Up Front: The Up-Front Guides: The Weasel Translator
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Craig: I'm trying to find a document that specifies the Church's view in civil marriage for unbaptised people but no luck do far. I did however find the 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia page for civil marriage. It's an interesting look back on countries' laws re marriage.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09691b.htm
In Italy you had to get parental consent to marry up until you were 25, or 20 if you were a woman. In England females could marry at 12 with parental consent.
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Gee, in reply to
What I think is that the State should get out of the marriage business completely. Our society is forming families freely with many people coming together for a while and then breaking up again, some marrying and some not. Many parents aren't married at all and marriage is no longer a social requirement for sex and children legitimized by society.
By this reasoning, then anyone who wanted to get married would have to be religious. There go their religious freedoms. I am civilly married because I wanted to show to my partner my commitment, and because law does require certain evidence of partnership. When you leave NZ, de facto has different definitions and different rights. Even within NZ, there are functional, happy marriages that wouldn't meet the de facto criteria for various reasons (needing to live apart for study, wanting to keep separate accounts for everything etc). I wanted a marriage, but I also required the legal status, so a blessing of an areligious type with friends and family wouldn't cut the mustard.
BTW, my first marriage was Catholic. It took an extraordinary amount of time to find someone who was a) happy to marry me to a non-Catholic, b) happy to do so somewhere that wasn't a church, and c) actually available on the day. I lived in a large city at the time, and had a lot of help finding people, but could only find ONE. I was a baptised, Pakeha Catholic and mostly practising at the time, and in a large city. How much harder it would be to find one if it weren't an almost typical Catholic wedding blows my mind.
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Megan Wegan, in reply to
Tess, you can't have it both ways. It can't be:
Marriage is traditionally how we build family and the family is the base cell of society.
and
Our society is forming families freely with many people coming together for a while and then breaking up again, some marrying and some not.
Either everyone gets to _choose_ how to build their family, or no one does. And you and the church can (arrogantly) believe its version of marriage is more worthy, more holy, more important that everyone else's, but it really just isn't. It's just more important to the people involved. And I'm pretty sure the civil union I officiated earlier this year was more important to the people involved in that.
There are still legal reasons why we need marriage - property rights, childcare arrangements, welfare, immigration - and while a utopian world would be one where everyone could just have the relationships they want without having to name them, we don't live in that world yet.
Were it me, I'd want to form a union in a place, with people around, where love is celebrated for everyone, not a select few, where people aren't called deviants because of the consenting adults they love, where my choices and my life and my happiness were celebrated, not called sin. But then, that's just me. And my choices are no more important than yours. And vice versa. (Incidentally, I love the tagline of the Protect Families website: You. Your loved ones. That's a family)
Again, I come back to the point that the legal requirements for a wedding ceremony are really very simple. There's _one_ line that needs to be in it. You can have your sacrament all your like, but that's your belief system, and it's not up to the rest of us, nor the state, to accommodate that.
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Gee, in reply to
Interesting... I wonder if the Canon Law could be altered in the future for non-gendered language based on a change to this:
Canon 1058 All can contract marriage who are not prohibited by law.
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Danielle, in reply to
You can have your sacrament all your like
I don't really want to be "one flesh" with my husband. It sounds like it would be terribly inconvenient.
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BenWilson, in reply to
I don't really want to be "one flesh" with my husband. It sounds like it would be terribly inconvenient.
Isn't it meant to sound just a bit rude?
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Sacha, in reply to
I think Genesis is literal only in a theological way, it's certainly not a scientific text. Sorry if I was unclear.
I'd be careful with the word 'fact' around us heathens.
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Megan Wegan, in reply to
Isn’t it meant to sound just a bit rude?
Even so, I'm with Danielle. All the eew.
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One flesh. Wafer theen.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
I don’t really want to be “one flesh” with my husband. It sounds like it would be terribly inconvenient.
It sounds much better if you're 1) saying it in Latin or 2) David Cronenberg.
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If you want to know how the universe got here ask science.
Excellent. The science of archaeology says civil marriage predates Christianity. Not some kind of informal 'partnering ritual', but registered, contractual civil marriage. Civil marriage doesn't "mirror" Christian marriage, it got there first. Not, as has been said 'first' matters, but if you're claiming primacy on the basis of civil marriage being a cheap imitation of the real thing, you're wrong as well as insulting.
"One flesh" doesn't sound sexy to me. It sounds like I just lost the right to control my own body.
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Megan Wegan, in reply to
“One flesh” doesn’t sound sexy to me. It sounds like I just lost the right to control my own body.
Which, in fairness, is exactly what they want.
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When me & my dearly beloved get down to making the "one flesh" it is #goodtimesinthehouse
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Tess Rooney, in reply to
By this reasoning, then anyone who wanted to get married would have to be religious.
No, I meant that anyone could have the ceremony of their choice with the meaning of their choice. Basically I'm advocating a system that allows for multiple definitions of marriage without the State having a legal preference.
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Tess Rooney, in reply to
Either everyone gets to _choose_ how to build their family, or no one does.
The top quote is my belief about what marriage is and why it exists, my bottom quote is a description of what is actually New Zealand reality.
To a certain extent I'm shrugging my shoulders about this discussion because Wall's bill is going to fly through the House and become law. The legal question is whether Idiot Savant is right or not - will people who are civil celebrants who won't marry GLBT couples be forced to stop being legal celebrants. I hope they can remain celebrants, but I just have no idea of the law around that.
How marriage is defined has already changed in society.
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Lilith __, in reply to
Basically I’m advocating a system that allows for multiple definitions of marriage without the State having a legal preference.
If God’s definition is what matters to you, why do you care what the State does?
And: what you say here is exactly what Louisa Wall or any other advocate for same-sex marriage might say. Multiple definitions of marriage without the State preferring one over another? That's the whole point.
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Tess Rooney, in reply to
The science of archaeology says civil marriage predates Christianity. Not some kind of informal 'partnering ritual', but registered, contractual civil marriage. Civil marriage doesn't "mirror" Christian marriage, it got there first.
Christianity is barely 2000 years old, of course marriage predates it.
However I'm leery of saying that civil marriage predated a religious meaning of marriage. Early civilizations (ie. the ones with archaeological records) usually don't separate religion and state. The state is religion and vice versa. Ancient Egypt, Sumer, Israel - the religious power was political as well. Some ancient societies didn't even religiously or civilly codify marriage, in Greece if the couple said they were married they were. And in ancient Greece, even though older men and younger men were encouraged to be lovers, marriage was still the preserve of man and woman for the purpose of having children.
There's always been homosexual lovers, even in very rigidly heterosexual societies for example Central Asian Bacha bazi. Often the ideal lover is seen as a beautiful boy, indeed in ancient Greece a small thin penis was regarded as the most beautiful because it mirrored the adolescent body. (Shades of Justin Bieber?)
I don't think civil marriage is an imitation, but I do think marriage _as an institution_ is about creating kin through bloodlines. That has been the main social function of marriage. Obviously definitions have changed in New Zealand and I have no doubt the law will come to reflect that. It will be interesting to see how marriage is viewed a century in the future.
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BenWilson, in reply to
You're taking an interesting position, Tess. I can see why Craig suggested it was concern trolling, you're suggesting that marriage sanctioned by the state isn't liberal enough. Perhaps there's truth in that. If I'm understanding you, you're saying "if people want to get married, under whatever arrangement they like, they should be allowed, and no one should be able to say yeah or nay. This includes getting a square old Catholic marriage, which should still be allowed, as a private cult, to refuse people on whatever pretext they like".
If the main concern of marriage laws, support and child-rearing, were decoupled, then this would be a more direct way of circumventing all the silly rules around marriage. It would indeed become a ritual of significance limited to the adherents.
My main objection to this is that social progress seems to come one step at a time, so I hope you're not suggesting any progressive moves should be forestalled because they don't measure up to an ideal, and that we should thus stay in the highly discriminatory state we're in. But honestly, I don't read that out of you, and I thank you for your contributions. It's always good to get a reminder that there are other perspectives.
A second objection is that if you allow Catholicism to dictate all terms of it's own marriage, you are really abandoning all the Catholics who are currently oppressed by those terms. That people could disassociate with Catholicism is the obvious comeback, and it certainly seems to be what a lot of Catholics think is appropriate - that gays should just piss off, or at the very least, shut the fuck up. Considering how enormous the Catholic church is, how many people are under its sway, and how important it is in the lives of devotees, I simply can't agree that the state should never be allowed to interfere internally to right certain wrongs. There really are people suffering from the Catholic oppression of gays, and in this country at least, we can do somewhat to reduce that, and being moral people, we should do it. Religion gets its hooks into people from a very young age, so it's not like freedom to choose really exists practically. You get raised in a cult, you think like the cult, even if you are, by chance, gay. I don't think that gays should have to suffer disconnection from their entire society, every time they come out. It's bad enough that that happens anyway (to some extent) due to human prejudice, without actually letting an institution make it a formal position.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
Early civilizations (ie. the ones with archaeological records) usually don’t separate religion and state.
This statement is not true.
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Tess Rooney, in reply to
If God’s definition is what matters to you, why do you care what the State does?
Yeah, I do struggle with this one.
Much of me doesn't mind how others define their relationships, it's none of my business. But I truly believe (and before I used the word 'factual', which was wrong and sloppy) objectively that God is real and that He has revealed the institution of marriage through Creation and Jewish/Christian tradition and scripture.
If God says that marriage is the union of a man and a woman then I see that as an objective truth and a common good.
I have no desire to live in a theocracy, but I do want to use my democratic right to say what I think.
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Tess Rooney, in reply to
This statement is not true.
Could you give examples? And if so, are there examples were there was a purely civil marriage institution?
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Lilith __, in reply to
I don’t think civil marriage is an imitation, but I do think marriage _as an institution_ is about creating kin through bloodlines. That has been the main social function of marriage.
Marriage as an institution has in most societies been about control and ownership of female sexuality as a means of guaranteeing paternity. In some parts of the world, it still is. Personally, I think it's a very good idea to move on from this model!
And perhaps it's worth a mention that our idea of a mum-dad-and-kids nuclear family is a very modern and Western one. Extended families have always included people rearing children who are not biologically their own, for all sorts of reasons.
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Tess Rooney, in reply to
Pretty much I'm torn between being harsh to people and sticking with what I really believe to be true.
I want to magically find a solution between the two, a way that everyone can have the relationship that is right for them and for the State to not redefine marriage in a way that "steps on God's toes".
I think the way I'm dealing with this inner personal tension is for me to say loudly and publicly that marriage is a man and a woman making babies before the legislation passes and then feeling relaxed when the legislation goes through. I'm at heart a conservative person, and I live a very conservative life and I know I have to be careful not to project my way of life contentment onto other people. But I really, truly, deeply, feel that God has defined marriage and we would be wrong to change it.
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Tess Rooney, in reply to
And perhaps it's worth a mention that our idea of a mum-dad-and-kids nuclear family is a very modern and Western one.
We personally live in an extended family. My mother lives with us and when we make big family decisions it's the three of us adults that do it. My mother would raise the kids almost as much as hubby and I do. We do it for practical reasons, my mum is disabled due to a stroke and it's a financial decision as well.
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Colin Craig thinks we should recognise polygamy as well. Sort of.
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