'Somewhere' is wrong. Las Vegas weddings are legal worldwide. As Hugbug and I both explained, they fulfill all the requirements you yourself listed for legal marriage: A license obtained from a local government authority and a ceremony performed by a person licensed to perform weddings. The differences are the ability to get married very quickly and cheaply and the more colorful options for the ceremony. The government DOES set a standard, and Vegas obeys that standard. You're free to think it should be done differently, of course, but not to confuse your opinion with fact.

It's obvious you don't like Nevada, but it seems rather mean-spirited to hope a couple of million people have their lives disrupted and lose their homes and livelihoods because you don't approve of quickie weddings.

All of which is completely OT, of course.

At the end of the day, why does anyone care how/why other people get married? The only marriage anyone should really pay any special amount of attention to is the one that they are in. And if you are not in a marriage, focus on finding yourself the right person to marry, and stop worrying about all the other marriages you happen to dislike because of.... [insert totally irrational reason here]

It's because they remember from Bible school how Jesus came to America to save folks from the atomizing marijuana not-satisfied with civil unions homos. You know, the part before he gets his hand cut off by Darth Vader.

Oh you! you forgot the gun rights somewhere in there. How else would they deal with the atomizing marijuana dissatisfied with civil unions homosexuals, bra burning feminazis trying to take over the world, and other liberal groups, after Jesus died?

Gospel of PMD, Chapter 5

1. And thus saith the LORD that guns will be held sacredly sacrosanct
2. And all that stuff about helping people and dining with the whores and IRS is heresy
3. The gays must not be allowed to marry, because that'll end the world
4. And always look forward to the end of the world.
5. If you wanna know how the world ends, you must start to read Revelations, then go to Daniel, then go back to Revelations, then read one verse of Ezekiel, then go back to Revelations...
...
10. And thus endeth the back and forthing of the apocalypse.
11. Women are inferior because they're all emotional and stuff.
12. And they all want to be dominated by men. Women pretending otherwise are whores.
13. Also, the moment you convert to our religion, all the stuff you need to know will be downloaded directly into your brain. If it isn't, something's wrong with your connection with THE LORD.
14. Now, wake me up in 2,000 years. There won't be any miracles until then except the occasional acne-clearing, but the people who correctly play the Guessing Game of the Apocalypse will get an Eternal Reward!
15. And the LORD finished speaking, and a distant rumble was heard throughout the land.

Just skimmed this crappy-ass thread but, yeah, Christian and I support gay rights [kind of hard not to since I'm bi and I don't hate myself] and I think referring to marriage between gays as Gay Marriage alone is a load of crap. I like it when they make a distinction, like, "Gay Marriage now Legal", but for the most part it isn't needed.

It should be allowed everywhere, because you can't just tell someone who they can or cannot marry, but it should be called something else

*sigh* But, you know as well as I do that "Separate but, Equal" never works. People will either accept the fact that gays have valid marriages or they won't, very rarely is there an in between.

Like if I call myself a person, and someone else a negro and someone else a redskin. It's the same thing, surely? It's not like anyone could use that as a base of bigotry or separation, right? What's in a word?

"I'm married. You? You're not married. If they meant for you to be married they would have called it that. Your kind doesn't get marriages. You get something inferior because it's different."

It is different. Marriage is the union between a man and a woman. They have to change the definition and laws of marriage in order to allow for same sex couples to have a marriage ceremony. Different doesn't necessarily mean inferior nor superior, but rather something more suited to your specific needs.

It is two consenting adults who want to spend their lives together. It is the exact same thing in every way.



Not in 18 states of the United States of America or 17 other countries in the world.



Which is exactly what the world is doing and will continue to do every single day.



Just like how "colored" water fountains and restaurants were more "suited" to Black people's needs. Mmhmm.

actually im pretty sure its only recently been that way. marriage has been and continues to be, lots of things.
see also: child marriages (say, between a 8 year old little GIRL and a 50 year old MAN), polygamy (which goes WAY back but is still practiced in the world today), polyandry (yes, that one is also still around today), and numerous other marriage "types".

the only way you can really seek to define marriage as only being 1 thing is to go around the world trying to enforce it as being only that 1 thing, and good luck with that.
if it can hold multiple applications elsewhere, it can hold multiple applications here. simple as, really.

We go by the law definition of marriage, not by whatever cohabitation formula people practice. If we were to take into account the definition of marriage as people living together by choice then all various marriage types should be legal.

In the bible, marriage is defined as between a man and many women (like Solomon and his 1,000 wives); a man, his wife, and her slaves(Abraham); a man and his brother's widow if the first marriage didn't produce kids (Onan); a man, his wives, and his concubines (Solomon again, with his 3,000 concubines).

There are numerous examples of polyandry - when a woman marries more than one husband - around the world. Draupadi in the Mahabharatha is one of the more famous examples from India. Also in Asia, Tibet practiced it (it's officially been outlawed, but since when has that stopped people?), as did Lagash (near the junction of the Euphrates and Tigris), southern Arabia, Media (part of Iran), the Hephthalites/Hoa-tun (old empire around China), the Sherpas (Nepal), Bhutan, Muli, the Gilyaks (Sakhalein Island), and Sri Lanka. In Africa, the Masai, the people of the Lake Region (Central Africa), northern Nigeria (Irigwe people), and Gran Canaria practiced it. And last year, in August, there was a woman who married two men in Kenya. The ancient Britons practiced it, as did the HRE and Lacedaemonians. Allia Potestas (from Perusia)) lived with two male lovers and it's described on her gravestone. The Aleut and Inuit from North America practice it, as do the Kanak (New Caledonia), the Marquesans, and the New Hebrides (and New Ireland and New Britain) all in Oceania. And in South America, up to 70% of Amazonian cultures have practiced it.

Speaking of Rome, Nero actually married two men. One was a Greek slave he'd freed - Pythagoras (though Suetonius says his name was Doryphorus) - and the other was a castrati named Sporus. It wasn't until 342 AD that same-sex marriages became illegal (very shortly after religious persecution of Christians stopped). Mesopotamia recognized same-sex marriages. In some times in China (the Ming and Zhou Dynasties) it was acceptable or even expected. Medieval France and Spain both have recorded same-sex marriages.



They already have changed it. Several times. And they had to change it to disallow same-sex marriage. Shouldn't we change it back, then?



Oh, you mean common-law marriage? Yeah, that was and is legal.

Just like they had to change the law to allow blacks and whites to marry in the US? I presume you found something wrong with that change too?

Fun fact:

Same-sex marriages were performed in Spain by the Catholic Church as early as 16 April, 1061:

http://www.galiciae.com/nova/78210.html

How's that for your definition of traditional Christian marriage? Hmm?

That link refers to something which happened in a village very near mine (about 20km), but it was news just because it is the oldest documented case ever found around around here.
Not that it was unique, really.

It was a common ceremony in some Christian regions which was called adelphopoiesis. (It was common enough to have a name )
As well as marriage is supposed to be the formal union between a man and his woman, this would be the formal union between two any people (usually two men) who would become some kind of "blood-brothers" in order to share the responsabilities of a household... but technically it did no not involve any kind of sexual and/or romantic relation.
Seems pretty obvious that homosexuals of that time would have found it a rather useful trick, but that does not imply that sodomy (which I think that the word used back then to refer to the "sin" of homosexuality) was widely accepted by Church or that traditional Christian marriage included such a notion as same-sex marriages.


Anyway I think it is something to learn from.
UNIONS DID NOT HAVE TO BE BASED ON SEXUAL OR ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS.
I've never really got why "marriage" gotta be limited to only two people, or why those two people must have sex.
Seriously?
That seems like a logical legal concept?

For me, it should more like a partnership, deciding to build a common life, sharing good and bad, creating something new from scratch. It's a society. A little society which is the base of larger societies.
Who you decide to create it with, which rules you set to make it work, well, that belongs to your private life.

So in my humble opinion a "traditional marriage" should not be any kind of legal figure. And if they want to keep the name only for heterosexual couples joined in a church, they can keep it, I don't care. They can add it to the list which includes baptism and similar religious vocabulary.
Because I think that an open version of adelphopoiesis is actually what the legal reference should be.

Really? That's a requirement? I don't remember that in the marriage vows that I've seen.

I think she was making the point that a married couple shouldn't necessarily be involved romantically at all. Which I must admit, is an intriguing concept to me. In such relationship, would they choose to not have a physical relationship with anyone, or would it be considered an "open-marriage" type of deal, where their life partner and physical lovers are separate people?

Of course it's required. Marriage is for two people who can make babies, which is why teh gayz can't marry. So you must make babies, and most of the time sex makes those little crotch-dumplings, so you must have sex.



Asexuals are already having similar kinds of marriages. In any case, it would depend on the couple and what they want. I guess they might ask for exclusivity if they don't want to look like they're getting cuckolded, though.

where do you think the law came from?

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/...nIZb_cuoaj2kKM6

Have you ever heard the expression "consummate marriage"? THAT is having sex.
The Church would consider invalid any marriage that has not been consumated. Because the sex itself was supposed to be what joined man and wife in the eyes of god.
It is funny that out of all the Christian sacraments (can't talk of anything else as I don't know if it's the same) it's the only one which does not require a priest, as the public ceremony is just a celebration and what matters is what happens in the intimany.

Of course this has to do with the reproductive objective of marriage.

Yes, but I don't believe that sex is a requirement by law. Religion is meaningless as an argument, since we don't all share the same religion. What matters is the legal definition of marriage. If two people marry and decide not to have sex, they are still married. People who are ill and cannot have sex remain married. In fact, some civilized countries actually consider non-consensual sex within marriage to be rape, rather than a "requirement".

I agree on this with Mootilda.
In technicality, it is more tradition than requirement to have sex after the marriage, which as we all know has a chance of producing offspring. Now there is to say that some take this technicality to be homophobic assholes and twist shit up to say that since gays can't reproduce, the marriage isn't valid or it shouldn't be allowed in which the issue of this, is that besides invalidating homosexuals, it would invalidate anyone who is ill, unable to have children, etc. In a paradoxical or confusing sense, you don't need to produce offspring to seal a marriage, just the sex part which in itself would make the marriage valid. The children are a product, and there is nothing about the tradition of consummating a marriage that says a child must be created as a product of the consummation. it is just the people who have twisted up the wordings and ideals to fit their motives or agendas.

Notably, Marriages aren't just for producing spawn. Marriage, in a more poetic sense, is about the love for another human being that draws upon the mutual desire for a companionship bound by time and love for each other. Nothing in there that implies the genders or any other purpose of marriage. Now to say you want to reproduce with this person is another motive that comes from the product of sexual activity and not the marriage, even though you get married because of traditional/religious values that frown down on having children out of wedlock.

Now a question, isn't there options for lesbians to get pregnant? and wouldn't using these options validate the marriage under the twisted ideal as it does have a chance of making offspring?

OTOH, not siding with the other side, not being able to have sex is often one of the legal grounds for annulment. I'm not sure if it's grounds for annulment everywhere but it's there, along with "I was really drunk" and "Found out she is my aunt, my bad."