Appealing The Decision
So. This comes back to real life. Did you know the State of Texas can deny you an application of a marriage license if you’ve had nine previous marriages? Tru fax. A friend’s father was straight up legally denied his tenth legal marriage over a span of 35 years, on the grounds of “you do that too much.” And yeah, I can see where they’re coming from, but it kinda throws this whole “marriage should be a legal institution, not a private/religious one” thing into sharp light. He wasn’t getting married to another man, he wasn’t green-card scamming the whole time, he just got married too often for the state to like. So they decided to say “Nope, no more. You’re done.”
Yeah, he was, according to all reports (I never met him personally before he died) a bit of a womanizer and an alcoholic crazy nutjob. But at the times they happened, all of his marriages were legitimate desires on his part to marry a woman. (Omar’s love life is a tiny bit based on this dude, in case that wasn’t implied.)
Geez. So get married in New Mexico. Or Arizona. Or Oklahoma. Or hell, Nevada.
That’s why some peeps are about getting government out of marriage, too. It’s a legal contract between two adults, not unlike the thousands of other legal contracts we adults enter into all the damn time. Of course, some of those peeps use it as an excuse to be against gay marriage, to which I would liberally apply a bitchslap to their forehead. Not a hard concept to grasp. Since government is in the business, now, it should be equally applied, now. Doesn’t mean we should not also get it out of the business in the future.
I’m not sure how someone can be for getting the government out of marriage, and also against gay marriage. It would seem tome that as soon as the government no longer dictates who may or may not enter into this contract, any consenting adult could do it with any other consenting adult. Which is the whole idea of getting government out of marriage.
I actually had some argue that government should not allow same-sex couples to marry because government shouldn’t be involved in marriage at all, and therefore if they did allow it it is extending instead of reducing that power. personally, I thought he was being a hypocrite and just wanted to keep gays from marrying, as he didn’t actually seem to care about it otherwise.
There are people who fundamentally object to marriage being anything other than the union of one man and one woman; I put a fair amount of thought into it, and realized that my real objection is to the state’s involvement in the institution.
As far as the push for state-sponsored “non-traditional” marriage goes, I have two major issues with the position in vogue on this issue, but they both fundamentally amount to one thing: Dishonesty.
First, if those in favor of widening the definition of marriage were honest, they would be fighting to get the government out of the business of approving or disapproving marriages. Just like gun control, marriage control primarily grew as an institutional way to prevent the inter-marriage of whites and non-whites in the south after The Civil War. The only motive I can see for keeping marriage as a state-involved institution is as a way to force people of religious convictions to participate in the proceedings against their will. From my perspective, they’re not advocating against people being under the boot of government oppression, they’re advocating only to put someone else under the boot. They make themselves out as champions of liberty and equality, but really all they want to do is take the oppressive yolk off their backs and put it on someone else. Personally, I find that to be repugnant and mendacious.
Second, they also openly lie when they deny that polyamorous marriage will be next. Anyone with a brain can see the truth here; that they deny it smacks of mendacity and/or intellectual dishonesty.
TLDR: I’m opposed to people being oppressed by their governments, and even more opposed to people using the government to oppress other people, ESPECIALLY if they’re just trying to reverse the status quo. As a libertarian, I can’t support this kind of tyranny: The only position that I currently believe to be in keeping with my beliefs is to remove the state from marriage.
Since I’m a man of limited means, and I care more about other issues, the bulk of my time lobbying is spent on other issues (like gun rights); That is, at least until someone tries to take the government’s boot off their back so that it can be put on mine.
All the way up until you and your same sex partner want to be buried together in your family plot and the cemetary caretakers say “no, because you are gay”
Fact: At least 1 in 20 at Arlington are homosexual.
I’m opposed to the government getting more involved with marriage. It’s a religious institution, in my estimation. Oh, and before you start calling me homophobe and all that. Shut up! I feel that it should be the couple’s CHURCH that decides what is and is not an acceptable union. 1 man 1 woman, 2 men, 2 women, 2 women one man, two men, one woman. one man forty wives(god… if you can listen to that many women complain, go for it…). If the religious institution supports it, then the government’s only job should be certifying the civil contract portion of it.
No one (with any authority) is demanding that priests / pastors marry homosexual couples, so calm down. In fact, it’s pretty well established that the government can’t. Your preacher is perfectly free to not perform weddings for same-sex couples or even recognize that it exists. The “gay marriage” issue only pertains to legal status and civil papers.
Well, that’s the position I’ve held since BEFORE same sex marriage was an issue (back when the argument was over “civil partners”):
Leave “marriage” as a social, cultural, and religious affair — if your social circle, culture, or religion says it’s a marriage, whatevs. . . hetero monogamy, same-sex, poly, group — whatever your peeps want to call “marriage” is your business. Don’t like the definition your church uses? There’s another church down the road – go find one you agree with, or start your own. NO ONE could “redefine marriage” or “limit the definition of marriage out of bigotry” TO YOU, because you wouldn’t be bound by THEIR definitions.
Have the government involved in registering partnerships between consenting adults free to contract those partnerships, without any legal notice taken as to who is sleeping with who in what combinations of consenting adults. (There is an argument that, since financial and tax benefits are currently involved, there is a legitimate case to limiting it to two people per relationship. So if you have a poly family, then for governmental purposes, each spouse could only have one registered partner. Purely to keep a large group of friends from registering as one partnership so everyone could get in on the goodies. . . )
With the governmentally recognized civil partnership being wholly seperated from the idea of “marriage”, there is NO reason for the government to have ANY say in who can hook up as a civil partner, so long as thery are each consenting adults who aren’t prohibited from entering ANY new partnership. You could select whatever other consenting adult you trust most in the world to be your presumptive heir, hold presumptive medical authority if incapacitated, be on your company health insurance, etc. – even if there is no sexual relationship or attraction between you. Two elderly siblings who live together and just want to keep assets in the family since neither has any children or spouses? Sure. Two hetero guys who are long time business partners, and neither trusts any woman on teh planet more than their business partner? Sure.
The government has ALWAYS been in marriage, because marriage has ALWAYS been heavily tied into property law. Marriage has always been about determining who inherits property. It’s also been about determining who has legal responsibility for whom.
For example, saying that the government should get out of marriage is also saying that I should be able to marry someone without her owning my income during the marriage. (New Mexico is a community property state.) It’s saying that I should be able to divorce her by fiat without owing any alimony.
So if such a person gets married in another state will Texas recognise the marriage? What are the implications if Texas doesn’t?
That matter is actually before the courts now. There’s a same-sex couple who were legally married in another state, then transplanted themselves to Texas, who are trying to get a divorce. Problem is, Texas won’t grant them a divorce because Texas won’t recognize the validity of their marriage. So they’ve sued the state to get their marriage legally recognized by the state in order to get it legally dissolved by the state. Pretty sure if the courts rule in their favor, legal precedent would apply to heterosexual couples whose marriages Texas doesn’t want to recognize as valid either.
But, since I can’t remember ever hearing about a case where a heterosexual couple was married in one state and then had the validity of their marriage challenged in another state, yeah, Omar needs to put down the galvanized pipe and pick up the phone to book a weekend in Vegas for Maria and himself.
Not since the ’60s, anyway. The only other cases, which go much further back, mostly involve states that don’t let first cousins marry refusing to recognize such marriages from those that do. Pretty much ignored these days, and there is that “full faith and credit” clause.
“Full Faith and Credit” is the clause under which all these challenges fall. Far as I’m concerned, good in one, is good in all. End of subject.
But of course, there are a lot of very smart hair-splittin’ lawyers out there, so my “plain language reading” has probably been ‘nuanced’ to hell and gone.
Ted K. went to my High School. True fact.
I’ve said this before, elsewhere, but it bears repeating: What we call “marriage” has two components. One is a civil contract between two consenting adults with which religion has no business interfering. The other component is a religious sacrament in which government should not interfere. I am surprised that no suit has been filed alleging violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
To clarify…MAY have two components. If you go to the courthouse and get married by the JP, there is only one.
Which is what Omar and Mara were trying to do. One of thousands, nay, millions of arbitrary decisions made by all levels of government over hundreds of years affecting our lives.
*Maria
@Necron99, Holy Mother Church will tend to disagree, if there is no impediment (such as a living spouse). If a man and a woman intend to get married, binding themselves to each other in a lifelong covenant for the good of their children, then the Church will regard that as valid (unless they’re baptized Catholics; they have to get married in a church, with a priest, at a nuptial Mass).
I’ve evolved from a total libertarian to a generalized minarchist. Government force is nearly always best used negatively, to restrain evil, such as theft, injury, vice, and cheating. It can be remarkably difficult to use government to promote public good.
Public goods are very rare things. They should benefit the entire community, rather than benefitting one group at the expense of another. There are a LOT of cases where rent-seeking is portrayed as a public good, but it almost never is, and that is the main reason I’m very cautious in calling something a public good.
Marriage promotes a public good, to wit: children. The more children there are, the more quickly prosperity tends to increase. And when birthrates fall too far, a society can easily collapse (as imagined by P. D. James in The Children of Men and Brian Aldiss in Greybeard). The future looks pretty grim for our elders, particularly in places like Japan, China, and Europe.
Children tend to do best when reared in a stable, lifelong marriage between their biological parents. I know that there are children that do well outside that milieu, but the proportion of children who do well rises when they are so reared. The traditional social edifice of marriage (and the laws which support it) are there to support children being so reared. This is a legitimate public good. It helps everyone, and so the government has some business supporting it, and no business interfering with it.
The first assault on marriage and children was legalized contraception, followed by no-fault divorce, then legalized abortion, and now gay marriage, which does not naturally result in children.
I am sterile. So is Mel. Should we not be allowed marriage?
JL, you’re a man and she’s a woman, and under ordinary circumstances that sort of marriage leads to children. Infertility of any degree is not the ordinary circumstance of men and women, and its discovery often leads to people seeking medical assistance to overcome it. And, those ordinary marriages which do not produce children still support their proper rearing in society.
Mel and I are both infertile and have no urge whatsoever to pursue medical mitigation of this status. We don’t want additional kids. Should our marriage be annulled?
You haven’t said anything to suggest it should, such as a previous marriage to somebody still living, or that your vows were specifically towards a temporary partnership, rather than for the rest of your respective lives.
I am also a remarried divorcee, and my ex is still alive. Our vows included Til Death. That makes my current marriage null and void?
If you try to enter the Catholic Church, yes. You’d have to go through that lengthy and annoying legal review process I mentioned in my reply to Mad David below, to prove that there was something wrong with your first marriage. Given the state of American culture in this day and age, that is not necessarily terribly difficult.
Which Holy Mother Church?
Read Leviticus. It’s a hand-book of EVERY religious rite and ceremony that God handed down to the Hebrew people. There is not one mention of how to perform a marriage ceremony. There is not one mention of a religious marriage ceremony in the bible. think about that.
Read Isaiah. Rituals are tools to shape human behavior and are harmful when humans put them ahead of the desired behavior. God doesn’t care half as much about who performs your wedding ceremony as whether your are faithful to your spouse. God blesses a marriage by JOP when the spouses are faithful to each other, and curses a marriage pronounced by the Pope himself if the couple is adulterous.
Read the letters of Paul (you’ll have to read them all, because I forgot which one.) If you marry while you are an unbeliever, and convert, your marriage is still considered valid. (The only caveat is that if your spouse refuses to live with a Christian, you should divorce and are blameless in the divorce.) So even a marriage blessed by a priest of Hera is something God will accept as valid, as long as both people are faithful to it.
I think that practically all of the Catholic Church’s emphasis on ritualism stems from converting heathens. “If we allow them to marry before a judge, they might have Frigg bless the marriage and be damned for it.” Plus, priests are just as power-hungry as the next human guy, and ritualism lets you control people. Even if there is a major prophet giving a scathing denouncement of that kind of thing right there in the Bible.
Why should government force be used on vice?
Serious question, are you more a fan of the 18th or 21st amendment?
Mad David, I refer to the Catholic Church, which, to my knowledge, is the only one to regularly so refer to itself. And she likes marriages of converts to be convalidated, but as I said, she will recognize any marriage made by the proper ministers and matter (one unmarried man and one unmarried woman for both) with the proper intent. Proper intent is presumed, and generally has to be disproved in a long and tedious legal review if you want the Church to recognize your marriage to any living spouse besides the first. You are correct in saying that the minister of the nuptial mass, be he priest, bishop, or Pope, will not overcome the impediment of a previous spouse. And as for reform, that has been the typical driving force behind the foundation of just about every religious order in the Church, starting from the Third Century or so.
stimpynarf, that is a fair question. I would prefer that other forms of social pressure be used on vice, but that the government not do anything to undermine those forces. Vice degrades and weakens families, which are the fabric of society. As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live, which is one reason that I really resist government interference in families.
More harm has been done with drug and alcohol prohibition than by their abuse — to wit, illegal production; smuggling; and powerful gangs that corrupt the police, menace the innocent, and battle in the streets to control the trade. And people who want illegal substances have always had little trouble getting them. Sexual vice, because of how it affects children and families, is a rather more serious matter than legal substance abuse, pretty much regardless of the substance.
It’s really just adorable watching you rationalize your ridiculous stone-aged superstitions in this modern world. BOOGA BOOGA PRE-MARITAL SEX WILL BLOW YOUR LEGS OFF.
Put simply, you can preach to me about morality when your own holy, renowned church does 2 things:
1. Stop treating women as inferiors.
2. Stop hiding, covering up, and funding the legal defense of the clergy in your church who hold down screaming children and fuck them.
THEN we can start talking about morality. But right now, you follow a cult that rapes kids. Don’t talk to me about “the proper rearing of children” when your clergy literally holds down screaming children and rapes them, then spends tens of thousands of dollars per case defending them. I’m not talking about “alleged” child rapists. I’m talking about the ones who admitted to their superiors in the church that yeah, they fucked some kids, but the church still spends money relocating them, and defending them in court.
You have no leg to stand on, and if you ally yourself with these kidfuckers, you’re as bad as a kidfucker yourself.
That is a straw man argument. The core of Catholic sexual morality is that under ordinary circumstances, sex leads to children, and because children deserve to be reared in a stable family built on the lifelong marriage of their biological parents, it’s a bad idea for people in other situations to have sex.
Your second pack of arguments is a mess of red herrings.
Regarding point 1, this is not only irrelevant but false. Men and women are different. As a result, there are cases where the Church treats them differently. However, different is not the same as inferior. Do not equivocate the two. And bear in mind that after God Himself, the person given the highest honor in and by the Catholic Church is a woman.
Regarding point 2, if there were some doctrine suggesting that it’s okay for clerics to rape kids, that would not be a red herring. But no. Like every other form of extra-marital sex, the rape of children by clergy is prohibited as gravely sinful. Sure, priests are all sinners, and some of them as foul as can be imagined. But to argue that this invalidates Catholic morality is to argue guilt by association. The true measure of Catholic morality is not in measuring those who are the worst at following it, but those who are the best — the saints. And even then, bear in mind that aside from the angels and the Blessed Virgin, all saints are sinners too, and you will find failures in their lives.
You have every right and reason to be outraged at clerical misconduct, and I share your outrage. So too does Papa Ben, and he did yeoman’s work both as head of the CDF and as Pope to bring about justice for the victims. But your outrage is fueled in no small part by availability bias. The most likely perpetrator of child rape remains a single mother’s live-in boyfriend, but it’s so common that it doesn’t make the news.
There are very few organizations which have deep pockets, access to children, and liability for such lawsuits. Large Protestant churches, the Boy Scouts of America, and WAGGGS, are set up to not have control over or liability for hiring decisions made by local groups. Private schools are too small. Public school districts have sovreign immunity. Without big payoffs and big scandals, news organizations hardly care about endemic child sex abuse in other organizations.
Public school faculty not only have a higher per-capita incidence of such allegations than Catholic clergy, but also continue to receive legal protection and transfers, from both their districts AND their unions. Meanwhile, since the adoption of the Dallas Charter in 2002, the USCCB has immediately tossed any accused priest under the bus whenever there has been even the most specious of accusations of child sex abuse. It’s fairly easy to find earlier examples if you look.
Given insurance companies’ business model of making higher-risk populations pay higher premiums, that the Catholic Church doesn’t pay any more for sexual misconduct riders on their liability insurance than anyone else should speak volumes.
Guilt by association works just fine as long as nobody is MAKING you associate. I’m having a crappy time with the “check your privilege” crowd, because I can’t NOT be a straight white cis-male… But you COULD not be part of the same group as child-rapists. Either you could leave the church, or you could excommunicate them. That’s a valid concern.
And insurance companies make mistakes, too. People ask why insurance is higher on campuses which don’t ban firearms, because *they* have an ideology, too.
stimpynarf, when one argues, “Catholic moral teaching on sex has to be wrong, because there are priests who, in disobeying it, rape kids,” that’s arguing both ad hominem and guilt by association, which are irrational arguments and non-sequiturs. If you want to argue that Catholic moral doctrine on sex is bad or wrong, argue against the doctrine, not the people who fail it.
The word “Catholic” means “universal.” We’re the church for all of God’s beloved children. It exists solely to get us all closer to him, not divide us into the elect who are saved, and the damned, to be kept away. We are not Calvinists, let alone Puritans.
The point of excommunication (which specifically means a person may not receive the sacraments) is to bring about repentance. Demonstrated repentance opens up the sacrament of reconciliation, which then opens up the rest. Our God is a merciful god, with infinite mercy for the repentant. He desires mercy, not sacrifice. If sinners of any stripe demonstrate some repentance for their sins, who are we to judge their souls?
Or at least that’s the doctrine. Since adoption of the 2002 Dallas Charter (officially the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People), with very few exceptions, the practice has been that any time any accusation is made against any (living) priest, even if the only allegation is that it happened one time 50 years ago in some place where that priest never was, is that the accused priest is immediately stripped of all priestly faculties, cut off from all support by his diocese or order, and left to make his own way, both against the allegations and in the world. Is that vengeful enough for you? Or do you believe in innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt?
As for incidence of child sex abuse, the John Jay study puts it at about 4% for priests, just about the only population to receive such study, with about 80% of victims being pubescent and teenage boys. Best estimates for the male population at large is about 10%. But that is truly only a wild-assed guess. So any claim that priests are unusually prone to these crimes (or that such criminals are unusually prone to seeking out the priesthood, rather than positions as coaches, music teachers, Protestant youth ministers, or scout leaders) are wild-assed guesses also, subject to distortion by at least availability bias and confirmation bias, if not others also.
Those aren’t the arguments we’re making, and thus the ad hominem turns to a straw man. 😉 What we’re arguing is that there is a cohesive church body who is permissive about child rape, in DEED, not in word, (actions speak louder, etc.)… Then you have chosen to either associate or dissociate yourself with that group. If 4% was the norm in society, a military unit would have a dozen or more kid-rapists. Would you want those to be your envoys to other nations? I’m not trying to make a special case, but a consistent one.
Then we’re definitely arguing past each other. My argument is, “greater obedience to Catholic doctrine on sex leads to a better society.” Yours appears to be, “Because the heirarchy that promotes Catholic doctrine on sex was unusually notorious for harboring sexual offenders in a specific era, the doctrine itself is clearly suspect.”
Your argument is definitely ad hominem. You aren’t talking about the doctrine, or the effects of obeying it, but the actions of a small part of a large group of men. An analagous argument would be that working on ReiserFS development leads to violence, because Hans Reiser, the lead developer, was convicted of murdering his wife.
Arguments that you can not make for lack of evidence include:
1. Child sex offenders are more likely to seek and/or obtain Catholic priesthood than other child-access positions, such as school teachers, coaches, scout leaders, rabbis, or Protestant clergy.
2. The Catholic Church is more prone than other bureaucracies to act unethically in order to protect itself from scandal and its members from prosecution.
And even if you did have evidence for those arguments, they would remain irrelevant to my argument, which is “greater obedience to Catholic doctrine on sex leads to a better society.” And here’s my first supporting argument:
When Catholic priests disobey Catholic doctrine on sexual morality (e.g., by raping children), it clearly leads to a worse society. Had those priests obeyed the doctrines regarding sex with children, society would have been better than it now is because they did not do so.
“Yours appears to be, “Because the heirarchy that promotes Catholic doctrine on sex was unusually notorious for harboring sexual offenders in a specific era, the doctrine itself is clearly suspect.””
Not at all: I’m not commenting on the doctrine at all, I’m commenting on the voluntary association of humans known as “the Catholic Church” who have, in fact, and from the top down, PRACTICED a rule, albeit unwritten, that the response to their own members’ sexual predation of those too young to consent is to shield them from consequences. In the same way that bailing out businesses is a crap idea because it gives them the message that they won’t be allowed to feel the brunt of their own consequences, the clergy are being sent a message that fiddling and diddling are OK by them.
“And even if you did have evidence for those arguments, they would remain irrelevant to my argument, which is “greater obedience to Catholic doctrine on sex leads to a better society.” And here’s my first supporting argument:
When Catholic priests disobey Catholic doctrine on sexual morality (e.g., by raping children), it clearly leads to a worse society. Had those priests obeyed the doctrines regarding sex with children, society would have been better than it now is because they did not do so.”
As long as you keep working on the pretense that the catholic doctrine is “what’s supposed to happen in theory” and turning a blind eye to “what it amounts to in practice”, you’ll have problems. Remember: The thing about theory and practice is, in theory they’re the same… In practice, they’re not.
The counter to that sort of argumentation is usually, “Well, we outlaw murder, but people still do it, so why do we bother?”
If you’re going to argue that obedience to Catholic sexual doctrine is bad, you don’t point to the failures. You point to the successes, to wit: the saints.
No matter WHAT sort of moral doctrines you set up, there will be people who disobey them. Their disobedience is not a failure of the doctrines, but the people.
I have maintained that obedience to Catholic sexual doctrines results in a better society. And your argument has largely been, “But your church is so notorious for harboring offenders against that doctrine!” There are two serious deficiencies in your argument: (a) you have no real evidence that Holy Mother Church is any better or worse than anyone else, and (b) you have refused to address the effects of acceptance of and obedience to those doctrines.
Pope Paul VI had it right when he pointed out (in Humanae Vitae) what would happen if we broadly accepted contraception:
a) conjugal infidelity (which includes divorce & remarriage);
b) general lowering of morality;
c) men would cease to respect women in their totality and would treat them as “mere instruments of selfish enjoyment” rather than as cherished partners (e.g., porn, sex trafficking, the PUA/”game” community);
d) Massive imposition of contraception by unscrupulous governments (e.g., China’s One Child Policy).
He knew this would happen because it happened the last time that there was broad acceptance of (relatively) safe contraception, to wit, sylphium.
Now, those are bad effects of abandoning Catholic sexual doctrine. Do you want to argue that they didn’t happen, or that they aren’t bad?
“The counter to that sort of argumentation is usually, “Well, we outlaw murder, but people still do it, so why do we bother?””
People get a prompt lesson in the difference between prohibitions and real crimes, in this case. Malum in se, a thing which is wrong by way of harming one or more… or Malum Prohibitum, a thing which is “wrong” because someone said so, and isn’t wrong if they change their mind.
I don’t see anywhere in my comment, however, that I made any argument spurring your reply. Could you copy-paste what inspired that?
“If you’re going to argue that obedience to Catholic sexual doctrine is bad, you don’t point to the failures. You point to the successes, to wit: the saints.”
I’m pointing out that what’s said to be doctrine is theoretical, and what’s being done to shield molestors and rapists is the reality of the situation.
“There are two serious deficiencies in your argument: (a) you have no real evidence that Holy Mother Church is any better or worse than anyone else, and (b) you have refused to address the effects of acceptance of and obedience to those doctrines.”
Re A: I don’t need it. If it’s the same as anyone else, that would point to a stark reality in which the church is, at best, not an improvement over life without the church. Re B: I don’t need to address the effects of it, because as I said, they’re merely theoretical. I can only show you hypocrisy within the church, at present. And if the church’s upper leadership isn’t following the doctrines when they harbor predators, how can anyone else be expected to? (If they ARE following the doctrines when they harbor predators, then burn the whole thing to the ground and start over with better doctrines. ‘Won’t be water but fire next time’, amirite?)
Here’s that trigger:
As an aside: The total number of credible allegations of sexual misconduct by Catholic clergy and religious against children in the US, that occurred in the Year of Our Lord 2013, was nine. As in, nine kids in the entire US Catholic Church. As in, less than ten. (source and commentary) I think that’s pretty strong evidence of reform, especially when the government figures that ten percent of public school students are victims of “educator sexual misconduct.” That’s an average of three in every public school classroom. Because school districts are pretty much immune from lawsuit (one reason why nobody is ever gonna get compensated for Love Canal), they have a lot less motivation to correct this kind of behavior, and it’s a lot easier to believe that they are much less vigorous in their efforts to do so.
As a further aside: When Papa Ben, then named Joseph Cdl. Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly the Inquisition), learned the scope of the abuse (which he readily called “filth”), he lobbied his friend JPII long and hard to have jurisdiction for cases of clerical sexual abuse of children moved from the hugely backlogged Roman Rota to his own part of the Curia, where things went much more expeditiously, with much more priority given to mercy for the victim than the accused.
I have never, ever, once, in this discussion, argued for other than fidelity to Catholic doctrine, for which the definitive resource is the Catechism of the Catholic Church. YOu have hauled in the priest sex scandal — behavior which is clearly and egregiously contrary and disobedient to that doctrine, and furthermore, to claim that calling for obedience to that doctrine makes me as morally suspect as the criminals who have so famously disobeyed it in violation of their vows.
Child rape is mala in se. That is disobedience to Catholic sexual doctrine. The doctrine and morality are congruent. And you’re arguing… fuck, I don’t know what your actual argument really is. It sounds like, “Your rules are too hard, and nobody ever REALLY follows them, so calling for people to follow them is bound to lead to them doing the exact opposite.” I am singularly unpersuaded, because you have not shown how the two are linked. I’d say the sort of coverup you’re decrying is far more readily linked to power, which the government has far more of than the Church. Power is what has protected famous child molesters like Roman Polanski, Jimmy Savile, Jerry Sandusky, Victor Salva, Steven Tyler, Jimmy Page, Michael Jackson, Ted Nugent, Woody Allen, R. Kelly, and whoever Corey Feldman refuses to name.
But there ARE people who are radically obedient to that doctrine. Their obedience is not theoretical, it is real. Men like St. Padre Pio, Pope St. John Paul II, Pope St. John XXIII, Pope St. Piux X, St. Maximillian Kolbe, St. Charles Lwanga, and for that matter, Fr. Gordon MacRae. Women like Bl. Teresa of Calcutta, St. Gianna Molla, St. Edith Stein, St. Maria Goretti, and for that matter, Dawn Eden and Jen Fulwiler. And those are just the folks I can cite (mostly) from the 20th century relying only on my memory.
Even if a particular sexual misconduct is not a crime against life, liberty, property, or contract (e.g. sex work), that does not mean it is only malum prohibitum. It always involves an offense against human dignity and well-being. That’s why it deserves the disapprobation of law, even if those laws are never enforced (as I tend to think they largely should not be; not everything is subject to remediation by law or the courts).
http://www.news.com.au/world/europe/skeletons-of-800-babies-infants-believed-to-be-buried-at-bon-secours-sisters-site/story-fnh81p7g-1226939959324
Welcome to your catholic church…
This is one reason why state-church alliances are so bad for the Church, something I’ve said for many years.
Just so.
The religious trappings are an added feature in which the government has no interest. Wanna get married outside of religious support? Can do. Wanna get married without a gov’t license..? Well, still can-do, but it’s a much harder (and longer) process.
That observation is one of my favorite positions when folks get all “one-man-one-woman-religious-rules-hurrr-durrr” in my face. What did Christ say? “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesars.” As per the observation above, marriage belongs to Caesar, i.e. The Government. And per no less an authority than Christ, Himself, religion should butt the hell out.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/29/us/churchs-lawsuit-challenges-north-carolina-ban-on-same-sex-marriage.html?_r=0
In North Carolina, The United Church of Christ is suing the state, arguing “that North Carolina is unconstitutionally restricting religious freedom by barring clergy members from blessing gay and lesbian couples.”
I actually had a discussion with my (Mormon) father about the whole thing. He brought up polygamy, and said that if gay marriage should be allowed “because it’s between consenting adults,” then what about polygamy? I said, what about it?
Really, what’s the difference, if it’s between consenting adults? If you want to make a legal contract between on or two people, or between one and five or six people, or whatever it is, the government doesn’t need to be involved. And this doesn’t have to be a one man, multiple women thing; it can be one woman, multiple men. As far as the government is concerned, marriage is a legal contract between consenting adults to take care of each other, and that’s all they need to concern themselves with.
It drives me nuts, because he’s believes that this is so morally wrong that nobody can be allowed to do it; but in the same discussion we’re also talking about “free will.” It’s a challenge to try and pull logic into a conversation with a religious person, because they always fall back on “God” when they can’t come up with a legitimate reason.
Just out of curiosity, what would prevent my Spouse-Shaped-Person and I from waking up one morning and declaring ourselves married?
FWIW, yesterday morning Oregon’s Attorney General officially refused to defend a ban on gay marriage in federal court; the news this morning said several hundred marriage licenses were issued yesterday afternoon.
The fact that most states don’t recognize common-law marriage.
The flipside of this is that people who live in a state that *does* recognize common law marriage have sometimes inadvertently found themselves married by making jokes about themselves being “husband and wife”, referring to their partner’s mother as a “mother in law”, and so on.
There was an episode of Who’s the Boss (remember that show?) that revolved around that. The rough plot (bearing in mind it’s been probably 25 years since I saw it) was: Tony and Angela had signed in to a B&B in a common-law state as husband and wife. Some time later, they were surprised to discover they were legally married; this being a sitcom, hijinks ensued, but were all wrapped up by the end of the episode.
I guess I’m asking, what database does this show up in? How do they know, or not, short of trying to figure out where we may, or may not, have gotten married?
Marriage licenses are a waste of time. Functionally, they serve only as a tax. I never had to provide a copy of my marriage license to either the state I resided in nor to the Federal government in order to claim Married Filing Jointly status, neither did I ever have to provide the state I reside in nor to the Federal government a copy of my divorce decree in order to go back to filing Single. So what do I need a license for? No other legal rights or responsibility depend on the actual possession of such a document. Have some ceremony, claim your married, file taxes accordingly. Screw the license.
If your spouse chooses to take your last name, he or she would be required to present the license to get his or her name changed on all identification, i.e. driver’s license, Social Security, passport, etc. He or she would also have to present a copy of the license to get his or her name changed on financial records. And if he or she didn’t choose to take your name, he or she would have to present a copy of the license to the SEA to claim spousal survivor’s benefits in the event of your demise.
Just to name a few.
I’m pretty sure anyone can file for a name change, with or without a marriage in the mix.
Huh? Nothing except inheritance, joint property division, custody, and a bunch of other relatively important stuff.
And THAT is the purpose of marriage – to define and codify a whole slew of joint responsibilities. Things like medical power of attorney, survivorship, defined authority in respect to children, control and use of property, etc. etc. On one act (marriage) that entire *very* lengthy list is recognized without any further ado, and without resort to lawyers.
That’s also why lawyers get involved in divorce, if you’re smart – including amicable divorces. You’re not just breaking up – you’re dissolving what amounts to a small corporation with many, many duties and rights which need to be addressed and devolved.
Also: Moderation entertainment – I’ve got a viable reply to a comment that is invisible in the moderation wait queue. 😀
Meh, not totally sure I agree with you on that one. I think there are plenty of cases where a neutral mediator (who may be, but need not be, a lawyer) is a wiser choice than having lawyers on each side, and some times where you’re better off with no mediator at all than getting lawyers involved. My divorce almost got far uglier than it had to because somebody talked my (then-)wife into hiring a lawyer to help divide our non-existent assets, instead of just accepting my proposal (which favored her heavily but got me the hell out). In the end we sat down, talked it out, and wound up with exactly what I had proposed to begin with – no doubt to her lawyer’s dismay.
…oops, that was supposed to be a reply to MaskMan’s “That’s also why lawyers get involved in divorce”… Not sure how I did that.
Bit by the moderation queue, you were. 😉
Mediators are nice, but lawyers are for *details.* Even amicable divorces need the details hammered out. Adding a lawyer != hostile. Indeed, having professionals in the mix can *reduce* hostilities.
That said, Mediators are a fine tool, and not to be despised – but they’re for resolution of conflicting interest, not so much for ferreting out the details which should be examined (and which may lead to the need for a mediator).
Back in the day, marriage licenses used to be issued only after the blood test results came back. Blood tests for VD. I always thought that was the main purpose of the marriage license.
That’s only in certain states. Texas has never required a blood test, as well as a dozen other states.
Arizona doesn’t, Hawaii doesn’t, I’m not familiar with any others.
Not for VD. For tissue compatibility issues – Some blood type combinations can be very bad for mother and / or child.
Indeed. My wife turned out to be ab- type blood. And since I’m A+ the tests showed she needed to have shots for every child to keep her body from killing the baby. Turns out it was worth it. Both girls are A+ like me! They could have died without the shots.
Yupper. My wife and I, too.
So.. you never bought a house? using the first time home buy family federal loan mitigation program? That got my wife and I a 3 bedroom/2 car garage house for 70k. Or you never claimed married financial benefits while in the military? Seems to me that you just never really looked out there at all the federal tax relief programs since the Great Depression that are still going for marriages.
I like the idea of a marriage being a legal contract, but there are a few hitches.. I can enter a legal contract with more than one person. Some of the people involved can have more or less involvement in the contracted arrangement. Not so in a marriage. It’s an equal share between two people. Even gay marriage is a binary contract. Two people is the max. More than that is illegal.
There was another type where a man could have multiple wives, but the wives were not married to each other… So it was more of a ‘multiple binary’ contract, or a contract from one entity with multiple other entities, and I’m not talking about that.
Basically, a couple enter into a marriage contract, and either at that time, or in the future, add another person to the contract. Legalizing polyamorous relationships. Defining ‘Primary’ and ‘secondary’ and all the other definitions would be a help.
It’s not unheard of to have something similar. Couple gets married, and has four kids, and it’s a six person family. If the two parents die, (Primaries) then all the legal stuff goes to the kids. (Now a four person family), and any of the four can get married, and add a fifth to the legal equation. (Sort of, as this is for underage people to be under the care of an adult, not to add an adult to a married couple)
I suppose a married couple could legally ‘adopt’ another adult, (or more) but it’s still tricky, and not as legally secure as a marriage. I do know of a gay couple where one woman ‘adopted’ her pregnant partner so they could share familiar rights since there was no provision for gay marriage in their state. It worked well enough to share health insurance.
Being able to build a marriage contract as any other legal contract would be great for alternative committed group relationships, and a headache for others.
Adopting one’s partner, wow. It’s absurd that works, it’s absurd that’s what they had to resort to, and yet it’s awesome that they thought of that.
I wonder if they fall off the insurance after 25 anyways?
Adopting a Partner is probably only legally viable in a handful of States.
In Texas, for example, the law will not legally allow anyone over the age of 18 to be adopted. Texas is so strict on this that if I, as a potential adoptive parent _start_ the adoption process before a child’s 18th birthday, but for whatever reason the court date to finalize the adoption cannot be scheduled until on or after the 18th birthday, the adoption cannot be legally completed.
Which basically means the deadline to start the adoption process is the 181st day after a persons 17th birthday – and your adoption advocates and lawyers better be absolutely on-the-stick getting the final court date scheduled and hope there are no delays.
http://www.thefrisky.com/photos/9-infamous-cases-where-adults-fell-for-underage-teens/underage-ted-nugent-jpg/
Umm.. ya…
OT, but I’ve wondered this a hundred times. If it’s already been answered three hundred times, please forgive but answer anyway:
What is that thing on the foreground side of the workbench supposed to be?
parts box with an open lid.
I’m all for Heinlein’s “contracts”, which if IIRC were custom-drawn-up by the adults in question themselves. They could be of limited time, or open-ended depending on how many “progeny” resulted, allowing for them to mature, or not.
I do think the state should get involved if children are not provided for, but not in relationship to marriage per se’. Just enforcing support by the parents who brought the kid into the world, or legally adopted them.
As for marriage itself, I’d love to see it become a strictly social custom, with or without a religious ceremony to kick it off, according to the participants’ tastes (and no religious ceremony would have legal authority anyway; a “church wedding” would just be for the emotional/spiritual benefit of those involved).
Today’s wedding would eventually give way to the reception, in significance.
Until that time, I say let gays, polygs, or any other consenting adults be allowed fully legal weddings same as anyone, but the ideal in my mind has always been that marriage disappear altogether as a legal institution.
So, in short (HA! too late for that)
I guess I agree with the comedian here. 😀
Don’t know why it’s so hard for people to get it.
A civil marriage license is a secular document, which forces the whole “and Justice for All” rules into play.
If your Church or Religion forbid same-sex marriage, and the Government is not allowed to make laws respecting one religion above any other, then your Church or Religion has the right to refuse performing a marriage ceremony for somebody(ies) who doesn’t meet your Church’s or Religion’s criteria.
Very simple.
Which is why the legal document shpuld just be called a civil union and can be between any number of consenting adults
No. It is a Marriage License, so the resulting union is a Marriage.
Political Correctness and Religious Bigotry *both* be damned, it is still a marriage.
Yup. No need to monkey with the label – the label is fine.
What about the converse?
If my religion explicitly allows same-sex marriage*, and the government is not allowed to make laws respecting one religion above any other, then why should I be denied that marriage by the government.
No one (that I have seen) has ever said “a Catholic Priest must be required to perform a gay marriage**”.
They’ve all said “The Gay Couple should have the option of finding a clergyman for a religion that believes in gay marriage and have that clergyman perform it”
Now, where it does get a little sticky (but only a little): Justices of the Peace perform legally valid, but explicitly non-religious marriage. Should a JP be allowed to ‘recuse’ themselves from performing a gay marriage if the JP does not believe in it, or must the JP (who is a representative of the judiciary, not the religiouciary [I just made that word up]) be forced to perform the gay marriage?
*same-sex Marriage should be interpreted to mean “whatever non-tradition type of marriage floats your boat”
** Ditto for Gay Marriage
If a JP refuses for any reason to perform a marriage ceremony for anyone with a marriage license issued within their jurisdiction, the JP should be dismissed for cause.
The same goes for a clerk who refuses to issue a license for a lawful application.
If you try to force your beliefs on someone else, either through direct action or specific inaction, you have no right to work in a government office. Why? Because you just don’t get the concepts some incredibly intelligent (and, btw, fundamentalist Christian) people spent months/years writing, arguing over, negotiating, and initially amending.
Go get a job at some mega-“ministry.” There, within the grounds/doors of your house of faith, you can do damned near anything you want to your fellow congregants (shy of murder/sacrifice/molestation/etc.)
jlgrant, do you know what County he tried to get married in or any extra information? My sociopathic (and long estranged) mother-in-law has been married 13 times… 9 of those were in Texas, curiously, the 11th was across the border in Texarkana. Perhaps that is the reason why but it’s the first I’ve heard of it. Each and every one was because they had something she wanted… usually money. Or a big dick. Or both. Shortest one was 14 days. Took me a long time to track those marriage it seems like Texas doesn’t keep “good track” at least on the woman’s side – surnames changing that many times buggers something up.
It would have been in the Houston area, between the early 1960s and early 1990s, IIRC.
Um little white chapel in vegas
Can’t have it both ways.
You can’t say “don’t pretend marriage is is some sacred institution when there’s people out there who’ve been married 6 times” and “don’t you dare interfere with my 10th marriage” at the same time.
Were you replying to someone in particular?