The journal of Dvd Avins

We also need to deal with the people who think it a ‘solution’ to relegate ‘marriage’ to the church. (I think it was Ron Reagan I most recently heard with this one, though in that case it was just an off-hand comment, so I don’t know if he had thought it through.)

First off, that’s not a ‘solution’, if only because the existing laws, regulations, and whatnot are written using the term ‘marriage’ and changing them all would be a monumental task that we cannot afford to take on. This is a case-closed argument against the idea, on practical grounds.

The other, more fundamental reason, is the gall it takes to call for the removal of a treasured secular institution, the marriage contract, and give it over to the church, which previously had been to marriage, in our so-called ‘society’, as the contract post office in the local supermarket is to the USPS.

End of rant.

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The real solution, IMO, is to take marriage away from the churches. Go ahead and have your wedding in a church, if you and the church agree on whatever you all deem necessary, but being a minister/priest/rabbi/imam/etc. should not automatically entitle someone to perform legally binding marriages. Go to the town hall or a JP for the legally binding part, like the rest of the civilized world does...

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I don’t understand; marriage licenses already are filed with the civil government, not churches.

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The licenses are taken out from and filed with the government. But in between, the execution is franchised out to clergy.

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The state could empower any person of stature to do it, and even I am not ready to deny that clergyfolk are persons of stature. :)

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Should clergy also be automatically deemed competent to ratify adoptions and divorces?

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Changing the subject isn’t a persuasive argument. My question for this thread is: What would removing clerics from the list of those who can preside over the marriage mumbo-jumbo do on behalf of the recognition of same-sex marriages?

It’s hard for me to imagine that even same-sex partners would be widely pleased by such an act. Is that the purpose, to put same-sex partners and Jesus Freaks on the same side of the ‘marriage’ issue?

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For the immediate purpose of getting same-sex marriage recognized, it's a lousy plan. For making things they way they ought to be, which I take to be what Tayefeth was talking about, it seems reasonable. And while tradition, even when inconsistent, does have some value, I find probing for consistency a useful and often definitive way or examining whether current practice makes sense.

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This is not probing for consistency, it’s probing for a red herring.

I don’t see the idea as reasonable, but hurt-provoking, and if passed probably purposely so.

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Well, if you don't see my question to you above as examining inconsistency, something's wrong with your perception. The rest of what you're saying is that in this case, tradition should rule for tradition's sake. In the short run, I agree. In the long run, I'm not so sure.

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It’s a red herring, of a sort commonly used in political contexts, even to get good laws passed, but still a diversion from the subject.

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I disagree. I think it shows that any argument for the status quo (regarding clergy being authorized) not based on the harm of upsetting people's expectations that are based on tradition is dubious. Once you acknowledge that tradition is indeed the only basis of your position, then it becomes a red herring.

That kind of argument, for instance to evaluate the desirability of some future, perfect automated umpiring for baseball games, is quite useful. There are numerous arguments people make for human umpires. But if you posit that such an automatic system were already in place, almost nobody who participates in this thought experiment would say it should be replaced by fallible humans. That does not automatically decide the issue, but it certainly calls into legitimate question the strength of most of the arguments made by those who favor human umpires.

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But how have you even disagreed with my position? You agreed with me that it was a lousy idea. I’m not even taking a position on long term social trends as to how people should get married, because that position would be irrelevant.

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avram

Well, not just to clergy -- you can have a secular ceremony. How is what Tayefeth suggests different from the current situation?

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She is suggesting that clergy should not automatically be deputized to perform a state function. It might make more sense, for instance, to give that franchise to all notary republics, or to no one. There's really no reason I can see why you can't have the clerk who issues the license also witness the execution of the license.

It means two trips to the government office, rather than one, since no the franchisee submits the executed license and presumably you want to enforce a 72 hour wait or something. So I guess there is a reason. But not much of one.

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No, there’s no real reason, it’s just traditional; you can get married just by going to government offices. I got married in a judge’s chambers after hours, by appointment. They gave us a list of judges to choose from, and it cost $40 or something like that.

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Sure, but it's two trips, right? You have to get the license and then after a waiting period you go to the judge's chambers, the mayor's office, or whatever. If you're going to have a church ceremony anyway, haveing the clergy licensed saves a trip.

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Yes, sure, that’s restating my analogy to a contract post office. If you mean there is a reason of convenience, then, sure, that’s something I’ve taken as a given all along. It’s implied in the contract post office analogy, no?

I haven’t even seen a reason given for shutting down the ‘contract marriage centers’. I can think of some, but they belong in the field of fundamentalist atheism, to which I do not adhere. I believe in marriage Choice.

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I think I am much less anti-religion than you in how people should run their lives, but more leery than you of the government granting religion any 'special place.'

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The only meaning I can imagine for the first part is that I don’t believe it is healthy for people to believe in myths, and you think it is; but since I do not wish to restrict people from believing in myths, it is a difference that has no bearing here. It would become relevant if we were discussing children’s educations.

Also I don’t see the relevance of allowing clerics to marry people to separation of church and state. In what way is anybody being discriminated against, or in what way is any church favored over another or against atheism by this? Is it because a cleric gets the fee instead of some judge working after hours? But that fee comes from the people getting married, not from the state.

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Why clergy, and not, say, university professors? Or cops? Or only JPs? That is where the church/state separation issue comes in.

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We must be talking about some law other than the First Amendment of the US Constitution. If there were any law unconstitutional under that amendment, it would be the one banning marriage by clergyfolk, because it would be intentional persecution.

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I am for protecting people’s civil rights. It doesn’t harm my civil rights if Steve and Carl want to have a minister preside at their wedding. The state doesn’t pay the minister—Carl’s dad does that, let’s say—and the marriage is treated no differently from mine. There is no special tax schedule for Methodist marriages.

Now, of course, I’d rather there were no ministers, and I support in general the idea of getting to that situation. But this is not relevant to whether or not letting ministers preside at marriages is damaging to my civil rights; and neither is the inability of ministers to grant divorces or child custody.

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It doesn't harm your civil rights if Steve and Carl want to have a minister preside at their wedding, but imagine that you and your beloved want your favorite college professor to preside at your wedding. Well, because of the way marriage works in the US right now, Steve and Carl can have their minister perform two functions: preside over their wedding ceremony and solemnize their legal wedding. You, since you want a non-cleric to preside over your wedding ceremony, have to either have two ceremonies or have two people presiding: the college professor and either a minister or a JP.

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I can hardly believe we are having such a silly conversation. Nobody is going to buy that a person has a constitutional right to be married in exactly the way they prefer. How we got from the right to same-sex marriage, and how to make that right work in practice, to nitpicking about constitutionally-unrelated minor annoyances of procedure is a huge mystery.

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I can hardly believe we're having this silly conversation, either. You started by arguing that it makes no sense to concede marriage to the churches. I suggested that it makes more sense to take marriage (the legal and cultural institution) away from the churches. You jumped down everyone's throat six ways from Sunday.

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This is how it happened with the important parts left out.

What I argued is that renaming marriage as ‘civil union’, an idea put forward by various people, was no solution to same-sex marriage rights. But your suggestion has no relationship to the same-sex marriage issue, as far as I can tell. I haven’t been jumping down anyone’s throat; I’ve been getting the runaround regarding the relevance of the idea.

There is a simple explanation: it is a pet peeve serving no purpose related to people’s civil right to get married. That’s fine, I have similar pet peeves about religious stuff; Dvd surely knows, because he’s called me on it before.

Personally I want there to be no religion, but want to get there without pique, retaliation, or the creation of trivial nuisances. Children should be taught the difference and incompatibility between scientific method and religious method, and that scientific method can be applied in all parts of life, not just in a laboratory. There is no need to create petty inconveniences, which is all this priest ban does. You said let’s take away the privilege of priests to marry people. Ever since then I have been trying to find out what the purpose of this suggestion is, and how it helps defend anyone’s marriage rights. But the answer is that it doesn’t, and it trivializes the plight of same-sex couples who cannot get the benefits of marriage, and I tried tiptoeing around this evident fact, to give people a chance to see for themselves.

Edited Date: 2008-12-02 04:53 am (UTC)

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I guess Dvd and thee got in front of me while I was screaming at Ron Reagan and others through my computer screen. I apologize.

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In much of Europe, you get a marriage license from the government, and then you have a civil "ceremony." You can also have a religious ceremony, if that's your kinky inclination, but the religious ceremony cannot substitute for the civil ceremony, as it can in the US. While clergy folk of some religions may be persons of stature, I'm not ready to concede that the immature 17-year old who got a mail-away minister's certificate and is now legally entitled to perform marriages is also a person of stature.

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What’s it to you if Karen and Timothy or Glenda and Isabelle get married by a 17-year-old? And what in the name of ‘heaven’ does this pet peeve have to do with the right to get married and how to fulfill that right? What opportunities to exercise one’s rights would a minor and probably unpopular change in procedure provide.

I think the real goal is to piss off people who’ve pissed off you and me.

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