The Federal Prop. 8 Trial / Gay Marriage Catch-All

SixteenBlue wrote:
Bloo Driver wrote:
Tanglebones wrote:

Indiana GOP passes law making it a crime for clergy to perform gay weddings

This seems like a pretty shocking violation of the separation of church and state.

This is ... amazing. Out of one side of their mouth, the GOP is scaring people with the spectre of government meddling with the church and forcing churches to perform marriages they don't want to. Out of the other side, they enact the sort of meddling that they invented but tried to pin on someone else.

Bravo!

Is this even legal? Can you make a religious ceremony (that doesn't actually break existing laws) a crime?

I dunno. Can we draw parallels with polygamy? Is it illegal to perform a polygamous marriage?

Tanglebones wrote:
momgamer wrote:
Yonder wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:

Plus that series is one big religious circle jerk where everyone who loves "God" (literally a magical sky computer) is good and decent and such and everyone who rejects him wanting to go their own way in life is evil and selfish and likely to cause the end of humanity.

So... just like real life then?

Is that the one where he basically novelizes the Book of Mormon, even down to names of characters?

Yup. The first book of that is where I stopped trying to read him any further - not so much for political reasons (I was still pretty young, and not very conscious at that point) but because it was f*cking awful.

Thought it was OK as a teen, rereading it as an adult though... bleh. To be honest, the homosexual character there was perhaps the least concerning to me in he series of books. Yes, he gets married to the last remaining female... but for both of them that is a matter of maintaining some level of status in a colonizing group... yes he has sex with that same lady to have kids, but it is solely to provide maternal fulfillment to his friend and they clearly state that it was an exhausting and relatively bleh experience for him. (Plus, no kids to adopt and no IVF available in the desert.)

I dunno, maybe that is just one of those things I don't get not being gay.

Jonman wrote:

Is it illegal to perform a polygamous marriage?

Unclear, I did some searching and haven't found anything definitive. Most interesting commentary I found from Wikipedia:

The practice of informal polygamy among fundamentalist groups presents interesting legal issues. It has been considered difficult to prosecute polygamists for bigamy, in large part because they are rarely formally married under state laws. Without evidence that suspected offenders have multiple formal or common-law marriages, these groups are merely subject to the laws against adultery or unlawful cohabitation — laws which are not commonly enforced because they also criminalize other behavior that is otherwise socially sanctioned.

The key word there being "informal", i.e. unlicensed marriages. It leads me to believe that as long as someone is not trying to pass their religious ceremony off as making licensed polygamous marriages, they can't really be prosecuted.

Really what happens when people with multiple spouses get into trouble is for tax reasons. It is when the second wife onward, or second husband, begins to file taxes jointly or as a married person, or stops filing a return altogether.

Marry as many people as you want, just don't double dip on the taxes.

There's some weird incestuous intermingling of church and state when it comes to marriage.

In my locality, your marriage license must be signed by the person who officiates your ceremony, who can only be:

1) A religious official, or
2) A justice of the peace

Which is... pretty strange. Technically my own marriage may be challenged as we just used a friend who became an Internet preacher, and there's apparently some question on whether that meets whatever definition in law there is for somebody to be a religious official.

I'd wager any regulation is specifically going to be related to the "able to sign off on a valid license" bit.

gore wrote:

There's some weird incestuous intermingling of church and state when it comes to marriage.

In my locality, your marriage license must be signed by the person who officiates your ceremony, who can only be:

1) A religious official, or
2) A justice of the peace

Which is... pretty strange. Technically my own marriage may be challenged as we just used a friend who became an Internet preacher, and there's apparently some question on whether that meets whatever definition in law there is for somebody to be a religious official.

I'd wager any regulation is specifically going to be related to the "able to sign off on a valid license" bit.

I was at a wedding a couple of weeks ago which featured the following words, verbatim:

"By the power vested in my by the State of Washington and some hokey fake church on the internet, I now pronounce you...."

Jonman wrote:

I was at a wedding a couple of weeks ago which featured the following words, verbatim:

"By the power vested in my by the State of Washington and some hokey fake church on the internet, I now pronounce you...."

The wedding I was at last summer in Colorado was basically like this. The couple had a friend get all "internet priest", and all she said was the end part. They basically married each other, just using the friend to make it official (and have someone to sign the papers).

McIrishJihad wrote:
Jonman wrote:

I was at a wedding a couple of weeks ago which featured the following words, verbatim:

"By the power vested in my by the State of Washington and some hokey fake church on the internet, I now pronounce you...."

The wedding I was at last summer in Colorado was basically like this. The couple had a friend get all "internet priest", and all she said was the end part. They basically married each other, just using the friend to make it official (and have someone to sign the papers).

This is very common now. The friend who married my wife and I was 'ordained' through something like the Universal Life Church (.org). He didn't say anything during the service like that, though. I think a lot of people do so to point out what a big joke the whole thing is. Anyway, a lot of my friends have gotten married over the last 8 years or so and off-hand, I can only think of two couples who had an actual priest preside over their ceremony, and they were also the only two couples to get married in a church.

We have friends who has a black lab that is ordained in FL. He was suppose to marry us but he saw a squirrel and chased it leaving us having to get another officiant.

My wife and I got married by a judge a week before our wedding, and then had a friend do the ceremony. It was in a church, but that's because Danforth Chapel on the KU campus is free for students. We wrote our own vows, and it was completely free of religion. That was almost 18 years ago. My wife was getting her masters in religious studies, and part of the reason we went so non-religious was out of respect for religion, since we were agnostic.

Jayhawker wrote:

My wife and I got married by a judge a week before our wedding, and then had a friend do the ceremony. It was in a church, but that's because Danforth Chapel on the KU campus is free for students. We wrote our own vows, and it was completely free of religion. That was almost 18 years ago. My wife was getting her masters in religious studies, and part of the reason we went so non-religious was out of respect for religion, since we were agnostic.

I apparently need to look up who this "Danforth" person is, because my wife and I got married at Danforth Chapel on the University of Iowa campus. While our ceremony was completely religion-free, we were married by a minister. Well, my dad the minister, who had no problem doing the ceremony exactly as I wrote it. Part of it was the same reason as you--while my wife and I are atheists, I have so much respect for all the positive things religion has helped my dad do over the years I feel like I can't lie about it. He's fine with it, I'm fine with what he's done, works great.

Jonman wrote:
SixteenBlue wrote:

Is this even legal? Can you make a religious ceremony (that doesn't actually break existing laws) a crime?

I dunno. Can we draw parallels with polygamy? Is it illegal to perform a polygamous marriage?

There are very few religious ceremonies that constitute a crime and that would be involved with the health and safety of another individual. For instance, you could never justify the ritual rape of a child or the murder of a virgin to satisfy the tenets of your religion.

As for marriage, however, a distinction needs to be made here. When a member of a religious order of a religious body performs a marriage, there were two concurrent ceremonies going on: one civil and one religious. The civil portion kicks in with the initiation of a marriage license that is present at the time of the ceremony. But if a marriage license is not taken out and a religious ceremony is performed, the couple (or more) may be considered married in the eyes of the religious body, but not the law. There is nothing illegal with that, Indiana notwithstanding. My church was performing same-sex marriage long before Massachusetts even allowed gay marriage. We considered the couple "married" in the eyes of the church, even though the government did not recognize the marriage. We also performed a triad marriage which the church recognized, but the government would not. They trio are listed on the books as spouses and garner the church benefits of being "married." We have never been bothered by any government agent for doing so, and I would surmise that the first time Indiana were to try to prosecute a member of the clergy for performing a same-sex marriage that is recognized only by the church (i.e. a marriage license is never procured), that would trigger an immediate lawsuit and the law would be found unconstitutional on its face.

gore wrote:

There's some weird incestuous intermingling of church and state when it comes to marriage.

In my locality, your marriage license must be signed by the person who officiates your ceremony, who can only be:

1) A religious official, or
2) A justice of the peace

Which is... pretty strange. Technically my own marriage may be challenged as we just used a friend who became an Internet preacher, and there's apparently some question on whether that meets whatever definition in law there is for somebody to be a religious official.

I'd wager any regulation is specifically going to be related to the "able to sign off on a valid license" bit.

I don't know where you live, gore, but there are very few locales where the internet-ordination would not be recognized. North Carolina, New York, and Virginia are the only states that expressly prohibit ministers from the Universal Life Church, the main purveyor of online ordinations, from solemnizing marriages. On the other hand, Mississippi, California, Washington State, South Caroline and Kentucky expressly allow ULC ministers to solemnize marriages. Here in Arizona, the requirements for who can solemnize a marriage are pretty thin, and in California, you don't even have to be ordained to be a marriage officiant.

Although people often laugh at the whole idea of an internet ordination, the question falls to whether or not the government should be in the business of dictating what is or is not a religion. What if I had a religion whose only tenet was that everyone should be ordained and minister to the world through the sacraments of marriage, communion, anointing, reconciliation, and last rites? Is that religion any more or less valid than your local Lutheran church or synagogue? And what do you do with congregations that don't have formal clergy like Quakers or Muslims or those who have small home churches?

It would be terrible public policy for the American or any state government to get involved in deciding what is a valid religion.

After all, you can absolutely have a religion of one. Why should the other 8 billion get to decide that your religion is less valid than all the others (with, incidentally, also started out as a religion of one)?

Tanglebones wrote:

Indiana GOP passes law making it a crime for clergy to perform gay weddings

This seems like a pretty shocking violation of the separation of church and state.

A couple other views of this story:

http://www.bilerico.com/2013/07/slow...

http://indianalawblog.com/archives/2...

MacBrave wrote:
Tanglebones wrote:

Indiana GOP passes law making it a crime for clergy to perform gay weddings

This seems like a pretty shocking violation of the separation of church and state.

A couple other views of this story:

http://www.bilerico.com/2013/07/slow...

http://indianalawblog.com/archives/2...

Thanks for the update, Macbrave - sounds like it was a 1997 law that's still on the books, then.

Phoenix Rev wrote:

I don't know where you live, gore, but there are very few locales where the internet-ordination would not be recognized. North Carolina, New York, and Virginia are the only states that expressly prohibit ministers from the Universal Life Church, the main purveyor of online ordinations, from solemnizing marriages.

You have a winner! This is the same state that tried to adopt a state religion, for what it's worth.

I'd be interested to know whether this sort of selective recognition of religions for this purpose would hold up to legal challenges, but this is one of the redneck NC laws that doesn't seem to be really enforced. I've never heard of anybody having their marriage invalidated or anything.

Other fun NC marriage law fact: first cousins are A-OK! Nothing closer than that, though - that'd be an abomination, natch.

Phoenix Rev wrote:
Jonman wrote:
SixteenBlue wrote:

Is this even legal? Can you make a religious ceremony (that doesn't actually break existing laws) a crime?

I dunno. Can we draw parallels with polygamy? Is it illegal to perform a polygamous marriage?

There are very few religious ceremonies that constitute a crime and that would be involved with the health and safety of another individual. For instance, you could never justify the ritual rape of a child or the murder of a virgin to satisfy the tenets of your religion.

As for marriage, however, a distinction needs to be made here. When a member of a religious order of a religious body performs a marriage, there were two concurrent ceremonies going on: one civil and one religious. The civil portion kicks in with the initiation of a marriage license that is present at the time of the ceremony. But if a marriage license is not taken out and a religious ceremony is performed, the couple (or more) may be considered married in the eyes of the religious body, but not the law. There is nothing illegal with that, Indiana notwithstanding. My church was performing same-sex marriage long before Massachusetts even allowed gay marriage. We considered the couple "married" in the eyes of the church, even though the government did not recognize the marriage. We also performed a triad marriage which the church recognized, but the government would not. They trio are listed on the books as spouses and garner the church benefits of being "married." We have never been bothered by any government agent for doing so, and I would surmise that the first time Indiana were to try to prosecute a member of the clergy for performing a same-sex marriage that is recognized only by the church (i.e. a marriage license is never procured), that would trigger an immediate lawsuit and the law would be found unconstitutional on its face.

Thanks, that's exactly the kind of info I was looking for.

There's a church that I pass on my way to my gym that changed their stereotypical out-front church sign to say, "Our church performed its first gay marriage in 1990," after the DOMA/Prop 8 rulings. Nothing profound, just thought it was kinda snarky and funny.

NSMike wrote:

There's a church that I pass on my way to my gym that changed their stereotypical out-front church sign to say, "Our church performed its first gay marriage in 1990," after the DOMA/Prop 8 rulings. Nothing profound, just thought it was kinda snarky and funny.

Damn civil rights hipsters are everywhere these days.

MilkmanDanimal wrote:
NSMike wrote:

There's a church that I pass on my way to my gym that changed their stereotypical out-front church sign to say, "Our church performed its first gay marriage in 1990," after the DOMA/Prop 8 rulings. Nothing profound, just thought it was kinda snarky and funny.

Damn civil rights hipsters are everywhere these days.

How did the hipster burn his mouth?

Spoiler:

He ate his soup before it was cool.

gore wrote:
Phoenix Rev wrote:

I don't know where you live, gore, but there are very few locales where the internet-ordination would not be recognized. North Carolina, New York, and Virginia are the only states that expressly prohibit ministers from the Universal Life Church, the main purveyor of online ordinations, from solemnizing marriages.

You have a winner! This is the same state that tried to adopt a state religion, for what it's worth.

I'd be interested to know whether this sort of selective recognition of religions for this purpose would hold up to legal challenges, but this is one of the redneck NC laws that doesn't seem to be really enforced. I've never heard of anybody having their marriage invalidated or anything.

Other fun NC marriage law fact: first cousins are A-OK! Nothing closer than that, though - that'd be an abomination, natch.

They didn't try to adopt a state religion per se, but they did stamp their feet petulantly and try to pass a resolution saying they could if they wanted to.

Because
IMAGE(http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7362/9216547162_5fa434eeb0_o.gif)

Tanglebones wrote:

Not saying anything new here, but I don't care what he does, or thinks in his private life; as soon as he crosses the line into public advocacy, and major donations in support of movements to deny rights to people, he loses my financial support.

It's definitely your right to vote with your wallet by whatever litmus test you want, but I don't understand what punishing past bad behavior/positions you don't agree with accomplishes when it comes to denying a sci fi author 20 cents (or whatever) of a $10 movie ticket. Would you financially support a Hillary Clinton run for the White House next election? She was a public supporter of DOMA, her husband signed it into law and would certainly stand to gain from her Presidency. "Voting with your wallet" or even voting with your vote seems much more effective when dealing with actual policy makers... doesn't it?

NormanTheIntern wrote:
Tanglebones wrote:

Not saying anything new here, but I don't care what he does, or thinks in his private life; as soon as he crosses the line into public advocacy, and major donations in support of movements to deny rights to people, he loses my financial support.

It's definitely your right to vote with your wallet by whatever litmus test you want, but I don't understand what punishing past bad behavior/positions you don't agree with accomplishes when it comes to denying a sci fi author 20 cents (or whatever) of a $10 movie ticket. Would you financially support a Hillary Clinton run for the White House next election? She was a public supporter of DOMA, her husband signed it into law and would certainly stand to gain from her Presidency. "Voting with your wallet" or even voting with your vote seems much more effective when dealing with actual policy makers... doesn't it?

I didn't support her for the last run

In any case, he's donated copious amounts of money to influence policy and sits on the board of NOM, so you're making an apples to oranges comparison there.

He's a *current* major supporter of NOM, which has not by any means given up.

Tanglebones wrote:
NormanTheIntern wrote:

It's definitely your right to vote with your wallet by whatever litmus test you want, but I don't understand what punishing past bad behavior/positions you don't agree with accomplishes when it comes to denying a sci fi author 20 cents (or whatever) of a $10 movie ticket. Would you financially support a Hillary Clinton run for the White House next election? She was a public supporter of DOMA, her husband signed it into law and would certainly stand to gain from her Presidency. "Voting with your wallet" or even voting with your vote seems much more effective when dealing with actual policy makers... doesn't it?

I didn't support her for the last run

In any case, he's donated copious amounts of money to influence policy and sits on the board of NOM, so you're making an apples to oranges comparison there.

I agree that lobbying for something and signing/supporting a law that legally accomplishes something is an apples to oranges comparison.

Let's work from there and build a consensus...

Yes, but again, the difference is that she's changed, whereas he hasn't. You're making a cute argument, but it's not got anything to do with the current situation on the ground.

I guess from my perspective, a politician running for president on a one woman/one man platform seems like it would have a much more direct affect on Rav/Ed's marriage than supporting or not supporting a sci fi movie, and therefore a more logical lever.

NormanTheIntern wrote:

I guess from my perspective, a politician running for president on a one woman/one man platform seems like it would have a much more direct affect on Rav/Ed's marriage than supporting or not supporting a sci fi movie, and therefore a more logical lever.

Are you trying to argue that this is Hillary Clinton's platform?

Tanglebones wrote:

Yes, but again, the difference is that she's changed, whereas he hasn't. You're making a cute argument, but it's not got anything to do with the current situation on the ground.

NormanTheIntern wrote:

I guess from my perspective, a politician running for president on a one woman/one man platform seems like it would have a much more direct affect on Rav/Ed's marriage than supporting or not supporting a sci fi movie, and therefore a more logical lever.

Tanglebones wrote:

Yes, but again, the difference is that she's changed, whereas he hasn't. You're making a cute argument, but it's not got anything to do with the current situation on the ground.

NormanTheIntern wrote:

I guess from my perspective, a politician running for president on a one woman/one man platform seems like it would have a much more direct affect on Rav/Ed's marriage than supporting or not supporting a sci fi movie, and therefore a more logical lever.

I think I see where this thread is going.

NormanTheIntern wrote:
Tanglebones wrote:

In any case, he's donated copious amounts of money to influence policy and sits on the board of NOM, so you're making an apples to oranges comparison there.

I agree that lobbying for something and signing/supporting a law that legally accomplishes something is an apples to oranges comparison.

Let's work from there and build a consensus... :)

It's an apple cider to oranges comparison:

NormanTheIntern wrote:

Would you financially support a Hillary Clinton run for the White House next election? She was a public supporter of DOMA, her husband signed it into law and would certainly stand to gain from her Presidency.

The important words there being "next" and "was". If a person "was" doing something bad, and the "next" time they get a chance to make a difference, they'll do something good, I see no intellectual inconsistency in adding a carrot to the bag of tools along side the stick.

My guess is that if Card turned his oranges into orange juice and changed in his position to the same degree Hillary has, the people now boycotting Card would actually go out of their way to funnel their consumer dollars towards him.

DP