Oh well...
Nov. 8th, 2008 03:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avevale_intelligencerThis started as a comment to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ci5rod's post on the gay marriage issue, or rather a comment to a comment on it, but it got too long and I didn't want to risk starting another ding-dong in someone else's LJ.
So I've brought it back here. The fact that I have disabled comments isn't intended to be antisocial, it's just self-protection: if anyone comments I will probably be impelled to answer, and before you know it we're off to the races. I can't go through that again quite yet.
I get confused. Are the people who want to get religion out of the marriage business the same people who want to get the government out of the marriage business? Because I'm just wondering who's going to be left *in* the marriage business when they've finished. The blacksmith at Gretna Green, I suppose, but he's going to be awfully busy...
Slightly more seriously, I can't help feeling that an essential part of "marriage"/"civil partnership"/whatever, as opposed to casually hooking up for a few weeks and then splitting, is and has been for as long as anyone knows the recognition and witnessing of the commitment by an outside authority. Which has got to be either the church or the state. And whichever one you go with is going to assume, I think with some justification, that they have some say in what constitutes a marriage as recognised by them. Therefore, unless the intention is to throw out marriage completely, the objective must be to persuade, or compel, one or both of those authorities to expand their definitions.
Just a thought, anyway. Read, consider, see what you think, accept or discard or revise as you wish, and move on with my blessing.
ci5rod's post on the gay marriage issue, or rather a comment to a comment on it, but it got too long and I didn't want to risk starting another ding-dong in someone else's LJ.So I've brought it back here. The fact that I have disabled comments isn't intended to be antisocial, it's just self-protection: if anyone comments I will probably be impelled to answer, and before you know it we're off to the races. I can't go through that again quite yet.
I get confused. Are the people who want to get religion out of the marriage business the same people who want to get the government out of the marriage business? Because I'm just wondering who's going to be left *in* the marriage business when they've finished. The blacksmith at Gretna Green, I suppose, but he's going to be awfully busy...
Slightly more seriously, I can't help feeling that an essential part of "marriage"/"civil partnership"/whatever, as opposed to casually hooking up for a few weeks and then splitting, is and has been for as long as anyone knows the recognition and witnessing of the commitment by an outside authority. Which has got to be either the church or the state. And whichever one you go with is going to assume, I think with some justification, that they have some say in what constitutes a marriage as recognised by them. Therefore, unless the intention is to throw out marriage completely, the objective must be to persuade, or compel, one or both of those authorities to expand their definitions.
Just a thought, anyway. Read, consider, see what you think, accept or discard or revise as you wish, and move on with my blessing.