6 ms·

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

by burntoutfire 5y ago

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
      Yeah I'm saying it's not pragmatic, it's the opposite of pragmatic. Of course people want governmental recognition, many hetero married couples want it and already rely on it. Gay couples also want equal rights on top of that. They want both. This is cutting the proverbial baby in half and redefining the legal institution so no one gets what they want, that will go well in a democracy /s
      - maerF0x0 5y ago
        I think what seems really off is just that we've legislated a single concrete version of something instead of it's abstraction (a person capable of making good choices). It makes sense to give people a way to indicate they intend to give a person legal rights, but it doesn't make sense to imply (by the concrete choice of "marriage") that it's basically going to be a person that you're having sex with, or monogamous with, or that they're of a certain set of sexual pairings (ie heterosexual)... And before you suggest it's not about monogamy, see that in many states have laws around adultery and fault/no-fault divorce... I should be able to extend the same set of privileges (like can make decisions for me if I am unable to) to my grandmother, or roommate, neighbor, priest, or whomever I choose. It makes little sense how we've constrained the solution w/o adding any value by those constraints. This maybe just the software engineer in me, but we've codified the concrete instead of the abstraction. This is actually something of high importance to single people too -- something like 30-40% of households are single person and do not have a simple way to elect a person who can make legal decisions for them besides a relatively expensive and difficult power of attorney... So I see it as win:win:win to distill todays "marriage" into a legal common ground and give that right to _all_ people. Then anyone, gay or otherwise, can claim "marriage" because there will not be a legal definition (kind of like "natural" in food labelling). Christians wont be able to claim a monopoly on an undefined term.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  I'm with the McGuffin on this: Marriage existed long before Christianity, so if anyone gets to give up the word, it's the religionists. Or, heck, let's be generous and let them keep using the term, provided they use it with a qualifier: "Religious marriage", or something. As long as everybody knows that's not what actually counts for anything in the real world... But the word "marriage" in itself is part of language just like any other word, and there's no sensible reason to let the religionists co-opt even some small part of that. (That's actually how it works, AFAIK, in traditionally deeply Catholic but legally wholly secular France: People "get married" twice. Once [usually first, AIUI] legally at the magistrate, and [then] optionally also in church, by a priest. But the latter is only "for show" -- for any deeply religious mothers and aunts who think that's "the real deal"; and, at a guess, in no small part to give the bride the grand show she's always been dreaming about.)

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
    Yeah I'm saying it's not pragmatic, it's the opposite of pragmatic. Of course people want governmental recognition, many hetero married couples want it and already rely on it. Gay couples also want equal rights on top of that. They want both. This is cutting the proverbial baby in half and redefining the legal institution so no one gets what they want, that will go well in a democracy /s
    - maerF0x0 5y ago
      I think what seems really off is just that we've legislated a single concrete version of something instead of it's abstraction (a person capable of making good choices). It makes sense to give people a way to indicate they intend to give a person legal rights, but it doesn't make sense to imply (by the concrete choice of "marriage") that it's basically going to be a person that you're having sex with, or monogamous with, or that they're of a certain set of sexual pairings (ie heterosexual)... And before you suggest it's not about monogamy, see that in many states have laws around adultery and fault/no-fault divorce... I should be able to extend the same set of privileges (like can make decisions for me if I am unable to) to my grandmother, or roommate, neighbor, priest, or whomever I choose. It makes little sense how we've constrained the solution w/o adding any value by those constraints. This maybe just the software engineer in me, but we've codified the concrete instead of the abstraction. This is actually something of high importance to single people too -- something like 30-40% of households are single person and do not have a simple way to elect a person who can make legal decisions for them besides a relatively expensive and difficult power of attorney... So I see it as win:win:win to distill todays "marriage" into a legal common ground and give that right to _all_ people. Then anyone, gay or otherwise, can claim "marriage" because there will not be a legal definition (kind of like "natural" in food labelling). Christians wont be able to claim a monopoly on an undefined term.
CRConrad 5y ago
I'm with the McGuffin on this: Marriage existed long before Christianity, so if anyone gets to give up the word, it's the religionists. Or, heck, let's be generous and let them keep using the term, provided they use it with a qualifier: "Religious marriage", or something. As long as everybody knows that's not what actually counts for anything in the real world... But the word "marriage" in itself is part of language just like any other word, and there's no sensible reason to let the religionists co-opt even some small part of that. (That's actually how it works, AFAIK, in traditionally deeply Catholic but legally wholly secular France: People "get married" twice. Once [usually first, AIUI] legally at the magistrate, and [then] optionally also in church, by a priest. But the latter is only "for show" -- for any deeply religious mothers and aunts who think that's "the real deal"; and, at a guess, in no small part to give the bride the grand show she's always been dreaming about.)