage (a government-approved contract between individuals), which is the opposite of what the original commenter was arguing for.
Matrimony and marriage are separate already. If you want to get church-married, go for it. If you don't, don't. Doesn't sound hard or like it needs to be changed.
According to Wikipedia, the difference between matrimony and marriage isn't that clear:
For what it's worth, you can form a partnership with someone and not be married, there are a lot of ways to do it, including incorporating if you want to go that route or just performing a partnership agreement, which allows for things like shared ownership, there are a lot of other rights, but business are making it their goal to get those right for things like partnerships too.