There are legal aspects, like property rights, inheritance, powers of attorney, etc... The ceremony is a religious act. Marriage itself is a legal contract. You can get married without religion being involved. You can have a civil ceremony that has nothing to do with any religion. The whole point of the gay marriage movement is that government is restricting marriage to a man and a woman...not religion. If we passed an amendment today that said gay marriage is ok, no religious institution would be required to marry gay folk. I have always viewed as a violation on my religious rights as a minister and a violation of the religious rights of those who come to me because I cannot legally marry a same sex couple. I can do a ceremony that is not legally binding...but that does not convey any of the rights or privledges afforded to married couples...most importantly involving inheritance and visitation issues. There have been many cases where the other partner in a same sex couple was denied the right to visit his partner while he was in ICU as it is restricted to family members only...legally, he was not family. There have been several highly publicized cases where a partner, even though the couple lived together as a married couple for over 30 years...bought a house together...bought cars, invested together...but when one partner died, the family, who apparently was more interested in money, denied the surviving partner access to the house and other "marital assets". If this were a hetero couple...there would have been no denying the inheritance rights of the surviving partner...even if they were not married, common law usually covers that.
-----Original Message----- From: Cameron Childress [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2012 11:09 AM To: cf-community Subject: Re: what was that site... which politician fits me? On Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 12:00 PM, Ras Tafari <[email protected]> wrote: > ron paul said that the govt shouldnt be involved in deciding who > can/cant be married. > > its not their business. Marriage is completely an invention of religion. I am all for moving the issuance of marriage certificates into the hands of churches. Why does the government need to approve a marriage anyway? Then if a church wants to marry two men, or two women, they can. If you don't like that, don't be a member of that church. But then should marriage status even be considered when it comes to government benefits? The right the issue a DNR order? Taxes? Insurance? Perhaps that should be handled legally, outside of marriage. Strictly within *relationship* status - able to be assigned to anyone you wish. -Cameron ... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:345162 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
