New York approves Same Sex Marriage.Follow

Nah, marriage in the US is secular as far as the government is concerned. For example, my parents couldn't get married in a Catholic church because my dad is divorced but the Church doesn't recognize divorce (plus he was a Protestant, so it was kinda screwy from the start). They just had a justice of the peace marry them; a so-called "civil service." The church doesn't hand out marriage licenses directly; they either do so with government backing*, or people go to a government agency, and then throw a wedding after.

I actually just attended a wedding two weekends ago where they did it. The families were rather religious, so they had the wedding ceremony and reception last weekend. But the couple has actually been married for a year; they just never had a wedding, just the government issued them a marriage license.

TL;DR: Getting married in a church is not necessary nor necessarily sufficient to be "married" in the eyes of the government.

*Edit: Technically they can help fill out the paperwork, but they can't file at the church.

Edited, Jun 28th 2011 9:57am by LockeColeMA

Churches don't issue marriage licenses, county offices do. You get your license from the county, head to the chapel, have someone officiate it and sign the license that you actually agreed to get married, it gets returned to the county office and registered with the Dept. of Health, and you're married.

The officiating part is the bit the state cares the least about. Provided you, your spouse and some officiant sign the paper and have witnesses and no one comes back and contests it, the state doesn't care what happened at the "ceremony".

Edit: There might be some churches out there that will give you the license registration form, but that's like getting blank tax forms from the library. It's just paper until the appropriate government agency has it in their possession.

Edited, Jun 28th 2011 8:43am by Jophiel

That's our separation of church and state. If the priest my parents wanted had been someone able to give wedding licenses, he could not have refused them. Because religious institutions and marriage licenses are separate, the government cannot force a religious institution to "marry" someone they don't want to.

The marriage license is the meat; the wedding ceremony is just bells and whistles so far as the state is concerned.

The Church can legally marry people here, but our freedom of religion law means the government can't force them to wed people they don't want to wed, because it goes against their religion. You can always get married at the mayor's office, though.

Edit: That said, the Church can make exceptions if the individual priest/whatever wants to. My dad's Catholic and after divorcing his first wife, he married my mom (Protestant) in a Catholic ceremony. They were friends with the priest.



I forget that your states all have different laws.

Silly.

Edited, Jun 28th 2011 4:47pm by Mazra

Ah, gotcha. Yeah, there's no real religious reason to object to the US allowing gay marriage.

It's a useful issue to get people out to the polls. Manufactured outrage is quite effective if you convince people it's real.

They both sound like idiots.

I'm guessing that's what you meant.

Your argument is made up of sub-arguments that contradict each other.

I would be remiss if I didn't politely point out that "benefiting the state" is a deeply socialist motive to do anything.

This fight goes to PF in a knockout.

I'm not cool enough to use large tags.