Honestly I don’t know why the state is still in the business of giving out marriages. Who gives a shit what other people want to call marriage. The state should not even have the authority to perform marriages at all. It should be left as a cultural or religious institution. It has no right to legislate what is and is not marriage. The only thing that should be available is civil unions, being defined as a financial and legal union of two or more consenting adults.
That way, anyone can “get married” at their local church, at a secular ceremony, or piss-drunk in a pub by a barmaid. It would be legally vacuous and has only the meaning that the parties ascribe to it, or that is given to it by the religious authority they choose to follow. But if they want to be legally joined together then they would go register a civil union at the local registrar’s office.
If you’re a bigot and don’t consider two men in civil union to be married, cool, whatever, the law should not care about your opinion. You can privately think “those two are not married” all day, and be right in your mind. The only people whose opinions matter are those who want to call themselves married. There is no institution of “marriage” to defend, because you’ve already won. You can consider marriage to be anything you want and be right. Now you can leave other people alone.
The state cares insofar as your partner gets certain rights and will be included as family in many things.
For instance, deciding for you in medical cases, being informed if something happens, getting money from your life insurance whatever.
No marriage would mean the two are not connected at all in the states eye and thus not family.
You could say, ok lets just enable putting that into some record without marriage, but the state wants to safeguard itself as you can get things like citizenship and such
And in most states that is what you define as civil unions (there is no marriage as such often).
I don’t think this is at all a valid counter-argument as all of these powers can equally be given to civil unions, if they aren’t already. In my eyes, if you propose to someone and “get married” and want to give your spouse the legal powers associated with what was previously marriage, you would register a civil union.
No civil marriage doesn’t mean that people can’t connect themselves legally; it just means that you have to register a civil union to do so. All of the points you raise are easily defeated by just defining civil unions to replace marriage in all respects. The system is already very close to how I describe. You can “get married” at a church or wherever else and in most countries that does not mean anything until you have registered it with a local registrar. I’m just saying that the thing that happens in a church is “marriage”, and the thing that happens with the legal paperwork at the registrar’s office is called “civil union” regardless of the genders or sexualities of the parties involved.
Sorry, I think we are talking of the same thing. In Germany that is the way it is. Civil union and marriage is equivalent, you dont have to get married at a church, the only important thing is to go to the state for a few minutes and tell them basically.
I thought that the problem was that the state still has to accept things such as (whatever you call it lets say) unions of things such as same sex partner and so.
Problem is the civil union is mostly historically influenced often (tends to be less these days)
completely agree. the fact that this hasn’t been the widely adopted solution show that ppl are either really stupid or not actually interested in solving the problem.
Honestly I don’t know why the state is still in the business of giving out marriages. Who gives a shit what other people want to call marriage. The state should not even have the authority to perform marriages at all. It should be left as a cultural or religious institution. It has no right to legislate what is and is not marriage. The only thing that should be available is civil unions, being defined as a financial and legal union of two or more consenting adults.
That way, anyone can “get married” at their local church, at a secular ceremony, or piss-drunk in a pub by a barmaid. It would be legally vacuous and has only the meaning that the parties ascribe to it, or that is given to it by the religious authority they choose to follow. But if they want to be legally joined together then they would go register a civil union at the local registrar’s office.
If you’re a bigot and don’t consider two men in civil union to be married, cool, whatever, the law should not care about your opinion. You can privately think “those two are not married” all day, and be right in your mind. The only people whose opinions matter are those who want to call themselves married. There is no institution of “marriage” to defend, because you’ve already won. You can consider marriage to be anything you want and be right. Now you can leave other people alone.
The state cares insofar as your partner gets certain rights and will be included as family in many things.
For instance, deciding for you in medical cases, being informed if something happens, getting money from your life insurance whatever.
No marriage would mean the two are not connected at all in the states eye and thus not family.
You could say, ok lets just enable putting that into some record without marriage, but the state wants to safeguard itself as you can get things like citizenship and such
And in most states that is what you define as civil unions (there is no marriage as such often).
I don’t think this is at all a valid counter-argument as all of these powers can equally be given to civil unions, if they aren’t already. In my eyes, if you propose to someone and “get married” and want to give your spouse the legal powers associated with what was previously marriage, you would register a civil union.
No civil marriage doesn’t mean that people can’t connect themselves legally; it just means that you have to register a civil union to do so. All of the points you raise are easily defeated by just defining civil unions to replace marriage in all respects. The system is already very close to how I describe. You can “get married” at a church or wherever else and in most countries that does not mean anything until you have registered it with a local registrar. I’m just saying that the thing that happens in a church is “marriage”, and the thing that happens with the legal paperwork at the registrar’s office is called “civil union” regardless of the genders or sexualities of the parties involved.
Sorry, I think we are talking of the same thing. In Germany that is the way it is. Civil union and marriage is equivalent, you dont have to get married at a church, the only important thing is to go to the state for a few minutes and tell them basically.
I thought that the problem was that the state still has to accept things such as (whatever you call it lets say) unions of things such as same sex partner and so.
Problem is the civil union is mostly historically influenced often (tends to be less these days)
completely agree. the fact that this hasn’t been the widely adopted solution show that ppl are either really stupid or not actually interested in solving the problem.