Should government even be involved in marriage?

if you believe that they should be involved then that is correct and it should not be limited to 2 people. There should be no reason for govt to define what anyone views as being a marriage be they siblings, mom/son, 6 men and 1 woman etc etc

Or, we can do the sniff test and if a single person is treated any differently than a married person then clearly the govt has no role being involved in marriage.

 

Agreed, certainly.

Not only that, but when one points out the crystalline facts of history that disprove a clearly incorrect statement, one receives the reply "Nuh-uh."

It certainly grows tiresome, this debate against dishonesty.

In any event, you and I had an unfortunate miscommunication which we need not refer to further.

 

You didn't prove a thing. You made a statement and didn't back it up. However, at this point in time, your claim is irrelevant. And I also noticed that you could not address any of my other points.

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The one who has been dishonest here is you. You have made false claims that I shot down easily, with links to evidence. And you're talking about dishonesty? Wow.

 

You can notice whatever the hell you want, but I won't let you get away with changing the subject until you admit that your statement "The Federal government has ALWAYS been involved in marriage licensing" is false.

You are welcome to your own [im]moral compass, but you are not welcome to your own [not] facts.

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You did not "shoot down" a single claim.

Quit lying.
Quit revising history.
Admit your error.

 

You still have not proven that claim, so why should I admit anything?

And here we go with the "[im]moral compass" stuff. At least you are starting to admit that you simply don't want same sex couples to get married. Just admit it. The honesty would be refreshing.

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Oh yes, I most certainly did. I showed you that marriage predates religion, with links, and you ignored it. Admit your error.

 

Well, sort of.

If marriage were a standard, straightforward contract, all that would be necessary would be contract law and let the courts take it from there.

However, there's ten thousand years of history, most of which has kept women kind of like chattel involved here and the nasty issue of sex. How do you specify a performance clause that would stand up in court....as it is, the sex issue in marriage law is a legal minefield on which only the very foolish dare to read.

And then there is the question, if government is removed from the equation, is who will determine what constitutes marriage. True, in a completely free society it wouldn't be needed, but I doubt we want a situation where we are paying Social Security to one's grieving iguana whom the dearly departed decided to wed in a private, bed side ceremony in the agonizing throes of stage seven cancer and under extremely heavy sedation and massive amounts of marijuana.

So, who says what is marriage and whom will be doomed to it?

As to "enforcement".....I've never thought of marriage being enforced before and stand entirely if not humbly grateful that no such "enforcement" was in effect during my escape from everlasting romance.

 

They are not the same. You can get married in a church by a priest, but if you don't have a marriage contract, you're not legally married. Likewise, you can get married by a Justice Of the Peace, but your church does not have to recognize you as married in the eyes of God if they don't want to. They are completely separate institutions that only share a common word, and that's all it is. A word.

I hope that you never have to experience a situation where your desire for the same rights that others get because they are being arbitrarily denied to you makes you a "special interest group".

I have no objection to that. It's a fair position to take.

 

I have no problem with that. I'm all for things that make sense.

I see no reason why there can't be marriage contracts for all sorts of situations. Maybe each type has it's own rules and regulations more tailored to the situation, but maybe not. I see legal marriage as the government agreeing to honor and enforce a contract between people. It doesn't necessarily have to be limited to just two.

 

The fact that I disproved your "The Federal Government has ALWAYS been involved in marriage licensing" predates your subject-changing.

Here's a source: http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/a-brief-history-of-marriage-licenses-in-the-us/blog-393357/?link=ibaf&q=marriage+licenses+started+in+the+usa+in+1923

Here's another: http://privatizemarriage.org/

Here's another: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_licence#United_States

Here's another: http://www.strike-the-root.com/4/newman/newman4.html

Here's another, showing the some of the first marriage licenses. Guess what? They're from 1923, as I said: http://boards.ancestrylibrary.com/localities.northam.usa.states.missouri.counties.jackson/1751/mb.ashx

Once more, you must admit your error before this discussion goes any farther. I've given you five sources, and they ought to be enough to convice even the most hard-headed that he is miserably wrong.

I'll say it one last time: In direct opposition to your false statement, the Fed has NOT "always" been involved in marriage.

You = fail.

 

I will never attempt to alter the definition of a word, so I will never be in that position.

Furthermore, the licensing of marriages is an overreach of the government - not the problem of religion. And, as I've said before, legal "marriage" is merely a civil union.

 

Nobody said it was the problem of religion, even if it is religion that plays a large role in shaping the role of secular legal marriage.

If you want to call legal marriage a civil union, that's fine, if retaining the religious connotation of a generic term like marriage is so important to you. Either way it changes nothing.

 

Will you admit, in your apparent cohort's absence, that Federal marriage licenses have not been in effect "always?" I'm having some difficulty letting that go, since it's possibly the simplest fact which could ever be presented on this subject.

Anyway, to your point: This is where I break firmly with nearly all conservatives.
Yes, I believe that, if the government recognizes civil unions (and it does), it must also recognize civil unions for same-sex couples. Whether I like it or not is irrelevant - there must be the same rights for all groups and individuals, regardless of personal views.

Do I agree morally with homosexual marriage? No. (But neither do I hate homosexuals and bisexuals. In fact, my former girlfriend was bisexual, and I loved her dearly).

But my moral code has no bearing on the law UNLESS the law directly interferes with the rights of another.

Legal equality between civil unions of hetero and homo does not interfere with anyone's rights, so I must support it. To refrain from doing so would be hypocrisy.

 

ok it should me leaved up to the government but not the federal government because nothing in the constitution says anything about marriage so it should be leaved up to the states

 

I honestly don't know when the federal government first got legally involved in marriage. There aren't any federal marriage licenses though, the government just recognizes marriages performed by the states.

Now that is a position I can respect. I feel very much the same way about how the law and rights should work.

 

Why is it the purview of the government at all? Why does a government of any calibre have any power to decide what is best for a pair of consenting adults?

 

States began marriage licensing in the mid 1800s; the Fed began requiring them in 1923.

I am very glad we could come to an agreement of sorts!
I hope that others can view our discourse and see how liberty helps those of vastly different ideologies work in unison to a common, even libertarian goal.

 

More like no special interest group owns the word marriage as its property, and therefore has no right to prevent others' use of it.

Oh, I think it very much is, given what came next:

Dead giveaway.

1) Homosexuals can be religious.

2) There are churches/religions that bless same sex marriages.

3) The contempt in the bold-faced statement is unmistakeable.

4) There is nothing 'pretend' about my marriage to my husband. So, .

And one more thing regarding the "marriage is a religious institution not a government institution": My thrice-great-grandparents were married in Ohio in the 1840s by a Justice of the Peace. But according to you, they apparently weren't really married because their wedding wasn't officiated and blessed by a priest, minister, or similar religious official.

Your opinion on the matter is of no value in my estimation.


.

 

The gay marriage issue, like most issues, comes from an overreach of government as they attempt to "solve" a problem.

Marriage should be left to the churches - if they want to marry two men or two goats - that should be at their sole discretion, but no tax or legal incentives.
Civil unions should be recognized by the state and federal government - they should offer legal incentives and protections, but no tax incentives.
Tax incentives should only be given to those who directly care for a child and it should be reduced by each person who uses said breaks. 1 person = 100%, 2 people = 50/50, regardless of sex.

People need to be treated as individuals.
Most tax breaks and loopholes should be eliminated entirely as they promote abuse.

BUT: If the government is going to stay in the marriage business (which it will) it cannot reward one class while denying the other - which creates the mess we are in.

 

OK, I made a mistake. Now admit that you did too by stating that marriage did not pre-date religion. I gave you proof. Can't do it? I won't be surprised.

 

Yes and it should ban all forms of it , you want to live with another person? fine , you want to have kids? fine too but there is no state paper validating your relation and no benefits .

 

Government is not overreaching on anything. If you want to go to a church and get married, but not sign a marriage license, that's your right. No one os forced into civil marriage. The ONLY reason this is an issue at all is that some people don't like same sex couples getting married. Period- end of story. This would have never come up otherwise.

Religion did not invent marriage, as I pointed out earlier in this thread, and it does not own it.

 

More like no special interest group should have the power to change the definition of a word. What if Republicans decided they could define the term Democrat?

Nope, it wasn't relevant. Nice try at obfuscating the material in an attempt to delegitimize a valid assertion based on a false (and irrelevant) presumption of bigotry.

Dead giveaway? Is that, like, when you anti-straights give away arguments that are dead-on-arrival?

1) Agreed. Just like a glutton can be "religious." Both are sinful. Relevance?

2) Those churches are incorrect, just like the schools whose textbooks claim that the Crusades were started by Christians.

3) Contempt? No. A lack of respect for an ideology that claims it can have all of the blessings of religion, without any of the Natural, Created laws.

4) Are you a male? Then yes, your "marriage" to your partner is quite, quite false.

No, they were not married. They were civilly united. Not the same thing, chief.

Really? Because if my opinion is truly irrelevant, you would not have bothered wasting your time in response to it. Get real.

 

Prove it.

Prove it

Prove it.

Prove it.

 

Fantastic!! Let's move on, shall we?

First order of business: I claim that religion and marriage have always coexisted. You claim that the former predates the later.

Unfortunately, I cannot admit what is not admissible.

You cannot prove your claim against mine, and here's why: The Bible, which is a history book (you can argue about the authenticity of this history book, but you cannot argue that it is, truly, a history book), places a married Adam and Eve at the very dawn of the created world. So actually, "religion" slightly predates marriage.

You say "but such and such a document existed before KNOWN copies of the Old Testament," etc.
And? You believe that all newer history books are necessarily more accurate than all the older ones?

But wait a minute! Wouldn't that mean ALL books should be ignored unless they were written down as the events happened, like the minutes in a Town Hall meeting?

Regardless, the "text" you mentioned never claimed that marriage predated anything. It just happened to predate the earliest KNOWN written text of the Sciptures.

I hope you see how silly this argument is.

 

I'm going to write a book. Call it a history book. Get it published. In this history book, it is written that all life originated in a Black & Decker Toaster Oven. The "Toaster Incident" as I call it, will have originated before the time of Adam and Eve.

I hope you see how silly this argument is.