Alex added That Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion to my quoting the “non-establishment clause”. Bring the full quote to “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”

Congress shall make no laws prohibiting the free exercise thereof. You are free to exercise all the religion you want to. That includes zero, but you are not free to limit anyone else’s exercise of religion. So I agree there is Freedom OF religion, but no Freedom FROM religion.

Priya>If one is in the hospital and the partner comes in the hospital staff will need a lawyer sorting through reams of paper and legaleze to decide whether or not one should be allowed to make medical decisions for the other or even be allowed to visit.

You are being absurd. If your contracts are not clear about such things you deserve what you get.

At what point did we allow government to steal away our right to decide for ourselves beforehand who can and cannot visit us in the hospital? Why are you so adamant against taking it back? What do you have against empowerment?

Priya>We’ve seen with gay couples that this doesn’t work, partners get prohibited from visiting their sick spouse or making medical decisions for them.

This just in. Sometimes it happens to heterosexual couples and family members too. If you don’t file for power of attorney, wills, living trusts, etc… while the patient is deemed mentally competent, you can and will be excluded from making critical decisions about your loved one. This isn’t just a homosexual issue. The whole system is broken and needs to be reformed. Relying on Marriage as a one size fits some, but we can change what marriage means without telling you … Is just not working for anyone.

I’m not chaning Marriage into a legal contract. Marriage already is a legal contract, has been for longer than this country has been a country. That is why you have to file papers to a judge and have to file papers to a judge as well as likely go to trial to settle any disputes. All I want is to get the Federal and State governments out of it, move anything that they do that is of value to civil law where it can be managed by the individuals instead of the Government. It’s really not that big of a change tho what marriage is, but it takes out a meddlesome third party that has no business between you and your partner.

Jon said “I’ll accept that friendly amendment.”

I said “If you think there is no such thing as freedom of religion in your country and freedom from religion you are virtually alone in this. Practically no one takes that idea seriously. Take your religion and stuff it.

Jon said “It doesn’t matter what I think. What matters is that is the law this country is founded on. I can’t help it if you don’t agree with the law.”.

So when Alex points out the law says there is freedom of religion you’re going to agree with him, but when I point that out you’re going to idiotically say “I can’t help you if you don’t agree with the law”. Sometimes people are more about disagreeing with someone they don’t like than speaking what they know to be the truth.

Jon, its clear your motivation is all about appeasing the bigoted religious people and neutering the government, and imposing hardship on all couples to do it. You’re severely deluded if you think you’re ever going to convince me that’s a good idea.

Contrary to what you said you aren’t proposing to change marriage from one standard package into “more than one standard package”, you’re talking about abolishing marriage altogether. Once you replace marriage with a highly variable series of contracts no one will have any clue on the face of it what a couples relation to each other means. If one is in the hospital and the partner comes in the hospital staff will need a lawyer sorting through reams of paper and legaleze to decide whether or not one should be allowed to make medical decisions for the other or even be allowed to visit. We’ve seen with gay couples that this doesn’t work, partners get prohibited from visiting their sick spouse or making medical decisions for them. Sometimes anti-gay family comes in and because the family relationship includes a standard package of rights, obligations, and benefits they are allowed to make medical decisions for the sick partner and have been known to do so against the sick person’s best interests. Gay couples have wills but because they aren’t married in some cases anti-gay family members have come in and legally been allowed to throw the surviving partner out of the house they’ve been in and take all their possessions throwing the surviving spouse out in the cold. This is the sort of thing you’re proposing to possibly allow to happen to all couples, its a bad, bad, bad idea.

If you think replacing marriage with legal contracts is a good idea no one’s preventing you and anyone who thinks like you from doing just that. Go ahead, knock yourself out, but don’t think you should be assuming to take control of what marriage is from people who like it as is and tell them what the can or can’t have. How hypocritical of you to talk about the status quo to be about greater government control and less personal control. Most people now have the personal control to do exactly what you propose as well as the personal control to accept marriage as it is. It is you who’s proposing to take control away from them by denying them what marriage is currently.

I’ll accept that friendly amendment.

Priya>Jon, surely you can’t be that dense. I don’t want anything to do with any church, I don’t want to “give something” to any religion, I don’t choose a religion and I’m not going to a church for any marriage.

I never said you had to. You and your partner can sign your marriage papers and file them. Only difference is your marriage papers will be the package of laws that you and you partner with to commit to, rather than a generic placeholder contract that a third party (the government) can re-interpret and change without either of your partner’s consent. You can have whatever ceremony or no ceremony, with whatever institution or no institution at all to back your commitment. All I want is to get the third party out from between you and your partner. Please tell me what is the harm in that?

Priya>I think taking marriage away from the government (which is by the people)

*laughs* Ideally, yes, but do tell me this. If the Government really is The People… Why is Congress trying to force a Health care bill that 60% of The American People oppose?

Priya> forcing people into a mishmash of complicated contracts is a dumb idea from the word go and you won’t sell me or the vast majority of people on it under any circumstances.

I can see you are too close-minded to consider radical new ideas unless they involve greater government control and less personal control. You yourself described mariage as a standard package. My proposal merely allows there to be more than one standard package. It allows people to chose the commitment package what they want, and gets government out of your bedroom, as it is no longer a government issue, it’s a civil issue between you and your partner alone.

Priya> The experience of all manner of gay couples has shown powers of attorneys, wills, contracts and the like are fraught with all manner of problems and none of them carry the currency of marriage.

They’ll have to when there is no currency of Marriage to compete against. This neededn’t be any more difficult to chose between a few commonly used packages. I thought equality was most important…

Priya> If you think there is no such thing as freedom of religion in your country and freedom from religion you are virtually alone in this. Practically no one takes that idea seriously. Take your religion and stuff it.

It doesn’t matter what I think. What matters is that is the law this country is founded on. I can’t help it if you don’t agree with the law.

I didn’t really detail my position, but I wasn’t necessarily advocating a “mishmash of contracts” to replace marriage. However, the only reason such contracts are inadequate is because the government blessed package of marriage is the only contract universally recognized and unquestioned. If nobody’s relationship was inherently held above all others, then it would be a far more workable construct, and if everyone needed such services, then the lawyer fees would no longer be prohibitive (plus for many a fill in the blank contract would be enough).

As it is, state-packaged marriage is one-size-fits-all that does not fit very many folks and actually means very different things in the various states as far as custody rights and reparations in divorce goes.

To me it’s incredibly irritating that the only way to secure the handful of rights and responsibilities I’d like to share with my significant other is through this one-size-fits-all deal. I shouldn’t have to submit to other people’s definition of my relationship to do such simple things as hospital visitation and willing my property (without the government as a thieving middleman).

Jon, surely you can’t be that dense. I don’t want anything to do with any church, I don’t want to “give something” to any religion, I don’t choose a religion and I’m not going to a church for any marriage.

I think taking marriage away from the government (which is by the people) and forcing people into a mishmash of complicated contracts is a dumb idea from the word go and you won’t sell me or the vast majority of people on it under any circumstances. The experience of all manner of gay couples has shown powers of attorneys, wills, contracts and the like are fraught with all manner of problems and none of them carry the currency of marriage.
The way to resolve this problem is to allow gay people to marry, not to inflict all of society with the problems a lack of marriage causes.

If you think there is no such thing as freedom of religion in your country and freedom from religion you are virtually alone in this. Practically no one takes that idea seriously. Take your religion and stuff it.

Jon,

Oops, I think you missed the second part of that sentence: “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, OR PROHIBITING THE FREE EXERCISE THEREOF.”

What I’m proposing is to give people control, and taking marriage away from government which took it from the people.

I hope you take some time to think about this next question and it’s full implications. Would you rather have a social institution governed by a voluntary association (You chose your religion and can join or leave, without as much as having to move), or an involuntary one? You don’t chose your country and changing it is always somewhat difficult or in some cases as close to impossible as it is possible for the despots to make it.

But the biggest problem you seem to be having is separating the interpersonal from the greater social repercussions. First off I’m not giving Religions anything, I’m giving people the ability to give something to
the religions they chose. I’m suggesting there is more than one standard one-size fits all package that has all sorts of awkward things bolted on to it to accommodate the majority while the minority suffers… Instead there should be multiple packages instead of one standard package of rights (granted by the individual, not by government) and obligations to your partner. Equality is found because the Government is agnostic to these marriages

Nothing in my plan requires a couple to have a church(or other social institutional) marriage. All the legal aspects of what has previously been known as marriage are left to standard civil interpersonal contracts. You’d only need to go to a Church(even social clubs and groups could offer their own ‘marriages’ if they cared to )…

They only time you’d need to would be for the social and moral aspects of marriage.

What the overall society needs from the complex social institution that has been known as marriage are 1) support of and subsidizing the raising the next generation of workers and taxpayers, 2) “ensure the domestic tranquility”, particularly in providing aggressive males with good reason not to engage in reckless activities. It is well documented that married males take much fewer dangerous risks, no doubt in large part because they have much more to lose than unmarried males of the same age. There may be a few other reasons but basically things along those lines are society’s interest in Marriage. Everything else is interpersonal, things that means so much to the individuals, but means little to nothing to the governing of a nation.

So why should Government be involved in it? Wedding ceremonies are very personal things, but the ceremonies themselves are not legally binding (which is the point Burr and others were making), it’s the legal documents that the government sees as the ‘Marriage’. There are Weddings today that have little or no ceremony, but they are still every bit a marriage under the law. So why should the government care what is going on as long as the two people involved consent to whatever agreement they do? Why should the government change how it deals with people because of commitments they’ve made to each other?

Priya>Freedom of religion also means freedom from religion, no one should ever be forced to go to a church for a marriage, people have a right to a non-religious marriage.

Freedom of religion is found no where in the either the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution (including the Amendments). What the law says is that Congress shall make no law regarding the establishment of religion. Government cannot legislate in or out of existence or influence. There is no provision for personal protection from religion in the founding Documents of this country. Regardless, what I am proposing does not force anyone to subscribe to a religion, only if they want the social benefits such institutions (may or may not in your own opinion) provide.

Ancient history, that’s irrelevant to the situation today where the roles are largely reversed. The Democratic party is the champion of minorities, and the Republican party is the champion of rich white men – that’s what matters today.