(no subject)

[theweaselking]

Lutheran church refuses to marry straights if they can't marry gays, too.

(They'll still hold CEREMONIES for both, like they've been doing for years. They simply won't allow you to combine the ceremony with the civil paperwork, the way people normally do.)

Comments

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

If the state won't separate from the church, then the church will separate from the state? Good move!

[lonebear.livejournal.com]

that's why we have 2 (actually 3) anniversary dates.

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

Religious weddings aren't legally binding in Hungary, and I think not in France either. Two of my cousins had church ceremonies in those countries, but also had civil ceremonies to make them legally binding.

It makes a certain amount of sense to me. From what I've read, church weddings largely arose from a time when your local priest was the only person around who could read and write, and thus make a legal record of the fact that you were married. Religion had very little to do with it.

My high priestess will happily perform weddings for gay couples, but she can't make them legally binding, even though she is licensed to do so for straight couples in my state. (Getting a license to perform weddings here is ridiculously easy.)

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Religious weddings aren't legally binding in Canada or the US, either. The civil paperwork is all that matters.

I think our officiant was a wiccan. I'm not not sure, since it never came up - we hired her from an agency that provides professional wedding officiants, arranged a secular ceremony, and were done with it.

[kjn]

Yes, but there's a difference. In the US (or Sweden) a priest can get the authority to do the civil paperwork from the church itself.

In countries where marriages are based on Code Napoleon, churches and priests are prohibited from doing a legally binding marriage ceremony. You have to do a civil ceremony. You can NOT get a legally binding religious ceremony.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

Although certain religious institutions can have a marriage solemnized by publishing the banns, and don't need to issue a marriage license.

(Either way, it's not the ceremony, it's the civilly recognized paperwork that makes the change. It's just that they get an exemption which allows them to issue a different kind of civilly recognized paperwork than that created by civil marriage or marriage by other religious bodies.)

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

What kjn said. Sorry, I should've been clearer.

My brother's officiant was a psych professor from UC Berkeley, I think. For the U.S. ceremony, at any rate. For the Thai one, the officiant was the Jesuit who taught my sister-in-law's father English, though it wasn't a Christian ceremony.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

> From what I've read, church weddings largely arose from a
> time when your local priest was the only person around who
> could read and write, and thus make a legal record of the
> fact that you were married. Religion had very little to do
> with it.

Reference? I grant you the literacy of the priest may have been a factor, but I'd be surprised (although always happy to learn) of any study which said that sociologically speaking, in some unspecified previous low-literacy time, religion had very little to do with the ritual that redefined the social roles of the participants.

I'd expect religion to be seen as important simply due to the fact that there weren't many other recognized mechanisms for changing from one social role to another, and cultures tend to formalize that. (Not that participants in the ritual always think of it in such detached terms, nor that it's utterly ubiquitous, but the pattern of having a change in social roles validated by an outside authority is pretty common.)

(Am also curious because have heard that marriages often weren't recognized if they weren't among nobles or landowners, or that it was considered irrelevant unless you were getting permission from your landowner to marry someone who (unlike you) wasn't their serf, and that common law frequently handled the situation. Admittedly, "a time when the local priest was the only literate individual around" covers a huge range both chronologically and geographically, so I may be thinking of a time and place your readings didn't cover.)

Hmh. Yeah. Don't mind me, got married six-months-and-change ago and have a general kind of interest in rituals and sociology. :)

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

Admittedly I'm probably thinking of a pretty small part of that large range, but I think I read it in Judith Bennett's Women in the Medieval English Countryside, which deals specifically with the early 14th century, and if memory serves she was mostly talking about smaller-scale, common-law situations. When substantial resources were involved, such as for example kingdoms, it was another story.

It's been awhile since I read the book; sorry the reference is so vague.

[jagash.livejournal.com]

Nice, that is something i support.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Pst: "I" is capitalised when it's a pronoun. To do otherwise so consistently, when you spell and capitalise correctly in all other cases, is to make me feel I'm being involved without my consent in your bizarre online sexual submission fantasies.

And wouldn't you rather just type correctly, rather have that?

[jagash.livejournal.com]

Bad habit of mine which I am attempting to rectify. To be fair though, my overall spelling is hardly flawless either way.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

It's not, but you manage a reasonable approximation of other errors being ERRORS - things you get wrong once in a while, but usually get right.

[jl-williams.livejournal.com]

Good for them.