Originally Posted by Pat

Gay couples may soon be able to tie the knot in church | UK news | The Observer
snip,

Originally Posted by saltwn

Gays already get married in churches. Just some churches don't allow it due to their beliefs. Same thing with divorced people. Many sects of Baptists and others will not marry a couple where one of them is divorced.

Originally Posted by Pat

Evidently, they can't get married in churches in the UK.
Did you read the linked article?

Originally Posted by foundit66

I think a lot of people who talk about separating "marriage" from the government just plain don't understand HOW it is entangled in the first place.
And they don't seem to fully understand the implications of the dis-entanglement.

Take the power to make medical decisions for your spouse. Just one of over 1,000 rights and privileges that the government "entangles" themselves with...

If the government removes this, what is left?
Well, there are already laws establishing familial (non-spouse) decision making.
This is part of what played out in the Terri Schiavo case. The husband had legislation backing his position of being able to make decisions for Terri, which the family was challenging based on their legal standing.
If we remove the laws helping the husband, leaving the other family protections, is that really what we want?


It's very easy to claim "let's remove government from marriage", but we ignore all the circumstances where people WANT government protection for married couples...

"Divorce" is another area of protection whereby the government's involvement in marriage (specifically the ending of it) is desired, although everybody has different opinions of how it should be...

Originally Posted by rivrrat

Those things can be handled without marriage contracts.

Originally Posted by dabateman

The financial questions generally cannot... And functionally, a marriage contract automatically disperses these rights without having to "fight" for them.

Originally Posted by rivrrat

Sure the financial things can. Just about anything can be drawn up into a contract.

Originally Posted by dabateman

Taxation is a HUGE aspect of the financial problem, and a contract outside of marriage doesn't fix that problem. AND contracts that would control many financial issues between two people who are do so for "relationship" interests would be considered non-binding as it's merely a moral obligation and not a true business transaction...

You should see the cases that are thrown out because the courts don't recognize moral obligations between two un-married parties.

Originally Posted by rivrrat

Married people shouldn't get tax breaks. Hence the whole point that the govt need not be involved in our relationships.

The contracts could easily be drawn up as business transactions. Aside from that, maybe people should just be responsible for their own finances and not use the government to determine that crap for them.