Gay Rights, the Law and Politics

Alaric said:

In order that there isn't a huge backlog of individual requests, pre-approved 'templates' will be made, so when I want to be with a girl forever, I'll get down on one knee, and present a contract and say, "Will you make me the happiest man in the world and sign civil union 16B with me?" And then her lawyer will get together with my lawyer and work out the details. *sigh*... so romantic...

Click to expand...

painted wolf said:

*sigh*

I have some bad news... it seems that the Cherokee nation of Oklahoma has banned gay marrage. So much for tradition. mg:

looks like they didn't want to go agianst the state government.

wa:do

Click to expand...

Mr_Spinkles said:

pah, do you think an amendment to ban gay marriage will pass? I think it would be unlikely.

Click to expand...

Bastet said:

Well, John Howard's anti-gay marriage and adoption laws are looking like passing uncontested. I love my country, but my future isn't here anymore, and is looking less and less like it will ever be. :roll:

"Government legislation to prevent same-sex couples from marrying or from adopting overseas children passed the lower house of parliament on Thursday.

The Liberal government wants the bill proclaimed into law before the country heads into an election. It was announced last month by Australian Prime Minister John Howard."

Taken from http://www.365gay.com/newscon04/06/061704ozMarr.htm

Click to expand...

Tying the Knot: Civil Contract or Holy Matrimony?

by Kevin Eckstrom
Religion News Service




WASHINGTON —- Are 10 little words — “By the power vested in me by the state of ...” — the most crucial phrase in the culture war involving gay marriage?

They are some of the most significant powers delegated to a member of the clergy, when acting for both God and country, he or she pronounces a couple to be married as husband and wife.

But any couple who has ever filed a joint tax return will tell you it is the civil marriage license, not the minister or rabbi’s blessing, that entitles them to the legal benefits of marriage.

So if marriage is essentially a civil contract, shouldn’t a couple be singing — the Dixie Cups’ 1958 standard notwithstanding — that they’re going to City Hall, and not the chapel, if they are “gonna get married?”

“We don’t ask the state’s permission to do confirmations, baptisms or funerals, so why should we ask the state’s blessing to do weddings?” asked the Rev. Christopher Webber, vicar of Christ (Episcopal) Church in Canaan, CT.

Since 1994, when he published Re-inventing Marriage, Webber has argued for a separation of church and state when it comes to marriage. There is no good reason, he said, to confuse civil marriage with holy matrimony.

Proponents of gay marriage agree. Long ago they set aside dreams of church bells and flower-covered altars to focus instead on the legal document that conveys the rights and responsibilities of marriage.

They also point to places like Sweden, France and Japan, where newlyweds pursue both sacred and secular nupitals as a matter of routine.

Defenders of traditional marriage, meanwhile, argue that marriage will be forever harmed if either church or state is granted sole custody.

“One of the strengths of marriage is that it combines the two,” said Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University. “To have this kind of splitting off weakens our understanding of what we have held marriage to be for centuries.”

A small but growing number of clergy — mostly from liberal mainline Protestant churches — say they feel uncomfortable granting state approval to marriages, especially if they cannot also bless gay unions.

“There are many people, myself included, who feel uncomfortable acting as an agent of the state when we as pastors are asked to sign marriage licenses,” said the Rev. Lois Powell, a team leader in the Justice and Witness division of the United Church of Christ.

“A marriage is a legal, civil agreement between two people. The role of the church is to offer blessing to relationships.”

Back in 2000, Episcopal Bishop Mary Adelia McLeod of Vermont said the church should relinquish its role in weddings unless it was given equal jurisdiction in granting divorces.

“The clergy of our church should be agents of God’s blessing,” said the now-retired bishop, “and not agents of the state.”

In San Francisco, Unitarian Universalist the Rev. Margot Campbell Gross recently signed her first marriage license in seven years — to a gay couple — after she joined several dozen UUA ministers in boycotting marriage licenses until gay couples can legally wed.

Just where did this church-state marriage of convenience come from? The answer, it turns out, has been after a tumultuous courtship.

Historically, churches did not get into the marriage business until the Middle Ages. But in the 16th century, Protestant reformer Martin Luther argued against marriage as a church-approved sacrament, and threw it back into the civil sphere.

America’s earliest pioneers were church-state purists. The Rev. Peter Gomes, pastor of Harvard University’s Memorial Church, noted that the Pilgrims who arrived in 1621 didn’t authorize religious marriage until 1692.

“The civil law is just that, and the distinction between it and ecclesiastical law is as important as the necessary distinction between church and state,” he said in a recent op-ed published in The Boston Globe.

Even though the Pilgrims imported Luther’s belief in civil marriage to America, marriage has never been an either/or institution, said John Witte, director of the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Religion at Emory University and author of From Sacrament to Contract: Marriage, Religion and Law in the Western Tradition.

“Marriage is a spiritual association, a natural association, a private contract and a social estate,” he said. “Those four corners were considered to be four dimensions of an institution that was multilayered.”

Don Browning, who headed the Religion, Culture and Family Project at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School, said marriage is intimately tied to notions of sexuality, intimacy, parenthood and mutual support that neither side has fully considered.

Browning, who takes a rather dim view of gay marriage, said gay marriage could boost the importance of marriage by expanding it, or belittle it by watering it down. It’s a discussion that he said, until now, has been “abysmal.”

“That’s the underlying discussion that will feed the legal, religious, political decisions that will have to be made,” he said. “But so far, I don’t think it’s happening very well.”

Click to expand...

pah said:

Tying the Knot: Civil Contract or Holy Matrimony?

by Kevin Eckstrom
Religion News Service




WASHINGTON —- Are 10 little words — “By the power vested in me by the state of ...” — the most crucial phrase in the culture war involving gay marriage?

They are some of the most significant powers delegated to a member of the clergy, when acting for both God and country, he or she pronounces a couple to be married as husband and wife.

But any couple who has ever filed a joint tax return will tell you it is the civil marriage license, not the minister or rabbi’s blessing, that entitles them to the legal benefits of marriage.

So if marriage is essentially a civil contract, shouldn’t a couple be singing — the Dixie Cups’ 1958 standard notwithstanding — that they’re going to City Hall, and not the chapel, if they are “gonna get married?”

“We don’t ask the state’s permission to do confirmations, baptisms or funerals, so why should we ask the state’s blessing to do weddings?” asked the Rev. Christopher Webber, vicar of Christ (Episcopal) Church in Canaan, CT.

Since 1994, when he published Re-inventing Marriage, Webber has argued for a separation of church and state when it comes to marriage. There is no good reason, he said, to confuse civil marriage with holy matrimony.

Proponents of gay marriage agree. Long ago they set aside dreams of church bells and flower-covered altars to focus instead on the legal document that conveys the rights and responsibilities of marriage.

They also point to places like Sweden, France and Japan, where newlyweds pursue both sacred and secular nupitals as a matter of routine.

Defenders of traditional marriage, meanwhile, argue that marriage will be forever harmed if either church or state is granted sole custody.

“One of the strengths of marriage is that it combines the two,” said Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University. “To have this kind of splitting off weakens our understanding of what we have held marriage to be for centuries.”

A small but growing number of clergy — mostly from liberal mainline Protestant churches — say they feel uncomfortable granting state approval to marriages, especially if they cannot also bless gay unions.

“There are many people, myself included, who feel uncomfortable acting as an agent of the state when we as pastors are asked to sign marriage licenses,” said the Rev. Lois Powell, a team leader in the Justice and Witness division of the United Church of Christ.

“A marriage is a legal, civil agreement between two people. The role of the church is to offer blessing to relationships.”

Back in 2000, Episcopal Bishop Mary Adelia McLeod of Vermont said the church should relinquish its role in weddings unless it was given equal jurisdiction in granting divorces.

“The clergy of our church should be agents of God’s blessing,” said the now-retired bishop, “and not agents of the state.”

In San Francisco, Unitarian Universalist the Rev. Margot Campbell Gross recently signed her first marriage license in seven years — to a gay couple — after she joined several dozen UUA ministers in boycotting marriage licenses until gay couples can legally wed.

Just where did this church-state marriage of convenience come from? The answer, it turns out, has been after a tumultuous courtship.

Historically, churches did not get into the marriage business until the Middle Ages. But in the 16th century, Protestant reformer Martin Luther argued against marriage as a church-approved sacrament, and threw it back into the civil sphere.

America’s earliest pioneers were church-state purists. The Rev. Peter Gomes, pastor of Harvard University’s Memorial Church, noted that the Pilgrims who arrived in 1621 didn’t authorize religious marriage until 1692.

“The civil law is just that, and the distinction between it and ecclesiastical law is as important as the necessary distinction between church and state,” he said in a recent op-ed published in The Boston Globe.

Even though the Pilgrims imported Luther’s belief in civil marriage to America, marriage has never been an either/or institution, said John Witte, director of the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Religion at Emory University and author of From Sacrament to Contract: Marriage, Religion and Law in the Western Tradition.

“Marriage is a spiritual association, a natural association, a private contract and a social estate,” he said. “Those four corners were considered to be four dimensions of an institution that was multilayered.”

Don Browning, who headed the Religion, Culture and Family Project at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School, said marriage is intimately tied to notions of sexuality, intimacy, parenthood and mutual support that neither side has fully considered.

Browning, who takes a rather dim view of gay marriage, said gay marriage could boost the importance of marriage by expanding it, or belittle it by watering it down. It’s a discussion that he said, until now, has been “abysmal.”

“That’s the underlying discussion that will feed the legal, religious, political decisions that will have to be made,” he said. “But so far, I don’t think it’s happening very well.”

Click to expand...

Presbytarian News Service

It seems that marriage was not part of the church until the Middle ages and then Protestantism's birth sent marriage back to the civil arena. Don't let anyone kid you. Marriage is a civil procedure and the history of the Church shows that the "traditional" marriage was not part of the Early Church until the Middle Ages

Even our first prospering colony did not have a sectarian marrige until 70 years after it was founded. Our country did not start with the "traditional" marriage.

Click to expand...

Bastet said:

Quite frankly, I couldn't give a rat's *** anymore if I were married in (or by) a church, or not. I want a legally recognised union, that will allow me and my partner all the rights and responsibilities that heterosexual couples enjoy. If taking the word "marriage" out of the law and making it purely a religious ceremony that holds no legal weight, and demanding everyone (gay and straight), has a civil union to be legally recognised is the only way to stop this stupid argument, then I'd go along with that. Separate church and state, and be done with it.

Click to expand...

retrorich said:

Bastet: I think that is one of the best solutions I've heard to the gay marriage issue.

I feel that:

(1) No religious institution should be forced to condone or perform gay marriages.

(2) Marriages performed by religious institutions should have no legal significance.

(3) All consenting adult couples (whether opposite sex or same sex) should be entitled to a legal/civil marriage.

(4) All those who are joined in a legal/civil marriage should enjoy equal rights and benefits under the law.

I think that would work quite nicely.

Click to expand...

Pah said:

A common citizen has no power of persuasion until the citizen can be shown to be a part of a group that has political power.....

Click to expand...