5 ms·

I've never understood the reason we even have marriage defined in government at all, and thusly would include "gay" marriage (all marriage is marriage if it's u

I've never understood the reason we even have marriage defined in government at all, and thusly would include "gay" marriage (all marriage is marriage if it's undefined)... We don't have a government definition of prayer or baptism, but for some reason we have have codified that one religious practice into our government? Doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Also why do they get varyingly get tax incentives or disincentives? Maybe its the armchair libertarian in me, but it seems like we should just remove any formal definition of marriage from the government and instead normalize more power of attorney style actions.

amelius 5y ago
I think governments generally want to impress their own values onto the people. Marriage is often part of that.
JasonFruit 5y ago
How would that increase government power? It's like you aren't even trying to grow government.
burntoutfire 5y ago
Marriage is not a religious practice. Proof: non-religious people get married all the time.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- nostrebored 5y ago
  Yeah and neither are Christmas or Easter!
  - handrous 5y ago
    Kinda true. Especially Christmas.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- maerF0x0 5y ago
  > Marriage is not a religious practice. I, of course, agree with you in principle. However much of the controversy is around the religious aspect -- ie some religions have a narrow definition of marriage which we've codified into law. part of me wonders if it would be smarter for us to cede the terminology to the religious and just remove "marriage" as a term from the government and instead normalize another term, perhaps but not necessarily "civic partnership". Once we recognize the part that government should be involved with we can start to remove all religious connotations because it's not the <term> that we're "attacking". Christians want to say marriage is exactly a man and woman w/ a clergyman ? Fine they can do that inside their building because that's not a legal thing. But if a Christian wants to say "civic partnership" is a specific thing, well that's too bad because they dont get to define law (at least not directly).
  - themacguffinman 5y ago
    That sounds politically dumber. "Marriage" has been normalized for centuries/millennia but now you think you can just quickly normalize another term before we solve this equal rights thing? You know, just a quick errand before we restore equal rights: change the prevailing culture and change definitions throughout a complex set of laws. This is exactly the junior developer mindset described in the thread parent: restoring equal rights to gay people is a problem but first let's spin our wheels inventing a different terminology and taxonomy for marriage and upending legal precedent and existing case law about marriage.
    - maerF0x0 5y ago
      I'm just trying to be pragmatic that one side doesnt seem to be willing to cede any ground, we could just simply move the fight elsewhere. it is both equal rights if "everyone/anyone can get married" or "no one can because it's not defined" (in the eyes of the government). If people aren't willing to accept the 2nd case then I'm guessing they dont actually want equal rights so much as public(governmental) recognition of their status.
      - themacguffinman 5y ago
gumby 5y ago
I mostly agree with you but there are certain useful functions. It’s an optional service the state provides to many many* people with negligible transaction fee, as with, for example, maintaining the roads, air traffic control, or food safety. Those things help you even if you never leave your home or never fly. First it’s a default mechanism for saying things like “if I get hurt this person can come see me in / ask questions about me in the hospital”. Also “we have joint economic activity so friction should be removed”. Second, kids can’t necessarily articulate for themselves so it’s a default way of saying “here’s a couple of people who are helping me and others can be disregarded by default” And it acts as a dash pot for both entering into and especially leaving these set of default rights and obligations. * Marriage should be universally available. I’ve never liked saying that I “supported gay marriage” — the correct phrase is that “I want us to stop discriminating against people in the case of marriage”
- lupire 5y ago
  You are describing civil unions. Legal marriage is just religous baggage.
- maerF0x0 5y ago
  > It’s an optional service the state provides to many many* This is essentially the power of attorney portion of my post. Perhaps it would be more inclusive if we just had a way to grant certain checkboxes and options to certain individuals. eg I could grant financial decisions to my mother, friend, cousin, and could even give a time limited grant to a girlfriend like "For the next year you can make life and death medical decisions for me" or whatever. Sadly i dont see it happening because our government is so archaic
  - gumby 5y ago
    The point is that marriage is a default bundle, which is easier than tracking individual contracts.
kube-system 5y ago
Marriage is a contract. Governments regulate the enforcement of contracts. That's why they're involved. The religious part of marriage is entirely optional.
- joenot443 5y ago
  I think the difficulty is that for the vast majority of American history, marriages weren't really performed without any religious connotation. Hell, even legally, from what I understand, there was a time where marriages _had_ to be performed by a clergyman of some kind. Now, you're right, the religious association is technically optional, but it's worth remembering that for a very, very long time, marriage was as much a religious agreement as it was contractual.
  - handrous 5y ago
    Got married in the '00s in the US and IIRC in that state it was still the case that, to be valid, you had to have an ordained minister or certain officials (a judge) sign the paper. Now, would anyone ever check? Nah. Unless litigation (divorce, inheritance, whatever) came up and someone thought invalidating the original marriage might somehow help their case, though even then, dunno if it'd really matter.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    There was once a time (and still some places) when religion played a role in regulating other aspects of society, like dietary regulations. Nobody says "keep religion out of my kitchen" when the local health department insists that you don't cross contaminate other foods with utensils used on raw meat. Just because we used to regulate these ideas with religion in the past doesn't mean that our current institutions are religious. Some people who are legally married also subscribe to religious meanings of marriage. Some people who have food handlers cards also follow religious food customs. They're related but independent concepts in the modern day. The modern legal construct of marriage in the US is secular.
- jagged-chisel 5y ago
  But the government doesn't get involved at the outset of new contracts between businesses. I get that government, via the courts, has involvement when there's a dispute, but it's not like two companies wanting a contractural relationship have to file the contract with the government when it's created.
Animats 5y ago
I've never understood the reason we even have marriage defined in government at all Some countries handle marriage as a religious thing. Israel works that way, and it's really complicated.
ska 5y ago
> or some reason we have have codified that one religious practice into our government? We haven't really codified the religious practice so much as codified the civil law assumptions around it. It is weird in many ways, and it is the most complicated (and misunderstood) contract that many/most people will execute in their lives and it's done very implicitly. On the other hand, if you didn't have the contractual side of marriage standardized, a whole other can of worms gets opened. If we didn't have a "standard contract" there are a crapton of things you would have to deal with individually. Before gay marriage, some same-sex couples worked pretty hard to try and get as close to the marriage contracts as they could through contracts, which as I understand it was pretty expensive (5 figures typically) and ultimately not entirely successful especially as there are other implicit aspects that run counter to it.
eadmund 5y ago
The reason that the State has historically cared about marriage is family formation. That's all. Given that 'marriage' nowadays has nothing to do with family formation, it makes sense for the State to get out of that business.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  > ...marriage is family formation. Or just look at it the other (and IMO more correct) way around: It's actually family formation that is "marriage". This truth used to be recognised by governments too, as witnessed by the ancient legal term "common law marriage". If it's time for anyone to "get out of that business", it's everyone but the state.
CRConrad 5y ago
> I've never understood the reason we even have marriage defined in government at all Then you haven't understood anything -- at least not about marriage -- at all. > we have have codified that one religious practice into our government It's the exact other way around: Marriage is a social / societal thing, i.e. exactly what government is all about. Religion -- perhaps particularly Christianity -- has co-opted it, but certainly didn't invent it. > libertarian Yeah, that explains it.

amelius 5y ago

I think governments generally want to impress their own values onto the people. Marriage is often part of that.

JasonFruit 5y ago

How would that increase government power? It's like you aren't even trying to grow government.

burntoutfire 5y ago

Marriage is not a religious practice. Proof: non-religious people get married all the time.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nostrebored 5y ago
Yeah and neither are Christmas or Easter!
- handrous 5y ago
  Kinda true. Especially Christmas.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
maerF0x0 5y ago
> Marriage is not a religious practice. I, of course, agree with you in principle. However much of the controversy is around the religious aspect -- ie some religions have a narrow definition of marriage which we've codified into law. part of me wonders if it would be smarter for us to cede the terminology to the religious and just remove "marriage" as a term from the government and instead normalize another term, perhaps but not necessarily "civic partnership". Once we recognize the part that government should be involved with we can start to remove all religious connotations because it's not the <term> that we're "attacking". Christians want to say marriage is exactly a man and woman w/ a clergyman ? Fine they can do that inside their building because that's not a legal thing. But if a Christian wants to say "civic partnership" is a specific thing, well that's too bad because they dont get to define law (at least not directly).
- themacguffinman 5y ago
  That sounds politically dumber. "Marriage" has been normalized for centuries/millennia but now you think you can just quickly normalize another term before we solve this equal rights thing? You know, just a quick errand before we restore equal rights: change the prevailing culture and change definitions throughout a complex set of laws. This is exactly the junior developer mindset described in the thread parent: restoring equal rights to gay people is a problem but first let's spin our wheels inventing a different terminology and taxonomy for marriage and upending legal precedent and existing case law about marriage.
  - maerF0x0 5y ago
    I'm just trying to be pragmatic that one side doesnt seem to be willing to cede any ground, we could just simply move the fight elsewhere. it is both equal rights if "everyone/anyone can get married" or "no one can because it's not defined" (in the eyes of the government). If people aren't willing to accept the 2nd case then I'm guessing they dont actually want equal rights so much as public(governmental) recognition of their status.
    - themacguffinman 5y ago

gumby 5y ago

I mostly agree with you but there are certain useful functions. It’s an optional service the state provides to many many* people with negligible transaction fee, as with, for example, maintaining the roads, air traffic control, or food safety. Those things help you even if you never leave your home or never fly. First it’s a default mechanism for saying things like “if I get hurt this person can come see me in / ask questions about me in the hospital”. Also “we have joint economic activity so friction should be removed”. Second, kids can’t necessarily articulate for themselves so it’s a default way of saying “here’s a couple of people who are helping me and others can be disregarded by default” And it acts as a dash pot for both entering into and especially leaving these set of default rights and obligations. * Marriage should be universally available. I’ve never liked saying that I “supported gay marriage” — the correct phrase is that “I want us to stop discriminating against people in the case of marriage”

lupire 5y ago
You are describing civil unions. Legal marriage is just religous baggage.
maerF0x0 5y ago
> It’s an optional service the state provides to many many* This is essentially the power of attorney portion of my post. Perhaps it would be more inclusive if we just had a way to grant certain checkboxes and options to certain individuals. eg I could grant financial decisions to my mother, friend, cousin, and could even give a time limited grant to a girlfriend like "For the next year you can make life and death medical decisions for me" or whatever. Sadly i dont see it happening because our government is so archaic
- gumby 5y ago
  The point is that marriage is a default bundle, which is easier than tracking individual contracts.

kube-system 5y ago

Marriage is a contract. Governments regulate the enforcement of contracts. That's why they're involved. The religious part of marriage is entirely optional.

joenot443 5y ago
I think the difficulty is that for the vast majority of American history, marriages weren't really performed without any religious connotation. Hell, even legally, from what I understand, there was a time where marriages _had_ to be performed by a clergyman of some kind. Now, you're right, the religious association is technically optional, but it's worth remembering that for a very, very long time, marriage was as much a religious agreement as it was contractual.
- handrous 5y ago
  Got married in the '00s in the US and IIRC in that state it was still the case that, to be valid, you had to have an ordained minister or certain officials (a judge) sign the paper. Now, would anyone ever check? Nah. Unless litigation (divorce, inheritance, whatever) came up and someone thought invalidating the original marriage might somehow help their case, though even then, dunno if it'd really matter.
- kube-system 5y ago
  There was once a time (and still some places) when religion played a role in regulating other aspects of society, like dietary regulations. Nobody says "keep religion out of my kitchen" when the local health department insists that you don't cross contaminate other foods with utensils used on raw meat. Just because we used to regulate these ideas with religion in the past doesn't mean that our current institutions are religious. Some people who are legally married also subscribe to religious meanings of marriage. Some people who have food handlers cards also follow religious food customs. They're related but independent concepts in the modern day. The modern legal construct of marriage in the US is secular.
jagged-chisel 5y ago
But the government doesn't get involved at the outset of new contracts between businesses. I get that government, via the courts, has involvement when there's a dispute, but it's not like two companies wanting a contractural relationship have to file the contract with the government when it's created.

Animats 5y ago

I've never understood the reason we even have marriage defined in government at all Some countries handle marriage as a religious thing. Israel works that way, and it's really complicated.

ska 5y ago

> or some reason we have have codified that one religious practice into our government? We haven't really codified the religious practice so much as codified the civil law assumptions around it. It is weird in many ways, and it is the most complicated (and misunderstood) contract that many/most people will execute in their lives and it's done very implicitly. On the other hand, if you didn't have the contractual side of marriage standardized, a whole other can of worms gets opened. If we didn't have a "standard contract" there are a crapton of things you would have to deal with individually. Before gay marriage, some same-sex couples worked pretty hard to try and get as close to the marriage contracts as they could through contracts, which as I understand it was pretty expensive (5 figures typically) and ultimately not entirely successful especially as there are other implicit aspects that run counter to it.

eadmund 5y ago

The reason that the State has historically cared about marriage is family formation. That's all. Given that 'marriage' nowadays has nothing to do with family formation, it makes sense for the State to get out of that business.

CRConrad 5y ago
> ...marriage is family formation. Or just look at it the other (and IMO more correct) way around: It's actually family formation that is "marriage". This truth used to be recognised by governments too, as witnessed by the ancient legal term "common law marriage". If it's time for anyone to "get out of that business", it's everyone but the state.

CRConrad 5y ago

> I've never understood the reason we even have marriage defined in government at all Then you haven't understood anything -- at least not about marriage -- at all. > we have have codified that one religious practice into our government It's the exact other way around: Marriage is a social / societal thing, i.e. exactly what government is all about. Religion -- perhaps particularly Christianity -- has co-opted it, but certainly didn't invent it. > libertarian Yeah, that explains it.