For some people the difference in rights might feel small but there are certain edge cases when it makes a big difference. If my friend's partner was not the same sex as his, then he would be eligible to a spouse visa regardless of job status and could get permanent residence in as low as 3 years.

I'm not sure that it makes sense to alter marriage to solve immigration issues.

Or you could solve it by allowing same sex marriage. That sounds so much easier.

This is strictly my personal opinion, but I would be perfectly fine with renaming marriage to civil union as a whole in terms of law and giving the same rights to all couples independent of sex, leaving the term marriage for other uses outside of law.

However I understand the reasons why people would want to have same sex marriage named as so, I would also be perfectly fine with that.

Regardless of immigration, marriage should be "altered" to give everyone the same rights. If that means getting rid of the legal concept of marriage entirely, so be it.

I could be wrong, but I'm sensing some false advocacy here. It seems like you're using immigration as a red herring - don't "alter" marriage, alter immigration laws instead! How about both?

Or i inheritance rights when you pass away and you lifelong partner gets little or nothing because your relationship doesn’t mean anything to the state?

What about parenting rights?

And what about simply people who decide to commit to a relationship enjoy the same rights, privileges and duties as anyone else instead of making them second rate citizens unworthy of the protection and recognition of the state?

People were routinely denied the right to stay with (or even visit) their partners in the hospital, couldn't extend health insurance coverage to those partners to pay for rising treatment costs, and had little control over those partners' estates after they died.

Hence John Boskovich's "Feel It Motherfuckers": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Fan_(Feel_It_Motherfu...

There are some things that aren't replicable easily, some things that are more difficult to deal with because institutions are more used to dealing with marriage, there are recognition issues and anticipation issues because both the things covered and the legal forms necessary to acheive them differ by jurisdiction, and may not have the degree of mutual recognition marriage does, and there are innmost jurisdictions a very large number of things that this applies to so it complex, potentially costly, and leave lots of room for error to get everything yoj can do by contract.

And there are things you still can't duplicate at all because they are, e.g., benefits conditioned directly on marriage by the state or a third party, so contract between the parties outside of marriage has no effect on them.

Very off base. Requiring gay couples to jump through hurdles to access the rights and privileges afforded to straight couples is not equality.

So discussions are bound to be about the perks that have nothing to do with marriage per se, but are bundled with the marriage status, and are harder or impossible to get outside of it. Opening marriage to more people is a more reasonable proposition than rewriting every single marriage perk to be more open to everyone.

Bear in mind that the Japanese government's official rationale for allowing spouses to work freely is to allow foreigners in that position to support Japanese dependent family members. The fact that it applies to spouses of working adults without children is more of a legal accident than deliberate policy (the rules were set at a time when it was rare for women to have careers).

I think they're just stuck with the old japanese name and won't bother renaming it to something closer to reality.

That wouldn't allow a foreign husband to work to support a Japanese wife, which is an important function of the current rules. Gender discrimination may be nominally illegal in Japan, but it's still quite hard for a woman, especially a married woman, to have a full career and get promoted etc..

It absolutely is an intended feature - in part in order to make it easier for those women to have children, and in part so that they don't have to be supported by the state. Neither of those apply to OP's situation.

> It might also be that husband supporting such dependent family member is assumed to fall within the skilled labor category of immigrants.

It isn't. The visa deliberately allows doing any kind of work, including work for which it's impossible to get a work visa.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Taiwan

The definition and purpose of marriage is to do the least rewarding thing nowadays: procreate with all the headaches that come with it.

In my homeland Bulgaria, the opposite is unconstitutional, as for ages the definition of marriage in there has been: "the civil union of a man and a woman".

Alternatively, why does the state not abandon the idea of "marriage" altogether and only recognize domestic partnership?

The problem with "civil union" is not the core idea of it, which is sound, but that it is fruit from a poisonous tree. The construct exists for the purpose of discrimination. It doesn't make sense without the desire to discriminate. "Civil Union" exists explicitly to mean "marriage, but lesser."

The dig at Christianity is odd. Of the 36 countries around the world that recognize same-sex marriage, only one (Taiwan) is non-Christian. And there it was adopted by court order, not legislation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage. In fact, every single country, besides Taiwan, to accept same-sex marriage is either populated by European Christians, or was colonized and dominated by them (in Latin America, and South Africa).

None of the officially atheist countries recognize same-sex marriage. Of the former Soviet bloc countries that practiced state atheism, the only one that recognizes same sex marriage is Estonia, which was historically one of the few Protestant (Lutheran) countries in Eastern Europe.

That’s not a coincidence. Acceptance of same-sex marriage arises directly out of Christian ideas about man being made in the image of God and in particular Protestant ideas about individualized morality.

Historically, Japan’s view of marriage was strongly shaped by Chinese Confucianism, in which the focus of marriage is not the two individuals, but on the families being united through the marriage and the production of children that are related to both families.

It’s not just “secularism”—the absence of belief in God or absence of organized religion. Japan and China are extremely secular countries, more so than anywhere in Europe. The notable thing about the Netherlands seems to be not that they’re secular, but that they also were a hotbed of the Protestant reformation. Until the 20th century, the majority of the Dutch population was Calvinist. A few years after the Netherlands legalized same sex marriage—and long before most of the rest of Europe did so—Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same sex marriage. Massachusetts was founded by fundamentalist Calvinists (the Puritans). Even though American Calvinists and European Calvinists split (geographically) 300-400 years ago, their version of “secularism” evolved in a very similar direction, and quite differently than the “secularism” of Asian countries. It’s really hard to say that’s just a coincidence.

Many protestant sects have become accepting of homosexuality and even the pope is begrudgingly moving Catholicism away from uncivilized dogma.

Luther's reformation was ultimately about speaking truth to power. So I agree that there is a protestant disposition towards this type of thing or something in the protestant culture which is not as rotten as religions like orthodoxy or Islam. The idea of protestant work ethic, the golden rule, and similar artifacts probably played a very large part in the west out competing and out innovating the east.

However while I think there is an element of western culture that venerates speaking truth to power (and everything that implies, like there is a basis for finding truth), I don't think that is the christian element. If anything I think Socratic tradition is probably the root of western "enlightened" policies.

That being said, I am American and come from an American perspective. In America it is fundamentalist Christians who have largely opposed same sex marriage, even protestant cultures, my culture, were generally against homosexuality. For multiple elections it was a core wedge issue harped on like abortion. Some proponents of gay marriage are christian, but all opponents of gay marriage are christian (or Muslim, or some other fundamentalist or foreign group) and are against homosexuality because of their Christianity.

Fundamentalist is probably a better term.

After it became uncool to hate on homosexual people, there was a primarily christian shift to persecute transsexual people because they were weaker and less able to wield political power. I haven't seen the christian love movement pointed at trans people, that is for sure.

I read a pretty good quote about how the idea of separation between church and state was to protect the state from the church, but what are witnessing in real time is the state corrupting the church. These obviously non christian ideas of hate have somehow become the christian zeitgeist. The more christian someone feels, the more hate and lack of empathy for others they seem to have. Turn the other cheek isn't exactly republican dogma. Trump isn't exactly Christ like. I say this not as an outside judge. I say this having been raised Christian.

> The dig at Christianity is odd.

It is not a dig at Christianity. It is pointing out that the church wants to own the term spiritually and civic-ly. In other-words they want religious institutions that they have control over codified into law, and special privileges granted by the state over their codified religious institution. Separating the spiritual concept from the legal concept requires either the church give up the word marriage or the state give up the word marriage.

> state atheism

I am not sure I buy this idea of state atheism as presented. State atheism is forced. Western atheism is chosen. I think there is a world of difference, one has it's philosophical basis in reason, the other in dominance. Religion is dominance focused, you don't need to listen to much christian rock to hear how important submission to Jesus is, whatever that means. I also think the notion of state atheism in a palce like china is complicated. China cathol-isized bhuddism (meaning gutting the spiritual moral core and replacing it with indulgences and extravagance and other bankrupt practices while co-opting it as a tool of state power), while also seeing religion as a competitive force to state and as a colonial tool used by foreign powers.

You’re just observing that American politics occurs between Christians (or at least people who were raised Christian). Internationally, acceptance of homosexuality, especially homosexual marriage, is a distinctive feature of countries that have a thousand plus years of Christian history.

In the US, there is a sharp distinction between what foreign groups accept as to laws they perceive as governing “Americans,” and what they accept in their own communities. My extended family is from a Muslim country, but are college educated and highly secular. My dad rants about religion being the opiate of the masses and stuff like that. But it would be completely unthinkable for anyone in our community to come out as gay. As far as I can tell, the same is true of south Asian communities from a Hindu background, even though the religious tradition is completely different. There is something distinctive about Christian and secularism evolved from a foundation of Christianity.

> I am not sure I buy this idea of state atheism as presented. State atheism is forced. Western atheism is chosen. I think there is a world of difference, one has it's philosophical basis in reason, the other in dominance.

The Chinese are hyper-rational. That’s how they managed to revolutionize the living standard of their people in such a short time. The difference between Chinese atheism and western atheism is that the latter clings to the notion of individuals having inherent dignity and rights. That’s not a notion rooted in “reason.” That’s not an evidence-based idea rooted in biological reality. That’s a metaphysical assumption that comes from the Christian view that each individual is created in God’s image. Christian societies spent a thousand years developing all these ideas about the nature of the individual, based on Christianity. And they kept those underlying ideas even as they stopped overtly worshiping God.

You’re correct that Christianity posits submission to God. But the implication of that is that God is above the temporal government. That was, in fact, one of the big themes of the Protestant Reformation. In China, they never had that concept. When they had too many people, they just killed the extra babies that were born in violation of the one child policy. That was perfectly rational. If the experts decided that overpopulation was harmful to the whole society, and the baby was just a not-yet sentient meat organism, what was wrong about fixing the problem?

Because many Christians to varying degrees don't see marriage as a legal construct (whether exclusively, primarily, or at all, depending on the person), but as a religious one. "Civil Union" is the name that designates the legal construct, as the name implies.

> Alternatively, why does the state not abandon the idea of "marriage" altogether and only recognize domestic partnership?

I think this is something everyone could get on board with. It lets the religious sphere take back the "marriage" term while putting everyone on equal footing in the civil sphere.

...then we get to argue over what qualifies someone to be a husband/wife vs a partner!

Whatever they “see”, it is, in fact, a legal institution, has been such as long as it has existed at all, and is a legal institution that in most modern liberal democracies (and many other regimes) has been entirely separate, and regulated differently, from any religious institution of the same name for quite some time.

There's lots of institutions like that, because religion and civil law weren't historically separate domains, and many institutions (minority/adulthood, for one pair) exist which formerly were shared between the two and continue to frequently exist in both domains.

That doesn't give religions the right to impose their rules on the public institutions, or to demand the public institution change its name.

It's not quite so simple, though. In most countries without a state religion or with modern humanist foundations, they already recognize it as both.

Pedantic Catholics wouldn't recognize the religious validity of a marriage involving a divorced person blessed by a different church, but they don't challenge the legal validity.

Likewise, almost all Christians accept the legal validity of a marriage involving two hetersexual Muslims or atheists, even while rejecting that it carries the same religious validity as their own.

Most are totally accustomed to the difference between legal marriage and religious marriage and that requirements for such marriages vary. Their resistence to homosexual marriage has other roots.

A pedantic Catholic would note that the Church actually presumes the religious validity of non-Catholic marriages between people who are non-Catholics, even though such marriages would be invalid for a Catholic, and while the issue of prior divorce makes this a more difficult question, it only does so because it then requires a definitive resolution of the presumed validity of the former marriage.

This is not-infrequent source of complications if one of the partners, after divorce in the second marriage, seeks to marry a Catholic in the Catholic Church, so its a fairly well-documented issue, if perhaps obscure to people who aren't pedantic Catholics.

I don't think you've met very many Republicans, certainly not the ones I'm related to or have interacted with.

1. Rhetorical. They _want_ to be _married_.

2. In many places in the world, a "domestic partnership" is not recognized by everyone and requires quite a bit more legal paperwork (and associated fees) than a simple marriage license and filing. (In the US, typically $2000-$20,000+ vs $20).

3. A simple demand for recognition. By being _married_, there is a legal recognition that a "domestic partnership" lacks.

2. Many straight couples in Bulgaria refuse do get married yet live together, because they do not like the government having anything to do with their decision to live together and do it for the papers. This to me is even stranger than gay marriage and most of these people have children.

3. I understand, but it doesn't have to be called "marriage" or "domestic partnership". It could be called "committed union" or something else, but why do we need to hijack the traditional concept of marriage?

It's like saying, "Two black people can't get married like two white people can; they can become domestic partners, though!" That notion is offensively unjust to a lot of people.

What if someone wants to marry a cow? that's terribly unqual to deny him/her of that following your logic isn't it? So where does it stops?

Am I stating the argument correctly?

By law, marriage is between man and a woman. That’s it.

Also by law, you need a passport and visa to enter a country (mess at Mexican border is not a good example).

Are those laws outlawing some people? Hell yes

Ok, well, that's why I asked.

> By law, marriage is between man and a woman. That’s it.

This is not true in the US. My neighbors are the same sex and legally married. I know at least 3 same-sex married couples here and I don't even live in a big city.

But if you're OK with that kind of discrimination, then you wouldn't have a problem if the law said only gay people could get married--but don't worry because straight people can get a domestic partnership. Yes?

The problem with that is, of course, that we're not treating people equally under the law when we should.

Sure, it was the case that that particular kind of discrimination was allowed, but we stopped doing that. We've stopped doing a lot of things that were discriminatory for a lot of reasons over the centuries.

In my country, we're all Americans, and we should get the same marriage and domestic partnership rights, gay or straight.

That said, I would like to hear how two people of the same sex getting married has personally affected you in a negative way. Is it because you feel the institution is lessened by allowing same-sex marriage, and so indirectly so is your marriage? Or something else?

Cows (and to pre-empt the other tired argument) and children can’t consent. We’re talking about consenting adults getting married.

Following your logic, if 10 “consenting adults” would like to form a “marriage”, we should embrace that as well?

> Following your logic, if 10 “consenting adults” would like to form a “marriage”, we should embrace that as well?

You need to say something like "it's legal for 10 straight people to get married, but it's not legal for 10 gay people to get married." Then the extension would hold.

But saying that no people can marry 10 people regardless of whether or not they're gay or straight, that's still equal under the law.

Its a legal institution and separate institutions in law are inherently unequal.

What is it about such a change that you are opposed to? Why can't we question traditions and be comfortable with redefining them to better-fit shifting social norms as time marches on?

While it is correct that marriage has traditionally been a union of people of two different sexes, I think the root of the issue is that is not how many people perceive the tradition in reality. I, along with many people, view marriage as a union between _two people_ - regardless of gender. The fact that marriage has mostly always been across sexes is a side effect of centuries of homophobia/heteronormativity.

So saying that marriage is meant for a man and a woman does not compute for me. Trying to enforce that is _taking away_ from my concept of marriage.

The best thing would be to legally annul all marriages and make people apply for domestic partnerships if they want rights similar to what marriages give today like hospital visitation

Right. For instance, you don't want gay people to be able to get married, and that doesn't make any sense.

People who have established a stable family unit that looks like a marriage in all ways ways besides the gender of its members naturally want access to those same rights, priveleges, protections, and services.

In most cases, because of a variety of official or de facto details, a "civil union" or "domestic partnership" is not functionally identical to a marriage as far as this goes and so generally doesn't make for a convincing compromise.

The purpose of marriage is for two people who are are committed to each other to gain that legal and social status. That may be important for rights of inheritance, citizenship, residency and numerous other rights.

The idea that marriage is intended for procreation is false and a claim made by those who discriminate against homosexuals.

If procreation is a key factor then it should be enforced equally: you lose your marriage right or are prosecuted for not procreating.

No. The purpose of marriage was for a man and a woman to unite and create a family. All the legality was introduced recently to protect and aid in the creation of a family. Marriage predates legality by millenia. Marriage existed before law.

"The rituals and ceremonies surrounding marriage in most cultures are associated primarily with fecundity and validate the importance of marriage for the continuation of a clan, people, or society."

https://www.britannica.com/topic/marriage/Marriage-rituals

> The idea that marriage is intended for procreation is false

It's the basis of marriage. The fact that a man and a woman procreate is why we have marriage. It's why marriages all around the world have fertility rituals.

"Fertility rites intended to ensure a fruitful marriage exist in some form in all ceremonies. Some of the oldest rituals still to be found in contemporary ceremonies include the prominent display of fruits or of cereal grains that may be sprinkled over the couple or on their nuptial bed, the accompaniment of a small child with the bride, and the breaking of an object or food to ensure a successful consummation of the marriage and an easy childbirth."

https://www.britannica.com/topic/marriage/Marriage-rituals

> a claim made by those who discriminate against homosexuals.

No. People deny procreation as the basis of marriage because they want to push lgbt propaganda.

If you were honest, you would say marriage was based on procreation in the past, but now we redefine as something else.

Legal remedies for dissolution of the partnership

Tax benefits

Insurance benefits

Medical rights

Citizenship advantages

If you’re willing to allow for that then you can have the word “marriage” back, otherwise it sounds like thinly veiled bigotry (maybe not so thinly with that “lgbt propaganda” statement). People just want to be treated equally. Every time someone points out inequalities there’s always someone screaming about agendas, ruining institutions, and how they’re trying to take something away from them. It happens with the wealth gap and discussions about fair taxing, it happens with non-heteronormative relationships, and it happen(-s/-ed) with race.

Please let other people be happy when that happiness deprives you of nothing.

That's rich.

> People just want to be treated equally.

Nobody is denying 'gay people' anything. Do you know what gay people did when they wanted to form a family in the past? They married a person of the opposite sex and had children with them and formed a family. Gay people have been marrying for millenia.

> and it happen(-s/-ed) with race.

Which was wrong because people of different races were able to procreate. Two men nor two women can't procreate. Not the same thing. Stop leeching off the suffering of minorities.

> Please let other people be happy when that happiness deprives you of nothing.

Oh god. You got me in the feels. Lets throw truth out the window, harm innocent children and ruin society because degenerates should be happy too. No thank you.

Except you would still object if a trans man and trans woman married. Your rhetoric is rooted in hate, and has nothing to do with 'tradition'.

Wonder why lots of homosexuals think someone wants to discriminate against them. I understand it's just a form of attracting attention but still.

The marriage is indeed between 2 people of opposite gender able to procreate. That's it. There is no discrimination whatsoever. It's just what it is. You or me may like it or not

And of course for most people it's a show of love.

Most people on all sides of the issue view see an extensive overhaul of whatever existing legal and bureaucratic system to be much more burdensome and intractable than revisiting who might qualify for the existing word.

In most countries, "marriage" is the legally protected definition of a civil union in the eyes of the government. As soon as there's meant to be a "same but different" construct, prejudice creeps into the enforcement because legally things being "different" is interpreted as allowing difference.

The idea of "civil unions" being different to "marriage" has been used to do things like deny medical authority to one partner because they believe they might successfully litigate it. The only reason to try and draw a distinction has been to try and insert a seam where prejudice can be re-injected[1].

[1] https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=4726e827-5d5a-4...

Why the hell do people want to involve governments into their relationship? At what point of a loving relationship do you come to a need of a bureaucrat's stamp of approval? "Hey honey, I love you very much now, so can we get a stamp now, from the same guy that issues passports in the mornings?"

We could abolish (the government part of) marriage alltogether, and have unofficial parties, priests waving whatever and yelling "wololo wololo" if they want, or do whatever you want.. just not as an official formal procedure.

Businesses and corporations get registered, civil unions are registered for similar reasons - aside from any romance there may also be a financial arrangement that in some cases can be substantial; a few houses and copyright over written works, patents held etc. can add up.

The "rights that are gained" that you mention still have to be exercised, this becomes easier with clear registered documentation, a will, and an executor.

If it matters who you regard as a primary partner and there are assets at play, then things go smoother (but can still be a bun fight) with formal papers of union, dissolvement, another union, a will, etc.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39710726

I mean.. kids, i understand.. you get tax benefits for a kid here too, but in my country, marriage doesn't change any taxes.

They want to be treated as equals. Being limited to domestic partnerships is not equal, in a variety of ways.

>The definition and purpose of marriage is to do the least rewarding thing nowadays: procreate with all the headaches that come with it.

... gay people can procreate...

Edit: I'd encourage folk downvoting this to engage in conversation if they take issue with anything I've said. :)

A good example is legally being considered a partner if the other is in a hospital. In pre-same-sex marriage there have been concrere situations where partnes have been denied seeing their significant other on their death bed.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: this has been a problem for a long time:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35417006 (April 2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30592985 (March 2022)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13086020 (Dec 2016)

... and it looks like you've been doing it quite a bit recently, on various topics. We need this to stop. I don't want to ban you, you've been around for a long time and posted many good things, but you can't do this kind of flamewar on HN, so please stop. If you want to conduct provocations, there are other places on the internet to do that.

As to recent trends, it’s far from a uniform shift globally. Uganda joined made homosexuality punishable by death just last year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Homosexuality_Act,_2023

Going back another 20 years. 1991 Iran declared homosexual gay sex as punishable by death.

Saudi Arabia has verified executions for homosexuality as recently as 2019.

etc

The historicity of "same sex unions" of Roman emperors (Nero, Elagabalus) is debated. These claims may have been recorded to discredit those emperors.

There was no legal recognition of same sex marriages or unions in ancient Rome.

In terms of legality of marriage in Rome, I mostly agree. Arguably male adoption of other adult men could be largely equivalent to heterosexual marriage as far as the state were concerned. Ie name change, social rank, and property as there’s no kids and no wife possibly leaving her father’s control depending on the type of marriage. To be clear it was often a political tool, but that doesn’t mean it was always a political tool. Just something to think about.

No. You are in a cultural bubble.

> At least two of the Roman Emperors were in same-sex unions

What bullshit. Love how you try to sneak in same-sex 'union' for same-sex marriage. No roman emperor was in a same-sex marriage. That much we know. We know at least one roman emperor was executed by their own praetorian guards for degeneracy.

> far more were openly in homosexual relationships.

Simply not true. We know the romans admired the greeks for their culture but looked down on them for their degeneracy.

> Same-sex marriage was outlawed on December 16, 342 AD by the Christian emperors Constantius II and Constans.

There was no same-sex marriage before modern times. Not in ancient greece. Not in native american society. No where. These emperors banned sodomy and all kinds of biblically delineated degeneracy because they became christians. But no roman society ever had same-sex marriage. The idea of it would have been unthinkable back then.

> As to recent trends, it’s far from a uniform shift globally. Uganda joined made homosexuality punishable by death just last year.

Maybe you should read the Torah. Sodomy is listed as a mortal sin. You sound like an anti-semitic bigot.

Some people discredit it for various reasons, but there’s zero direct evidence either of them are false, so by default we’re stuck assuming them accurate. This may bother you personally but ignoring evidence that you disagree with is living in a bubble of your own devising.

> Maybe you should read the Torah. Sodomy is listed as a mortal sin. You sound like an anti-semitic bigot.

That’s a very strong response to a simple factual statement, you may need to seek professional help.

There are several independant accounts of Elagabalus, his behaviour is as well documented as any of those times to be sure.

That said, for context, he was hardly representative being described as "showing a disregard for Roman religious traditions and sexual taboos", claimed as having replaced "the traditional head of the Roman pantheon, Jupiter, with the deity Elagabal, of whom he had been high priest".

Most tellingly he lived fast and was assassinated at just 18 years of age.

I have no axe to grind here, it's a great little story from history; it should be made clear that both Nero and Elagabalus were relatively rare flamboyant exceptions to the norms of Roman leaders.

You mean the ones mocking them? The writers were insulting them. You can't be serious. They were essentially calling these emperors 'british cigs'. Not that they were in a same sex marriage.

How did I know you were going to bring these two up? : ' We know at least one roman emperor was executed by their own praetorian guards for degeneracy.'

Hmmm, I wonder if either one of your roman emperors was killed by their own guards?

> but there’s zero direct evidence either of them are false

Funny how there are tons of evidence of their marriages to women. But none for the supposed same-sex 'marriage'.

> so by default we’re stuck assuming them accurate.

So if there is no evidence you murdered a child and also, no evidence you didn't murder the child, the default to be to assume you killed the child? Wow, you don't know how logic works do you.

> That’s a very strong response to a simple factual statement

It's a statement of fact.

> you may need to seek professional help.

Hmmm. Standard M.O. How come you people always respond the exact same way? Must be the same training materials?

I suppose it could be projecting. Seems like it's always the mentally ill degenerates telling others to 'seek help'.

Look, when multiple people suggest you might need professional help, it's legit a sign something is wrong.

No shit you can debate history, or you can go talk to someone it's probably time.

> roman emperor was executed by their own praetorian guards for degeneracy > no evidence

If he was thought of a degenerate that's corroborating evidence here. This picking lines of thinking and then not making connections between them is not a good sign. If your thinking ahh it's obviously a conspiracy that's more evidence here.

Your going to ignore what I'm saying, but as one human to another seriously they may be some drugs etc that can help you get better.

PS: I am sorry if you found this post offensive. I had a more direct rebuttal when I reread "Standard M.O" and "it's always the" and I realized you really may think people are you to get you. Try and remember strangers aren't going to randomly focus on you over the other 8 billion people on the planet. So trust in apathy if nothing else.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Why are you so confident you wouldn't have been a victim when you "well actually"ed someone back then?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Even Sodom was about raping angels, who appears as children. Note that rape is definitely not consensual sex.

Marriage, as far as I can tell, is a concept that originated in different places with multiple definitions and the scope of what can or cannot be marriage has expanded and contracted over the years.

This is probably the best case against gay marriage, because it could easily just be about civil union that is acknowledged by the government and granted the same benefits, without needing to call it marriage, which should be the matter for each religion to decide.

Religion is a social construct which has co-opted various parts of life, not the other way around. It has no right to dictate to society what is allowable, only government has that right, given to it by the people themselves.

Marriage is a legal agreement that gives the parties certain rights and responsibilities that single people do not have. Historically governments have discriminated against homosexuals just like they've discriminated against other minorities. Discrimination is wrong. That religion promotes discrimination doesn't excuse it.

Some people think homosecuallity isn't acceptable, but it's something that occurs naturally in various species, including humans.

Arguably religion came before government, with early governments blurring that line. If so, then religion was the first to formalize reproductive union for the purpose of growing your group's population.

I think early humans probably discriminated against sexual activities that didn't promote reproduction and building a family because there weren't that many people back then, so not reproducing could mean the end of your civilization.

"Ancient civilizations such as those in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece had formal marriages, which were often agreements between families for economic or political purposes. Love was not necessarily a prerequisite for marriage in these societies.

In Roman times, marriage was a private affair but important for legal inheritance and citizenship status. There were several types of marriages, with varying degrees of formal requirements.

During the Middle Ages, the Christian Church began to exert more influence over marriage, seeing it as a sacrament by the late medieval period. This period also saw the codification of laws regarding marriage, including prohibitions on consanguinity (blood relation) and affinity (relation by marriage).

The 16th to 18th centuries saw significant changes with the Protestant Reformation, where the control of marriage partially shifted from the church to the state. Marriages became more about companionship and love, though economic considerations remained important."

So is ChatGPT wrong?

Because per ChatGPT the marriage originate as a private, non-religious affair.

Then church took over.

Then state took over and now it's the state (civil union) that grants marriage rights and obligations. So for all intents and purposes, civil union IS the marriage.

Optional church wedding is just a ceremony.

Romans and Greeks probably had rite concerning the marriage in city state and big cities, but the majority of Roman estates did not have priests.

Just look at causes for divorce in Celtic law, disrespect is clearly more represented than fertility. Maybe it was due to the polygamous nature, idk.

Celt priests were druids and did not left a lot. Druidism was an oral, masculine tradition, handled birth and death, as well as medecine. They might have been involved, but we can't know, because they left no texts. The laws we found however were quite clear about administrating a marriage, and did not require the presence of a druid. I'm not sure Celt gods can represent civil aspect like greco-roman gods did (justice, city, household). At most they were fertility and healing, but like I said, marriages weren't about fertility (they even had concubinage contracts, for how children outside marriage will receive resources).

The non-merchand role a celt woman with money could have was teacher, arms teacher (weirdly, we have text about that, probably because it was rare enough to be written about) or healer. That last tradition probably survived longer than druidism in my area (it is also linked to being a midwife, which was a part of life that Christian priests ignored), and was the initial target of witch hunts.

(Also, poisoning people, and especially rapists, would be something Celts women would have been very happy to do, considering Boudicca's reaction to her daughters' rape)

I think this is making too much of a distinction between religion and government.

For most of human history, most humans were not privy to clearly-defined centralized institutions (like our modern state bureaucracies). Religious traditions were decentralized emergent phenomena that codified ways of perpetuating a functioning society in a low-trust, low-organization environments.

As far as marriage specifically goes, it evolved as a practice in order to make the process of material inheritance simple, nonviolent, and easy for anyone to execute. This is where the notion of "legitimate" children comes from: legitimate in the sense of being eligible for inheritance, specifically because your parents were married. When strong centralized states started emerging, they codified this practice and built new structures on top of it.

At a personal level, I have zero pressure from society to reproduce and I suspect this is the case for millions, and because the problem spans across generations, it becomes invisible to people who are currently alive. This is what religion addresses that science may be incapable of. Now in post-modernity, we are embracing this miopic perspective at the risk of our civilization. Maybe 200 years from now the world will be 100% Muslim, and the Enlightenment will need to re-emerge, only to restart this cycle once again.

Marriage often has legal and financial implications. Those who want homosexual marriages probably want to also benefit from those. There are also non-trivial symbolic reasons. In this context I am using marriage and civil unions synonymously.

I don't mean this as a flippant question - I think it's at the heart of the matter.

Governments can decide that a homosexual union can be called marriage.

Religions can decide that a homosexual union isn’t marriage.

But Religions can’t expect others to accept their definition. They don’t get to demand that the government accepts their definition, unless they can get the votes.

I've heard that Russian Empire had de facto legal same-sex marriages in the form of adoptions.

One adult male could 'adopt' another one, they would live together and inherit to each other all right. People will grin understandingly but nobody would get in their way.

Each one of them could then have children (with a straight woman obviously), who would then be legally related to the their partner. Whereas even as modern same-sex marriages strive to include children, sourcing them is obviously quite complicated legally, as polygamous marriages are not a thing most anywhere.

And the other question is: what is a marriage in legal terms in Japan? In Europe marriage was originally a religious thing, officiated by priests and managed by the church; then the states stole the term to use it for a civil contract, officiated by civil servants (usually the mayor) with laws and courts managing it. For Japan, which one is in the courts?

That's how it should be, unless you're cool with the idea of the possibility of some other religion becoming the law in your land.

It didn't. Specially not the Christian church. The Christian bible was the basis for the christian religion. It was written before the religion existed. And it already mentions married people.

We have evidence of marriage going back to the 2300's BC. And it probably existed before that, we just didn't find the evidence yet.

Well, first the notion of marriage is a tad older than a thousand years, to claim it's only that old is remarkably ahistorical. Second, which church? Many religious and non-religious institutions have had some notion of marriage for quite a while. Which one gets to claim first rights and to have the proper definition and why do they get to keep making that distinction today for people who aren't members of their church/religion?

It was purely legal/civil matter, because religious matters weren't written down. So marriage was in fact not religious originally.

I've gotten that from Peter Berresford Ellis' books, which contains much more than that, and paint Celts as a more refined society than the greco-roman one.

Previously, not originally. In ancient Greece it was a state matter: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_in_ancient_Greece>

And unless you live in a world where words can be owned by an entity, nobody "stole" anything. Many marriages still get both the official paper (civil contract) and the sacrament. They mean a similar thing, and humans being humans means they use the same word.

(It's also not "usually the mayor", btw - that depends on the country. In Germany it's e.g usually the "Standesbeamte". A government official that does the job of a registrar. Mayors can only do the job if they've also been appointed to that role)

So yes, the state stole the term. It's like tomorrow the state decides by law that everything that color red will be called color blue, that would be stealing the word "blue" and use it to define the color of red things. It is not a natural evolution of language.

But if you keep going back, you get to a time before the church controlled marriages in Europe.

Generally, marriage is a cultural thing, and it tends to be religious at any point in time to the extent the culture is religious at that time.

Also some of the comments on this are pretty sad, but I'm not really that surprised. Peeps are still plenty homophobic in 2024.