Here’s a curious poll: “If marriage is a sacred institution authored by God, should atheists be barred from marrying?”
One answer is sweeping the vote (and I don’t think sending the Pharynguloid horde over there will change the trend), but Austin is making an interesting point. If gay people can’t marry because their union violates some religious requirement, then shouldn’t atheist marriages also be invalid? It seems to me that if you are arguing that marriage is a divine sacrament — and obviously, I don’t think it is — then a consistent fundamentalist ought to be arguing for the denial of married status to unbelievers.
Thank God fundamentalists aren’t consistent.
Just voted ‘yes’. It’s the only answer consistent with the premise.
I say by all means confine marriage to the religious, as long as it’s not a benefit. If it’s a benefit of course such an action would be immoral; not letting some people partake because of creed (or orientation of course). So what you have to do is allow marriage only if marriage includes losing the right to things like survivor benefits, visitation rights in hospitals, no right to a say in medical care of a spouse, and of course it must also include a tax hike for married people. If those things are part and parcel with marriage then I’m fine with restricting it to the religious.
That’s a terrible poll question. The question begs the answer, and then the first answer negates the premise of the question. The way the poll is phrased one is almost forced to answer “yes” because the idea that marriage is a “sacred institution authored by God” is built right into the question.
Uh, no. Marriage is a CIVIL union recognized by the state, no preacher of any kind is required to solemnize the proceedings.
That’s a pretty ill-designed poll. The question is a counterfactual conditional, which is OK. But none of the answers are satisfying.
“No. Marriage is a civil institution created by society…” is obviously wrong, because it ignores the premise of the counterfactual. (But it’s a good answer to the simpler question, “Should atheists be allowed to marry?”)
“Yes. Marriage is a holy institution created by God…” makes unwarranted assumptions about God’s Will.
I think the best answer is “I don’t know”. More specifically, “Atheists should be allowed to marry only if God permits it (or fails to prevent it).”
Holy crap! Don’t give them any ideas!
But then, I have to assume that some fundies have non-believer parents; invalidating those marriages would make them all bastards! Ha!
Bad poll. Religion *can* define marriage as between a man and a woman regardless of their faith. So an atheist couple’s marriage could be divinely approved while the couple goes to hell anyway.
The only question we need to deal with is how to write a law with a religious principle as basis while some members of the public don’t even follow that religion. The way it works is the minority (people of other faith or unbelievers) get shafted.
Finally a pointless internet poll has an answer I can fully endorse:
“I don’t care.”
Also, I hate about.com.
To be consistent, they should prohibit marriage for those who worship the WRONG god.
BTW, my answer to the nonsensical claim that marriage has anything to do with religion is to ask whether the divorce lawyers need divinity degrees. Obviously, by law — lots and lots of law — marriage is a legal contract which cannot be granted without the express and documented authority of the government, nor may it be dissolved without the same. And, boy, is there a lot of dissolution law.
A personal experience with Ouija boards, as described to the Christian Broadcasting Network
I think the obvious explanation for the results of the poll is that being anti-gay-marriage isn’t fueled by religion at all, its just plain old bigoted homophobia, using religion as a really lame excuse.
I always thought that because the point of marriage is to provide for the upbringing of children, any marriage that fails to yield offspring within five years should be invalidated. Right?
If marriage is a sacred institution authored by God, then how do these religious fuckwits account for the fact that marriage as an institution predates human written record (which means it also predates the blood-thirsty and woman-hating Abrahamic religions), and has existed in nearly every culture and society that we know of?
Oh, right. The bigots don’t know or care about anybody else, so they don’t bother.
I honestly hate these people. They make me fantasise about violence.
A CONSISTENT fundamentalist would be far more worried about churches remarrying divorcees.
Luke 16:18 “Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries one who is divorced from a husband commits adultery.”
Its interesting that when I got married (in Massachusetts) we had to have the civil part completed (by the local town hall, and the appropriate clerk) before the church bit. The priest/minister told us that the church part was completely non-binding or official, and the important paperwork was the civil paperwork. The marriage certificate had to be on record in the local town hall before we would be considered married.
So, in the US, the civil bit is more important than the church bit for tax and legal purposes.
The backwardness of this is that there are a large number of churches in the United States that do in fact recognize gay marriage, such that gays can in fact have a religious union recognized as sacred.
So in fact the secular civil government won’t recognize a marriage because its not sacred even though its has the stamp of sacredness on it, albeit not from the “right” church.
Fascinating. I remember, from back in my religious days, that somewhere the Christian apologist C.S. Lewis (of the Narnia children’s propoganda fame) argued for a complete distinction between Christian marriage, as a religious sacrament, and secular marriage, as a contract between two people, recognized by the state.
I think his position was that calling the religious and the secular versions both by the simple name marriage, caused confusion: keeping people from making a clear distinction.
I’m sure he was more concerned that the secular idea would corrupt the religious one, of course, than what we now have going on…
Here’s a better question: Why the hell is there a government-endorsed legal definition of marriage in the first place?
Personally I think marriage should be a private affair. If I want to go down to a lawyer and sign a contract with another legal adult granting them power of attorney if I’m incapacitated and my estate if I’m dead, then great.
The government shouldn’t be in the business of automatically granting legal rights to certain types of relationships.
Help! There are two papers in this week’s Science that need your commentary! (The one on the sequencing of the sea anemone genome and Buddenbrockia Is a Cnidarian Worm.)
What if we let them have marriage, and we get to keep all the science?
I’m sure god’ll show ’em how to make wedding rings and shotguns (in case a recalcitrant groom needs a little persuadin’). It might be some time before god reveals the secret of molding a miniature bride and groom out of plastic for the top of the cake, but that’s really a minor detail.
Wait, that’s heartless. I’m writing out of anger.
They can have IKEA furniture but no instructions!
Or the right god in the wrong way.
Here’s a helpful organization fighting to make marriage conform to God (and the WA Supreme Court’s) will.
http://www.wa-doma.org
We two atheists have been happily married for 6 years and no children….Extra burning for us.
god was never mentioned in our shindig anyway.
Least in Australia we have Defacto relationships which pretty much covers everything marriage does.
Basically who cares, if ya want to go for it, if not living in sin is just as fun.
I’m sure plenty of fundies aren’t happy with lots of things like that. They aren’t consistent because they know that people won’t put up with that crap. Thank God that the moderates are right about God being a moderate and that God is not a fundamentalist like the fundamentalists think He is. Thank you God for being just the way you are.
Personally I think marriage should be a private affair. If I want to go down to a lawyer and sign a contract with another legal adult granting them power of attorney if I’m incapacitated and my estate if I’m dead, then great.
You used to be able to do something like that by forming a LLC (limited liability corporation) with you and your partner(s), in whatever sense you construed “partnership.” I don’t know if that’s still true.
My fellow and I will not marry unless we have to to provide for kids, and since I’m 40 and getting sort of early perimenopausal, that would only be a consideration if circumstances forced us to accept custody of a niece or nephew.
Why won’t we? Well, because it’s our affair… literally. We do not want the church to feel like it is invited to have anything to say to us. We do not need the government telling us how to conduct our relationship, so long as we don’t frighten the horses. We do not need to be anything but kind, just, and loving to each other, and we’ve managed just fine for more than ten years now, probably longer than half of you or so have managed to be married.
I was shocked to find that in most jurisdictions, signing the documentation that makes you married in the civil, legal sense also means you have agreed to various government interferences into your marriage. It’s like marrying the government, in exactly the same sense that the Christian man and woman are said to have God as the third partner in their relationship. No, thanks. God and government can do what they like with me when I’m too weak to fight for my own, but I don’t have to agree in advance to the abuse.
Thank you God for being just the way you are.
Oh I almost forgot, thnak you God for having magic invisible birdie wings too! And for riding on flying magic birdie horsies up there in the clouds!!
Yes, in Australia I don’t need to participate in that ridiculous ceremony in order for our 21-year relationship to be considered ‘serious’. Occasionally, our 10-year old will mention us getting married, but she’s not terribly fussed, and would probably prefer a new puppy.
The religious can have their marriage if they desire. I’m sure they take the ludicrous aspects of the wedding ceremony seriously. Personally, I don’t need my dad “giving me away” to another male.
I guess many secular couples like the idea of marriage for other reasons, I just don’t get the appeal. If you want to be in a relationship, be in one.
While we’re at it, I don’t think our oath in a court of law should be legally binding either.
Is his wife an atheist as well?
Well, PZ, even the Roman Catholic church regards marriages between non-catholics as valid even when contracted without benefit of (RC) clergy. So you should be OK. (Unless, of course… I know you’re Lutheran by background, but if Mrs. PZ is RC and you didn’t have your wedding blessed by a guy in a pointy hat, I guess you’re both going to roast in hell.)
Anyway, technically speaking, few Christian fundamentalists would argue that marriage is a ‘Christian sacrament’, because they would (correctly) say that only catholics deem marriage a sacrament.
But now I must toddle off and cast my vote. This is important. I feel very strongly that any couple should be able to have their partnership recognised by the state, even if they are straight and Christian.
I’ve always thought of marriage as a religious ceremony and a Civil Union as the equivalent for legal purposes.
Marriage probably doesn’t have exactly the same meaning to people here (NZ) than in the USA though.
I spoke to one fundie who claimed that only Xians ARE married; all other people, including those of different religions such as Muslims, are in civil unions. To him, a marriage is what happens in church and binds two Xians together, rather than a legal document that allows me to live in other countries.
“Here’s a better question: Why the hell is there a government-endorsed legal definition of marriage in the first place?”
One can think of it the other way around, Civil Marriage is about forcing the government and society to recognize your relationship and responsibilities arising from it.
GoS @31:
that’s exactly how it is in most European countries. You get married as a civil matter at the town hall. If you want thereafter (but only after) to get married in the eyes of whatever god, that’s your own affair. Only the first marriage counts for anything in the eyes of the law.
Sounds pretty civilised to me, and perhaps explains why it is easier for civil-law jurisdictions to recognise gay marriage.
Marriage isn’t necessarily a “sacred institution authored by God.” The premise of the poll heading right on in is false. Marriage doesn’t have to be religious to be valid.
While we’re at it, I don’t think our oath in a court of law should be legally binding either.
I was just talking to someone about how the government obviously trusts atheists more than religious believers, because they’ll take atheist testimony on our word alone.
Not that the swear on a bible isn’t the same thing, just not in their eyes.
My office has a couple of fundies and one day I got into a discussion with the more civil of them about gay marriage. His point was a gay/lesbian couple can’t procreate therefore they can’t be married.
I said back to him something to the effect of: “So you think that my marriage should not be allowed or invalidated because I have no children and I’ve had a vasectomy to make sure I don’t?”
Blank stare and and end of discussion at that, which was a shame, because I wanted to ask if he thought lesbian couples might be allowed to marry soon since it would not take too much research to get the capability to allow two women to have a child that IS the biology offspring of both .
Who wouldn’t?!
To be consistent, they should prohibit marriage for those who worship the WRONG god.
Better yet, insert the First and Fourteenth(?) Amendments to it properly, rather than continue the fiction that marriage as it stands is fair today*: civil unions with all the benefits of marriage available to everybody, and marriage being available to religious people based on the rules of the faith they get it from. In other words, fundamentalist churches offer marriage to heterosexual couples, Catholics offer it to heterosexual couples who haven’t been divorced, Pagans and the United Church of Christ offer it to gay and lesbian couples as well as mixed-sex couples, and the Unitarian Universalists offer it to everybody.
Every church is free to do as it pleases, and every couple is free to get married.
*Of course, the current fiction has a hell of a lot of precedent, since ever since the calligrapher penned “All men are created equal” on the Declaration of Independence, the people of this country have been, to one extent or another, pretending they live up to it despite glaring evidence to the contrary.
PZ, for you to be able to live in sin with your wife, sin would have to exist.
Marriage for the religious – with NO civil benefits; civil unions for those who want the government to recognize it and grant the rights and benefits that government is in charge of – from being allowed in the hospital room to inheritance. You already need both if you want to be married in a church – just give ’em the name already.
My “wife” and I are both atheists … and are not “legally” married.
Even if there were a God, how is man to reliably sanction a divine covenant between two of God’s creations?
For us, marriage is a legal contact, *not* a personal commitment.
We are personally committed to each other, and will not invite the government into our personal life unless there are compelling reasons. So far, there are none.
I think the state should be out of the marriage business altogether. What FSM believers choose to perform as arcane rites is their business – do it for gays, or atheists or whoever floats your particular boat… or don’t do it as the case may be.
However, the legal partnership is another matter. That can be reduced to something little different that contract law, and it shouldn’t matter who is involved – two men, two atheists, 2 men and 3 women, whatever.
This is something whose time has most definitely come.
Hit Post too quickly…
The idea being that having been “married” in a church is legally irrelevant. The law can recognize a legal partnership (the civil union), but should have no interest in the religious or other jiggery-pokery that forms a “marriage” rite.
#39: Good start, but then why limit it to couples? Several religions don’t. If you’re going to disconnect legal marriage from the restrictions of one or two particular religions, why not go whole hog?
Marrying a new person should probably be grounds for divorce from any of your current spouses who object, but beyond that, I don’t see why the law needs to stick an oar in. (In fact, I don’t think you should need “grounds” for divorce other than “at least one of us doesn’t want to be in this marriage anymore”. Once that point is reached, attempts to shove the marriage back together are generally futile.)
My wife and I were married in a city park by a Justice of the Peace. We rented folding chairs to provide seating and had the cake and food under a canopy. Been married 17 years.
ummm, gay people are gay and they can marry. They shouldnt be allowed to have kids though. People are mean and the kids will be miserable, and won’t grow up to be straight. Haha just kidding, but the gay parents better let the children decide what thier orientation should be. Atheism shouldn’t even be an issue, you can believe in what you want. Thats protected by the constitution. Nobody has to worry about athiests not being able to marry. That doesnt make a damn bit of sense if they couldn’t. And its not ever going to happen.
Although most religious conservatives would never admit it, the real opposition to gay marriage is homophobia and has nothing to do with religion.
Religion, once again, simply provides cover and support for bigoted assholes.
OEJ
That was really funny! Decades ago in Finland some freethinkers living together were actually forced to marry, as per law.
I hate About.com too.
I have to concur with Lisa all the way back at #12. The purpose of marriage (At least according to the people scared of GLBT marriages) is that children are produced. If that is the case, I demand the the bride and groom are tested before they are married to check if the can procreate. If not, no marriage for those two. Also, no marriage between the elderly. Have are they going to have babies.
Alas, no one takes me seriously when I ask for these things.
“Thank God fundamentalists aren’t consistent.”
Or, at a bare minimum, less consistent than the grateful non-believer?….:)
I absolutely support the “yes” answer myself, though those people certainly wouldn’t like my reasons for doing so. We need a European-type system in which the only thing the government recognizes are civil-union contracts (regardless of the genders of the partners). Leave “marriage” and all its theological baggage to the churches where it belongs- but don’t let the churches have any role at all in the legal situation.
By the way, to “chips”:
Do you have the same worry about heterosexual couples?
“They can have IKEA furniture but no instructions!”
That’s downright inhumane. Much as I dislike fundies, that might be going too far.
Yes, we atheists should be banned from marriage. Then ban those who worship the wrong gods, next ban those who can’t have children, then annul the marriages of those who are now too old to have children (whether they’ve had children or not), and finally forbid marriages for anyone not in the right sect. Somewhere in that progression people might finally get sensible and set up separate civil and religious ceremonies & definitions, so that the state version can be opened up to anyone who wants to be legally married, gay or otherwise.
The government shouldn’t be in the business of automatically granting legal rights to certain types of relationships.
Perhaps not that exactly, but it is a perfectly legitimate business for the government to be in of creating certain standardized contract relationships, and regulating the types of contracts that can be entered into (or not). Therefore, if marriage is to be recast exclusively in terms of contract law, I can still see a role for the government in saying “this is the standard marriage contract”; this wouldn’t necessarily prevent people from making addenda (e.g. pre-nups), but it would set up the default state. And the government certainly could prevent certain addenda if there were a compelling state interest to do so – for example, the government could require that both parties have an equal right to divorce.
Standardized contracts are a good thing. They simplify legal proceedings (imagine if every divorce had to be settled on the basis of a customized contract) and provide certain baseline protections against the bad effects caused by people entering contracts who are in an unequal power relationship. (In other areas, standardized contracts enable markets to spring up, but I don’t imagine that’s relevant here)
However, as I believe was pointed out upthread, the only possible answer is “if and only if God says so”. Any other answer means either that you reject the premise of the question (and so aren’t actually answering the question the poll asked), or that you’ve had word from God on the subject of atheists and His sacred institutions.
Or, I suppose, there’s a third option that allows answering the poll: even if God authored the institution, He might have turned it over to humanity to run as we see fit. (Call this the “Rabbi Eliezer” view, though I guess more accurately it’s the non-Eliezer view)
My interpretation of the data from the Netherlands is that gay people tend not to avail themselves of marriage anyway. After an initial flurry when gay marriage was instituted, the rates dropped, and seem to be far below the rates for heterosexuals. At least that’s the conclusion of my very brief glance at the statistics.
So, in fact, the ‘threat’ of gay marriage is in fact a non threat. Marriage evolved to strengthen heterosexual pair bonding, and, hardly surprisingly, is most popular among heterosexuals.
The sensible solution, which several people have already proposed, is that the particular rights civil marriage gives, primarily with regard to children and inheritance, should be extended to any couple that wants them and meets some basic, non-discriminatory qualifications. Religious marriage should be a first amendment right completely decoupled from civil marriage. And so atheists shouldn’t be entitled to the latter category of marriage, any more than a couple of Lutherans can be married in the One Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church.
We need to have two separate forms of marriage here: civil and sacred. Folks can choose to do one or the other or both. But they are not to be confused.
I am an ordained minister, not an agent of the state, and I should not be signing legal documents. And I especially resent the government granting me the right to sign such documents then telling me that I can only sign it for certain couples. Therefore I refuse to sign any marriage license. Couples can go to the county courthouse for that bit.
AiG is all for interracial marriage, but against christian to non-christian marriage. Since quite a few fundies use them as their “moral compass”, I’ll bet that’s where the seven percent comes from.
They even give citations from the Bible for people to look up and verify. If they weren’t serious, AiG would be entertaining.
My wife and I have an infertile, interracial, atheist marriage. (That is, I’m an atheist. She’s a skeptical Baptist who only attends church for the choir.)
Despite those three counts against us, we’ve been married for 14 years, outlasting about half the marriages of my Christian acquaintances.
The thing that puzzles me is, “If marriage is a sacred institution authored by God,” why do his/her/its followers have such a hard time making one last?
The rise of
secularismerrr no, I meanfeminismhomosexualization over the past250oops I mean10040 years is undoubtedly to blame.Ha, ha :) Kseniya for Molly on the grounds of the piquant post 62. Hooray!
Guess why the Catholic church refuses communion to remarried divorcees.
Reassuring. I used to think it was that way all over the democratic world by now, but phenomena like , which defines “official recognition as a religion” as “ordained clergy […] having authority to perform legal marriages within the jurisdiction”, made me wonder if that’s different in (parts of?) the USA or (hard to imagine) Canada.
Interesting. Really interesting.
Very good question.
I’m probably overlooking something, but it sounds extremely easy. Just take an oocyte of one and a polar body of another. Mere microinjection should do.
There is no “decide” here. You’re born with your sexual orientation. Read more scientific journals.
It is universally called “marriage” in Europe, however. Some countries additionally have “civil unions” where the partners are less tightly bound to each other; in some of those still only “civil unions” are open for homosexual couples. (That’s changing, though.)
Isn’t that old news, together with the myxosporidians being four-celled cnidarians or so? <rushing to go read the paper anyway>
Ouch. That’s about like saying “the tetrapod genome”.
Guess why the Catholic church refuses communion to remarried divorcees.
Reassuring. I used to think it was that way all over the democratic world by now, but phenomena like , which defines “official recognition as a religion” as “ordained clergy […] having authority to perform legal marriages within the jurisdiction”, made me wonder if that’s different in (parts of?) the USA or (hard to imagine) Canada.
Interesting. Really interesting.
Very good question.
I’m probably overlooking something, but it sounds extremely easy. Just take an oocyte of one and a polar body of another. Mere microinjection should do.
There is no “decide” here. You’re born with your sexual orientation. Read more scientific journals.
It is universally called “marriage” in Europe, however. Some countries additionally have “civil unions” where the partners are less tightly bound to each other; in some of those still only “civil unions” are open for homosexual couples. (That’s changing, though.)
Isn’t that old news, together with the myxosporidians being four-celled cnidarians or so? <rushing to go read the paper anyway>
Ouch. That’s about like saying “the tetrapod genome”.
Derek @ #18: Here’s a better question: Why the hell is there a government-endorsed legal definition of marriage in the first place?
The original reason was to keep track of inheritance, especially of titles. The other implications just accreted over time, but the specific purpose of Church involvement was to establish a Church veto over inheritance. That power grab was directly responsible for the schism producing the Church of England, and probably a few other schisms as well. (Hint: “Divine right of kings” is older than the Papacy. Much like the idea of marriage, for that matter!)
So… religious marriages are recognized by the USA as if they were civil ones? ~:-|
So… religious marriages are recognized by the USA as if they were civil ones? ~:-|
So… religious marriages are recognized by the USA as if they were civil ones? ~:-|
Yep. At least in AZ, the priest/minister/rabbi signs the marriage license, which is then forwarded to the government entities.
You can have a religious ceremony and the gov’t will recognize it as valid (so long as you have the proper paperwork, which in many states precludes gays from marrying – they won’t issue a marriage license, hence no gov’t recognized marriage).
You can have a civil ceremony and it will be recognized per the same stipulations as above.
You can have both civil and religious – although it really isn’t necessary, since either one will do.
Every time I have heard religious people argue against gay marriage, they have referred to the “sanctity” of marriage. I want to ask them if they really want the courts, legislature, or executive branch to decide what is and what is not holy?
Would they like a court to order a conservative Catholic priest to marry two divorced people?
A separation of the civil aspects of marriage from the imaginary, er, religious aspects would solve the problem, but then the right wing would lose a rallying point.
In many states there are common law “marriages”. Colorado law stipulates that if two people own property for more than two years together they can be “declared” married by the state. Given, this is for property rights mainly and one of the two parties involved needs to file and a judge must decide if the two parties are in a legally binding contract (i.e. marriage). However, this law has granted some people the right to most of the civil liberties granted by a traditional marriage. They refer to it as a “common law marriage”.
I should like to note that this law has been “fixed” to exclude gays by our former Republican government. We are the home of Dobson and Focus on the Family after all.
mojojojo, when I read this, I totally read “sodomize the proceedings.”
Chips…
From my understanding, in spite of lots of idiots apposing it, there are a “lot” of gay couples with adopted kids and not one *scrap* of evidence to suggest that orientation can be “forced” on anyone as a *choice*. On the contrary, straight kids in those families *remain* straight. Worse, for the dipshits arguing against it, there is some evidence from the agencies involved that such parents tend to devote more time to those kids, be more active in their schooling and other issues and have almost *no* cases of any sort of abuses at all. Contrasted with straight couples that the same agencies deal with all the time, and have to “remove” an unacceptably high percentage of kids from, because of everything from sexual abuses to instances of Munchausen By Proxy syndrome. So… What exactly is the point you tried to make with your comment, given that there isn’t one scrap of evidence to support the idea that gay people would or even *can* change their children’s orientation? Just wondering..
Kagehi: IMO, the unintended point was that subtle homophobia takes many forms, and hides in dark corners.
The “people are mean” joke did remind me of an interesting bit of research which concluded that the most significant hurdle for children of same-sex couples was the stigma of being the child of a same-sex couple. In other words, the most harmful social experiences these kids could reasonably expect to face would be supplied by heterosexuals who believe that being raised by homosexuals is itself harmful.
Oops. Sorry about the irony meter. I should have warned you.
Several people have pointed out the idiocy in the position that “since marriage is for having children, gays can’t marry”. I really wish someone had asked Mitt Romney whether he thought infertile (straight) people should be able to marry, while he was in the process of insulting that lesbian couple a few weeks ago.
Addendum: A Google of dsm-iv homophobia returns the Conservapedia (“The Trustworthy Encyclopedia”) entry for homophobia on the first page of results, second from the top. Am I wrong to be vaguely irritated and troubled by this?
Yeah, Sean, that argument is blatantly stupid, and self-defeating. I heard it many times, from people who don’t seem to pay much attention to what it is that comes out of their mouths.
Has anyone told all those Catholic nuns – those Brides of Christ – that they’re way, WAY behind on their child-bearing?
Anyway, Romney is fraud.
For reference:
Children of Same-Sеx Couples Do as Well as Other Children
I voted YES because I would *love* it if the religious tried to deny the privilege of marriage to as many different groups as possible. This would greatly aid efforts to expose their bigotry for what it is.
Dayv wrote:
There’s something screwy about your position…
If you want to expose their bigotry for what it is, why not write a blog? I wrote this:
Orson Scott Card’s anti-atheist bigotry
I was married in a lovely pagan ceremony for the sole purpose of getting my VA loan approved.
Hubby and I have since refinanced through our bank (at a much better interest rate, btw) so, married, not married, whatever.
I had a thought about the whole marriage thing. Let me kick it out here:
“Marriage” is an unfortunate term because, as noted, it carries far too much religious baggage. Religious conservatives don’t like having their religious baggage stomped on by everyone who isn’t of their religion. Religious moderates are often reluctant to point out that the religion has been stripped from the baggage by the time the government gets its hands on it, because, hey, they don’t care that much, and they’re made somewhat queasy by having their norms challenged, and they’d like to score points with the religious conservatives.
“Civil union” is better, because it is absolutely clear that there is no religious baggage involved. However, religious extremists are quite aware that this is quite specifically meant to be a replacement phrase/euphemism for “marriage”, and get their panties in a wad over it, since, after all, it does have the word “union” in there, which has a pretty restricted meaning when referring to two people.
So, as a replacement term for “marriage”, yet nevertheless meant to contain all of the legal, state-conferred privileges and rights that marriage brings, how does the term “mutual next-of-kin registration” sound?
I admit it’s long and clunky, and, to be honest, stuffily bureaucratic. But I think that it, even more than “civil union”, emphasizes what is really being asked for. And there’s the added bonus that nowhere in the bible does it say that two people of the same gender cannot register as being mutually next-of-kin.
I can also see polyamorous groups benefiting from the use of the term, since there’s no particular reason why next-of-kin registration should stop at two.
Religious conservatives will still complain, of course, but I think that the use of that phrase might, maybe, just possibly, make it an easier sell.
Marriage is a bundle of legal contracts painted in religious colors. Someone remind me why we need that at all? If you really want to have a big party with a huge cake (and who doesn’t?) you are completely capable of doing that whenever you want.
Anyone want to join me in suing the government for not prohibiting heterosexuals from marrying the way they gays? Why shouldn’t I have the same protections from religion?!?!?!
Haha just kidding, but the gay parents better let the children decide what thier orientation should be.
We can always count on you to say something stupid and bigoted, chips. Sexual orientation isn’t a choice, and it’s heterosexual parents, not gay parents, who put pressure on their children for being of the “wrong” orientation — gays know better, and they know the pain of such judgments.
Atheism shouldn’t even be an issue, you can believe in what you want. Thats protected by the constitution. Nobody has to worry about athiests not being able to marry. That doesnt make a damn bit of sense if they couldn’t. And its not ever going to happen.
The point, genius, is to highlight the inconsistency of fundie attitudes about gay marriage vs. marriage for other “sinful” unions. Austin Cline’s point was precisely that very few of those who oppose gay marriage also oppose marriage for atheists.
Just voted ‘yes’. It’s the only answer consistent with the premise.
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That’s a terrible poll question. The question begs the answer, and then the first answer negates the premise of the question. The way the poll is phrased one is almost forced to answer “yes” because the idea that marriage is a “sacred institution authored by God” is built right into the question.
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That’s a pretty ill-designed poll. The question is a counterfactual conditional, which is OK. But none of the answers are satisfying.
The sad thing is that Austin Cline responded by saying it wasn’t “an exercise in logic” — he actually dinged those who exercised logic, i.e., responded rationally. It’s a basic theorem of logic that (not p) => (p -> q), but the only choices he allowed were
1: (not (p -> q)) and (not p)
2: (p-> q) and p
3: don’t know
4: don’t care
He posed one question (q?) in his headline as “poll of the week” but asked a totally different question (p -> q?) in the poll itself, then instead of acknowledging an error produced all sorts of point-missing rationalizations. Not a good performance on “our side”.
There’s something screwy about your position…
I agree; I can’t see how dayv voting yes in the poll could conceivably make it more likely that theists would outlaw more marriages. It looks a bit like an instance of a mental defect wherein people have trouble distinguishing their own mental states from those of others, except that in this case it isn’t even dayv’s own mental state. I guess Austin Cline got to the nub of it: “not an exercise in logic”, which characterizes far too much human behavior that poses as logical.
I have to disagree that the term “marriage” is loaded with religious implications. I got married in a very simple ceremony at the local courthouse. No deity was mentioned, and no holiness was implied. The term “marriage” merely refers to a joining of people, and that did, indeed, happen. A friend of mine recently got married in a very beautiful ceremony, with great pith and moment, but also without any mention of divinity. As my wife said to a mutual friend, who wanted some recognition of his love for his lady without the implications of “marriage”,
“It doesn’t matter if you and her recognize the relationship, it matters if Blue Cross does.”
Truth Machine:
I’m kicking myself for not posting this when it crossed my mind yesterday. Good on you. Truer words were never spoken.
Autumn,
It may not be for you, but you’re in the minority. Holy matrimony, and all that. The “defense of marriage” coming from the Right is almost entirely based in religious beliefs and “laws.” No?
I voted yes too. Tee hee!
“One can think of it the other way around, Civil Marriage is about forcing the government and society to recognize your relationship and responsibilities arising from it.”
Except it isn’t. I cannot fathom why anyone that is not religious gives one fig about marriage anyway. What responsibilities arise from marriage? It’s a NON-BINDING contract that either party can void at any time w/out reason.
Other than a tax break: What’s the point?
No, it isn’t.
Awesome. I am totally down with this concept. This means me and my atheist, not-married-in-the-eyes-of-any-church-in-fact-married-in-a-MA-City-Hall-so-practically-gay-anyway spouse and I can still be having freaky sinful single people sex … FOREVER!!!
To return to the two mentioned Science papers… I’ve just read them. Both are fascinating.
The sea anemone Nematostella vectensis has 18,000 genes — just like us. Drosophila and Caenorhabditis have lost lots of genes, and lots of introns and other junk.
To return to the two mentioned Science papers… I’ve just read them. Both are fascinating.
The sea anemone Nematostella vectensis has 18,000 genes — just like us. Drosophila and Caenorhabditis have lost lots of genes, and lots of introns and other junk.
I have a paper (in draft form) that tries to argue that the state shouldn’t recognize relationships at all, but only in the infinite limit of more perfect social solidarity. Which is a way of saying that I’m not sure about the tax break … and that’s all.