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Why don't Christians want to enter "christian unions" and cede control over the word "marriage" to the state as a legal construct? Alternatively, why does the

Why don't Christians want to enter "christian unions" and cede control over the word "marriage" to the state as a legal construct? Alternatively, why does the state not abandon the idea of "marriage" altogether and only recognize domestic partnership? The problem with "civil union" is not the core idea of it, which is sound, but that it is fruit from a poisonous tree. The construct exists for the purpose of discrimination. It doesn't make sense without the desire to discriminate. "Civil Union" exists explicitly to mean "marriage, but lesser."

indigochill 3y ago
> Why don't Christians want to enter "christian unions" and cede control over the word "marriage" to the state as a legal construct? Because many Christians to varying degrees don't see marriage as a legal construct (whether exclusively, primarily, or at all, depending on the person), but as a religious one. "Civil Union" is the name that designates the legal construct, as the name implies. > Alternatively, why does the state not abandon the idea of "marriage" altogether and only recognize domestic partnership? I think this is something everyone could get on board with. It lets the religious sphere take back the "marriage" term while putting everyone on equal footing in the civil sphere. ...then we get to argue over what qualifies someone to be a husband/wife vs a partner!
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > Because many Christians to varying degrees don't see marriage as a legal construct (whether exclusively, primarily, or at all, depending on the person), but as a religious one. Whatever they “see”, it is, in fact, a legal institution, has been such as long as it has existed at all, and is a legal institution that in most modern liberal democracies (and many other regimes) has been entirely separate, and regulated differently, from any religious institution of the same name for quite some time. There's lots of institutions like that, because religion and civil law weren't historically separate domains, and many institutions (minority/adulthood, for one pair) exist which formerly were shared between the two and continue to frequently exist in both domains. That doesn't give religions the right to impose their rules on the public institutions, or to demand the public institution change its name.
- swatcoder 3y ago
  > Because many Christians to varying degrees don't see marriage as a legal construct (whether exclusively, primarily, or at all, depending on the person), but as a religious one It's not quite so simple, though. In most countries without a state religion or with modern humanist foundations, they already recognize it as both. Pedantic Catholics wouldn't recognize the religious validity of a marriage involving a divorced person blessed by a different church, but they don't challenge the legal validity. Likewise, almost all Christians accept the legal validity of a marriage involving two hetersexual Muslims or atheists, even while rejecting that it carries the same religious validity as their own. Most are totally accustomed to the difference between legal marriage and religious marriage and that requirements for such marriages vary. Their resistence to homosexual marriage has other roots.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > Pedantic Catholics wouldn't recognize the religious validity of a marriage involving a divorced person blessed by a different church, but they don't challenge the legal validity. A pedantic Catholic would note that the Church actually presumes the religious validity of non-Catholic marriages between people who are non-Catholics, even though such marriages would be invalid for a Catholic, and while the issue of prior divorce makes this a more difficult question, it only does so because it then requires a definitive resolution of the presumed validity of the former marriage. This is not-infrequent source of complications if one of the partners, after divorce in the second marriage, seeks to marry a Catholic in the Catholic Church, so its a fairly well-documented issue, if perhaps obscure to people who aren't pedantic Catholics.
- hayst4ck 3y ago
  > I think this is something everyone could get on board with. I don't think you've met very many Republicans, certainly not the ones I'm related to or have interacted with.
mcmoor 3y ago
I mean with enough propaganda and time you can have civil union be "marriage, but better" and marriage become "that obselete thing that only hicks do". Term conflict is also part of language evolution after all and can still go either way
rayiner 3y ago
> Why don't Christians want to enter "christian unions" and cede control over the word "marriage" to the state as a legal construct The dig at Christianity is odd. Of the 36 countries around the world that recognize same-sex marriage, only one (Taiwan) is non-Christian. And there it was adopted by court order, not legislation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage. In fact, every single country, besides Taiwan, to accept same-sex marriage is either populated by European Christians, or was colonized and dominated by them (in Latin America, and South Africa). None of the officially atheist countries recognize same-sex marriage. Of the former Soviet bloc countries that practiced state atheism, the only one that recognizes same sex marriage is Estonia, which was historically one of the few Protestant (Lutheran) countries in Eastern Europe. That’s not a coincidence. Acceptance of same-sex marriage arises directly out of Christian ideas about man being made in the image of God and in particular Protestant ideas about individualized morality. Historically, Japan’s view of marriage was strongly shaped by Chinese Confucianism, in which the focus of marriage is not the two individuals, but on the families being united through the marriage and the production of children that are related to both families.
- shirogane86x 3y ago
  I have no idea where you get that acceptance of same sex marriage arises from Christian ideas. Because in my personal experience it really doesn't. I live in Italy and a lot of discrimination against gay people (me included), and a big part of the reason why we don't get actual marriage, is catholic rhetoric. Most of the homophobia I've experienced in my life, anecdotally, has been from devout christians: the more devout, the worse the discriminantion. So although I have no data on hand, I have a very strong suspicion that Christianity has nothing to do with it. If anything, it seems like at least in Europe, the more secular countries tend to get better rights for queer people and they get them faster (I think the first European country to get gay marriage was the Netherlands, back in 2001. And they're one of the least religious countries in Europe)
  - rayiner 3y ago
    It’s hard to see if you limit your view to Europe, because Christian morality is just “in the water” there. I’m from Asia, where same-sex marriage is not accepted anywhere except Taiwan. It’s not accepted in Buddhist Thailand, Hindu India, Muslim Pakistan, atheist China, or Shinto/Buddhist Japan. It’s hard not to notice that the places where same-sex marriage is accepted have something in common: they were Christian for more than a thousand years. It’s not just “secularism”—the absence of belief in God or absence of organized religion. Japan and China are extremely secular countries, more so than anywhere in Europe. The notable thing about the Netherlands seems to be not that they’re secular, but that they also were a hotbed of the Protestant reformation. Until the 20th century, the majority of the Dutch population was Calvinist. A few years after the Netherlands legalized same sex marriage—and long before most of the rest of Europe did so—Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same sex marriage. Massachusetts was founded by fundamentalist Calvinists (the Puritans). Even though American Calvinists and European Calvinists split (geographically) 300-400 years ago, their version of “secularism” evolved in a very similar direction, and quite differently than the “secularism” of Asian countries. It’s really hard to say that’s just a coincidence.

indigochill 3y ago

> Why don't Christians want to enter "christian unions" and cede control over the word "marriage" to the state as a legal construct? Because many Christians to varying degrees don't see marriage as a legal construct (whether exclusively, primarily, or at all, depending on the person), but as a religious one. "Civil Union" is the name that designates the legal construct, as the name implies. > Alternatively, why does the state not abandon the idea of "marriage" altogether and only recognize domestic partnership? I think this is something everyone could get on board with. It lets the religious sphere take back the "marriage" term while putting everyone on equal footing in the civil sphere. ...then we get to argue over what qualifies someone to be a husband/wife vs a partner!

dragonwriter 3y ago
> Because many Christians to varying degrees don't see marriage as a legal construct (whether exclusively, primarily, or at all, depending on the person), but as a religious one. Whatever they “see”, it is, in fact, a legal institution, has been such as long as it has existed at all, and is a legal institution that in most modern liberal democracies (and many other regimes) has been entirely separate, and regulated differently, from any religious institution of the same name for quite some time. There's lots of institutions like that, because religion and civil law weren't historically separate domains, and many institutions (minority/adulthood, for one pair) exist which formerly were shared between the two and continue to frequently exist in both domains. That doesn't give religions the right to impose their rules on the public institutions, or to demand the public institution change its name.
swatcoder 3y ago
> Because many Christians to varying degrees don't see marriage as a legal construct (whether exclusively, primarily, or at all, depending on the person), but as a religious one It's not quite so simple, though. In most countries without a state religion or with modern humanist foundations, they already recognize it as both. Pedantic Catholics wouldn't recognize the religious validity of a marriage involving a divorced person blessed by a different church, but they don't challenge the legal validity. Likewise, almost all Christians accept the legal validity of a marriage involving two hetersexual Muslims or atheists, even while rejecting that it carries the same religious validity as their own. Most are totally accustomed to the difference between legal marriage and religious marriage and that requirements for such marriages vary. Their resistence to homosexual marriage has other roots.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > Pedantic Catholics wouldn't recognize the religious validity of a marriage involving a divorced person blessed by a different church, but they don't challenge the legal validity. A pedantic Catholic would note that the Church actually presumes the religious validity of non-Catholic marriages between people who are non-Catholics, even though such marriages would be invalid for a Catholic, and while the issue of prior divorce makes this a more difficult question, it only does so because it then requires a definitive resolution of the presumed validity of the former marriage. This is not-infrequent source of complications if one of the partners, after divorce in the second marriage, seeks to marry a Catholic in the Catholic Church, so its a fairly well-documented issue, if perhaps obscure to people who aren't pedantic Catholics.
hayst4ck 3y ago
> I think this is something everyone could get on board with. I don't think you've met very many Republicans, certainly not the ones I'm related to or have interacted with.

mcmoor 3y ago

I mean with enough propaganda and time you can have civil union be "marriage, but better" and marriage become "that obselete thing that only hicks do". Term conflict is also part of language evolution after all and can still go either way

rayiner 3y ago

> Why don't Christians want to enter "christian unions" and cede control over the word "marriage" to the state as a legal construct The dig at Christianity is odd. Of the 36 countries around the world that recognize same-sex marriage, only one (Taiwan) is non-Christian. And there it was adopted by court order, not legislation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage. In fact, every single country, besides Taiwan, to accept same-sex marriage is either populated by European Christians, or was colonized and dominated by them (in Latin America, and South Africa). None of the officially atheist countries recognize same-sex marriage. Of the former Soviet bloc countries that practiced state atheism, the only one that recognizes same sex marriage is Estonia, which was historically one of the few Protestant (Lutheran) countries in Eastern Europe. That’s not a coincidence. Acceptance of same-sex marriage arises directly out of Christian ideas about man being made in the image of God and in particular Protestant ideas about individualized morality. Historically, Japan’s view of marriage was strongly shaped by Chinese Confucianism, in which the focus of marriage is not the two individuals, but on the families being united through the marriage and the production of children that are related to both families.

shirogane86x 3y ago
I have no idea where you get that acceptance of same sex marriage arises from Christian ideas. Because in my personal experience it really doesn't. I live in Italy and a lot of discrimination against gay people (me included), and a big part of the reason why we don't get actual marriage, is catholic rhetoric. Most of the homophobia I've experienced in my life, anecdotally, has been from devout christians: the more devout, the worse the discriminantion. So although I have no data on hand, I have a very strong suspicion that Christianity has nothing to do with it. If anything, it seems like at least in Europe, the more secular countries tend to get better rights for queer people and they get them faster (I think the first European country to get gay marriage was the Netherlands, back in 2001. And they're one of the least religious countries in Europe)
- rayiner 3y ago
  It’s hard to see if you limit your view to Europe, because Christian morality is just “in the water” there. I’m from Asia, where same-sex marriage is not accepted anywhere except Taiwan. It’s not accepted in Buddhist Thailand, Hindu India, Muslim Pakistan, atheist China, or Shinto/Buddhist Japan. It’s hard not to notice that the places where same-sex marriage is accepted have something in common: they were Christian for more than a thousand years. It’s not just “secularism”—the absence of belief in God or absence of organized religion. Japan and China are extremely secular countries, more so than anywhere in Europe. The notable thing about the Netherlands seems to be not that they’re secular, but that they also were a hotbed of the Protestant reformation. Until the 20th century, the majority of the Dutch population was Calvinist. A few years after the Netherlands legalized same sex marriage—and long before most of the rest of Europe did so—Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same sex marriage. Massachusetts was founded by fundamentalist Calvinists (the Puritans). Even though American Calvinists and European Calvinists split (geographically) 300-400 years ago, their version of “secularism” evolved in a very similar direction, and quite differently than the “secularism” of Asian countries. It’s really hard to say that’s just a coincidence.