protecting marriage

[cellio]

I'm late in adding my voice to this. California's Proposition 8, and similar efforts when they crop up in other states, destroys families. Its supporters like to argue in the abstract, but it has real effects on real people, and if you can't look the affected people in the eye and say "yes, I intend to attack you", maybe you ought to rethink your support.

I am married, religious, and heterosexual. I cannot see what recognizing other types of unions could possibly do to threaten my marriage. On the contrary, equal acknowledgement of all unions helps protect the institution; it makes it more likely that the folks in marriages actually want to be in them, rather than settling just to get legal protection (for, say, your kids).

What threatens marriage? Taking it lightly and not working with one's partner(s) to strengthen the family. The high rates of divorce and abuse demonstrate that we heterosexuals don't have a great track record on this. Why should I believe that my gay friends will do worse? I expect they'll do better, because when you're a minority, it takes a certain degree of commitment to your marriage to be willing to put yourself out there in the first place. I suspect there is a far, far lower proportion of casual marriages in the gay community than there is in mine.

You know what consittutional amendment I'd like to see? The abolition of marriage as a legal entity. The avenue of legal partnership -- for the sake of inheritance, custody, power of attorney, taxes, finances, etc -- should be available to any group of people who voluntarily and compently choose to enter into such an arrangement. The state should simply register them, as it does for business partnerships. Beyond that, it's not a state concern. This is not marriage; this is a civil union.

Marriage, on the other hand, is a religous matter. Different religions have different rules for what they will and won't accept. That's fine; all communities have rules that apply within that community. It is equally valid for Roman Catholics to say "no divorcees need apply", for Jews to say "no intermarriages here", and for Pastafarians to say "marriages must be trios of any two adults and a pasta product". Your community, your rules, and your own enforcement problem. Please leave the rest of us out of it.

If there is anyone out there who is at this late hour still able to turn dollars into efforts to defeat this proposition, please let me know. (The link I've seen expired before I saw it.)

Comments

[ngakmafaery.livejournal.com]

...friend of <lj user=gardenfey? and her crew, with a quick question: when you say "the Jews say 'no intermarriages'", does that mean that a rabbi will not perform a religious ceremony with a non-Jew, or that only certain denominations will...? My dear friend, Orthodox Jewish, said that the "two big rules are 'no intermarriage' and 'don't be against Israel'", and I am wondering to *what* degree this applies...

[cellio]

Hi and welcome.

Yeah, I should have been more specific. Rabbis in most Jewish movements will not (and mostly are forbidden to) perform intermarriages. Reform rabbis sometimes will do such marriages, and I don't know about Renewal and Reconstructionist but I think not for the latter. The Orthodox and Conservative movements have rules against this, and a rabbi who bucks those rules is likely to find himself in hot water.

As for "don't be against Israel", that's more of a socio-political issue, with shades of gray, than it is a halachic one. Jews, including rabbis, can and do speak against the Israeli government at times, for instance. So this isn't the same kind of "rule" as the one about intermarriage. Also, intermarriage, while a big issue, is not the only one in the Orthodox community -- they're all important, and educating your kids is surely up there along with kashrut, Shabbat, and others.

[ngakmafaery.livejournal.com]

...thanks...I think he was thinking of a combination of "the two worst things one could do in his orthodox community", above and beyond basic halachic stuff, or out-and-out crime...so does that mean that a legal civil ceremony is not recognised by community members (again bearing in mind what you said above)? He's really observant, and really wants to marry a non-Jewish person next time...

[cellio]

I hesitate to speak for an unknown-to-me community, as there are certainly variations in how people (a) hold and (b) express their beliefs, but... yeah, it's pretty likely that in an Orthodox community his marriage is not going to be recognized. That doesn't mean that they will treat him badly, but he's likely to run into some difficulty, especially if they have kids. Children of a non-Jewish mother are not considered Jewish; they can convert, and that's something he can do on their behalf, but they get to say "no" at age 13 if they choose. It's likely that conversion would be required for them to attend religious school and participate in the life of the community. Again, places vary -- this is what I understand based on what I've seen, but I'm not particularly worldly. I am also not an Orthodox Jew; readers who are are welcome to speak up.

How does his intended feel about being Jewish? While conversion for the sake of marriage is frowned upon, if she chooses to do so on her own -- perhaps because she is not attached to her own nominal religion -- that could be a path for them.

[ngakmafaery.livejournal.com]

...I replied to the other answers here and think that covers some of the questions (so please forgive me if I made a mistake or omission!)...but in this case, there would be no more children, and no question of converting...but there is complete appreciation of the man's religious and spiritual life and obligations, so more of a supportive hands-off to his religious life as practiced in the Jewish faith...I guess any community has members that lean more to the conservative or less conservative, and each person has personal limits as to what's okay, within the structure of belief...

[zevabe.livejournal.com]

First, intermarriage would qualify as "halakhic stuff", as there is a mitzva in Devarim (Deuteronomy) not to do it. I know some Conservative shuls will not let non-Jewish spouses or children be members, attend Hebrew school, etc. I can only imagine Orthodox shuls would do the same. It comes up less frequently in Orthodox shuls (at least the one's I've been to) likely because the sort of ppl who choose to do that tend not to also choose to attend Orthodox shuls. I am sure there are exemptions, particularly at Chabads, where many of the attendees are not personally observant.

So despite being Orthodox, I can't speak with a great deal of authority to what would happen practically as it is a rare case.

[ngakmafaery.livejournal.com]

...yeah, it's really interesting to me...I know some religious communities consider marriage 'religiously legal', so to speak, within their auspices only, but I am unsure what would happen with this possible marriage, because if there was enough feeling of wanting to be Jewish to convert, that's one thing and I presume it'd be done before marriage, but if there isn't, like in this case, I don't see the urge to go to shul etc. except maybe for being invited to an event like bar/bat mitzvah or marriage ceremony, etc. ...

[chaos-wrangler.livejournal.com]

From an Orthodox point of view:

A major part of the Jewish marriage ceremony is the man giving the wedding ring to the woman and saying "Behold you are made separate to me with this ring according to the laws of Moshe and Israel"*. Since the Jewish laws of marriage only apply to Jews**, it doesn't make sense to declare that an intermarriage now exists as a marriage in accordance with the laws of Moshe and Israel. In addition, since the rights and obligations of a Jewish marriage only apply to Jews***, if one could have a Jewishly-legal intermarriage, the result would be a marriage where one person has rights and responsibilities and the other doesn't, which doesn't really make sense.

As for whether the local community would recognize a civil ceremony, that depends on the community and what you mean by recognition - calling a non-Jewish wife "Mrs. X"? inviting her with him to sabbath or holiday meals? inviting her with him to synagogue functions? letting her do something that one Jew usually does for a group of Jews so that the entire group fulfills their religious obligation? Personally I'd only have a problem with the last one on that list, but different people have different standards. In addition, as Cellio said, any children they had would not be considered Jewish and would likely be at least somewhat left out of the local children's community.

*Literal translation; you can probably find a more poetic/romantic one using google or any Jewish wedding website, but I'm too tired to go looking just now.
**As far as Judaism is concerned, non-Jews can get married in their own non-Jewish ways, but Judaism doesn't regulate that.
***Non-Jews could base their marriage rights and responsibilities on Jewish ones, but again, Judaism doesn't have laws regulating that.

[ngakmafaery.livejournal.com]

...thanks for the input...in this case, I think there would be no other children, and no presumption to try to 'get the Jewish goodies without paying the price of being Jewish', so to speak, like presuming to go to ceremonies etc. that one is not qualified for...I think we'll all just have too see what happens...

[chaos-wrangler.livejournal.com]

and no presumption to try to 'get the Jewish goodies without paying the price of being Jewish', so to speak, like presuming to go to ceremonies etc.

I'm sorry if it sounded like I was suggesting that. What I was trying to say is that there are things that can look to outsiders like "honors" but from an Orthodox Jewish point of view are actually legal obligations, so the status of the doer can matter from a legal point of view.

Example: lighting Shabbat candles. Suppose 20 friends get together on Friday night and decide that one person will light one set of Shabbat candles and make the blessing for all of them (since 20 sets of candles = potential indoor bonfire). Since only adult Jews have the obligation to light Shabbat candles, if a child or a non-Jew lit the candles and made the blessing they wouldn't be able to discharge the obligation for any adult Jews present, so it's not just a matter of who gets chosen to "do the honors". As for a non-Jew being present... there are probably Jews who would be uncomfortable with that, but I know plenty who haven't been and wouldn't be.

[ngakmafaery.livejournal.com]

...oh, no, not that you were suggesting that: I have a little brain-damage and am rather flippant, but don't mean to be disrespectful! That's how I speak with my Jewish best friend, so maybe it just carried over...to me, it's completely understood that certain members of certain traditions are qualified to serve some obligations that could not be done by those who have not done whatever it takes to be qualified...same in Tibetan Buddhism, which I practice...I figure that the non-practitioner has the obligation not to be trespassy on the religious practices/ceremonies/etc. of practitioners of a certain faith, and would not think that "just being somebody's spouse" etc. would count as an excuse to intrude where not qualified to be...

[chaos-wrangler.livejournal.com]

No offense taken - I just wanted to make sure that what you had read matched what I had wanted to say.

[ngakmafaery.livejournal.com]

...good...thanks! Communication on earth can be difficult, but seemingly easier when people take the time to clarify...

Here! Here!

[tc-tick.livejournal.com]

So would you like me to send you a No on Prop 8 button? I won't need mine after Tuesday, and hopefully never again.

I can't believe we couldn't find a better use for the $60+ MM dollars spent on both sides -- and can't imagine the Yes individual supporters who have donated $1.5MM. I wonder if they are as generous with their local food bank?

My wife spent a day on the phone banks, and yes we have contributed toward the total.

Re: Here! Here!

[cellio]

I suspect that when this idea rears its ugly head in PA it'll have a different moniker, so thanks but I don't think I'll need the button.

If leaders of issues, and candidates, diverted even a tenth of their campaign treasuries to supporting food banks, clinics, schools in poor districts, and so on, they could make a real difference.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Well said.

I think No on 8 can accept, and definetely needs, financial help all the way to the zero hour: http://www.noonprop8.com/

[cellio]

Thank you for this link, by the way!

Oh B TW here is the link

[tc-tick.livejournal.com]

Donations: http://eqfed.org/ct/t7NiQT11mXF4/
I don't know if it will do any good at this date, but as of Friday they were still soliciting donations.

List of doners link:
http://www.sfgate.com/webdb/prop8/

Re: Oh B TW here is the link

[cellio]

Thanks for the info! (Sorry for not replying sooner.)

[alaricmacconnal.livejournal.com]

You explained it much better than I did :)

I won't necessarily say that marriage is only a religious matter, but rather a non-civil one (ie, the government should not be involved in who can marry whom). Or, put otherwise, must someone join a religion in order to get married?

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

Or, put otherwise, must someone join a religion in order to get married?

If "marriage" is a term which the government no longer recognizes, then you have to join some social group which grants it in order to get it, no? Though I suppose that social group could consist exactly of the people in the marriage.

[cellio]

Or, put otherwise, must someone join a religion in order to get married?

Any community, religious or otherwise, that has a concept of marriage could offer that service as far as I'm concerned. (The JP arrangement would become a civil union; I'm not sure what other secular options are out there already. But I did not mean to limit them.)

[alaricmacconnal.livejournal.com]

The one that comes to mind now is the ship's captain.

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

Preliminarily: I agree that a general legal partnership (or household or whatever) structure is how it should be implemented in government, and that marriage is a purely religious matter.

The only way I can figure that you can claim homosexual marriage injures heterosexual marriage is in the same way that imitation products injure name-brand ones. If you imagine that "marriage" is a high-quality brand name, then other people labelling inferior products as "marriage" hurts your image, and if it should happen that someday "marriage" comes to refer to the generic item rather than your version of it, then you've lost all the value in the term entirely. It's not that any particular individual marriage will get worse, but rather that its distinction and specialness is lost.

I imagine they don't want to solve this the other way (by making up their own new term for hetero religious marriage) because "marriage" is some really prime linguistic real estate, and they resent that what was previously theirs alone is now being shared.

But really, I have no idea what I'm talking about. :)

[cellio]

If it's about protecting a brand, then gay marriage still has nothing on the "desecration of marriage" that comes from some of the "because I felt like it...now I don't" celebrity marriages that invade the press on a regular basis. Which famous-for-being-famous celebrity recently got married for something like 3 days, probably as a publicity stunt? When the proponents of Prop 8 have taken care of problems in heterosexual marriage, then maybe they will have standing to go after others.

Or, less long-winded-ly, it's not the gender of the participants that marks marriage quality.

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

it's not the gender of the participants that marks marriage quality.

I suspect that, even if it's not the total determiner, it's still considered a factor of it by the parties pushing this.

Edit: In particular, in a certain worldview, this is like comparing a marriage between two humans to someone marrying a goat. Regardless of the problems in the human-human marriage, it's still more legitimate than the human-goat one.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

*deep breath*

All right, my last reply was intemperate, and I retract it. But the comparison of a relationship between two people with beastiality is not only offensive, but grows in offensiveness each time it's made. When will people stop already?

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

Did you use that metaphor because you think cellio is too stupid to get it otherwise, or just to be generally annoying?

No, I used it because it was the first thing which came to mind as "could be called marriage, but clearly isn't because the participants are unsuitable." If you wish to mentally substitute "cube of granite" for "goat", please do--the metaphor will take no harm in meaning thereby (though it might take some damage in comprehensibility). If anyone else has been using this as an example, I don't know about it--I've been pretty much ignoring this whole thing except to occaisionally say, "Why the heck are you all still talking about this? Shouldn't we be instead figuring out how to get out of the four wars we seem to be in?"

Also, please note that I didn't compare homosexual marriage to bestiality. This was a metaphor of four objects, and the things being declared similar were the differences between the pairs. Which, in the "certain worldview" I mentioned, they are. They're also similar to the difference between garnets and glass, and the difference between heaven and marriage, but I was trying to take two differences as similar as possible so that I didn't have to explicitly outline the points on which they were the same and different. Alas, I fail at teh internet.

As an aside, I take offense at your offense, as I believe that any comparison is valid to evaluate. Comparing a bag of dog manure to Benjamin Franklin shouldn't be inherently offensive to fans of Franklin--rather, declaring that they're the same should be. Certainly you have a right to be offended, but please be offended at what I actually said (homosexual marriage is of a lower order of legitimacy than heterosexual marriage) rather than what you apparently thought I said (homosexual marriage is indistinguishable from bestiality).

As a further aside, my opinions on this issue are pretty much the same as the ones Monica expounds in her original post. This entire exercise is a speculative attempt to determine how "marriage" would be harmed by the renaming of civil unions, a subject on which I am currently undecided. (Hence favoring Monica's solution, which throws the question out of government and over to the people who actually care to argue about it.)

[rav-hadassah.livejournal.com]

My point exactly.
Opening up marriage equality to same-sex couples will only bolster and strengthen the institution of marriage, not weaken it.
Sheesh, I don't get the homophobia but I especially don't get the fear behind it.

And I am religious and heterosexually married too.

[p1kap1ka.livejournal.com]

(rectangularcat sent me)

OK, I agree totally in principle. It's a solution I've personally proposed a number of times - that in order to get civil benefits you would do some sort of civil contract (hey! let's call it a civil union!) and if you wanted "marriage" you would find a religion that would marry you and do that, but your marriage would have no legal effect whatsoever, being between you, your partner, and whatever divinity you felt like worshipping.

slippery slope: does that mean that marriage can be polygamous? I don't see why not. it would have NO LEGAL EFFECT which means that you couldn't inherit through it, etc. Could you marry your sister? Sure, if your religion permitted it. again, no legal effect (note that incest is generally frowned on, legally, but this issue has nothing to do with your marriage)

slippery slope the other way: can you have a civil union with your sister (or brother, whatever)? My brain says sure, it's a contract you can enter into with one other person at a time, for a specific set of legal, taxation, and property rights. And you should be able to enter into that contract with whatever contractable individual you want. This is where the goat argument loses - you can't contract with a goat. since it's a contract, it avoids the whole goat issue. if you want to marry a goat, go ahead, but see above it has no legal effect and again bestiality is generally illegal, so good luck consummating the marriage.

BUT.

I don't think the Constitution is the place for this. I think it would beb perfectly fine as an ordinary old federal statute, just like the Defense of Marriage Act. The Constitution is not self-executing, and is a series of proscriptions on governmetn behavior. THat's not what would need to happen to effectuate this change. You don't want to change the Constitution (and in fact the C should only be changed in extremely dire circumstances or to correct existing errors therein or errors of Constittuional jurisprudence (see: Fourteenth Amendment)) you just want a law. Really.

[cellio]

Hello and welcome.

slippery slope: does that mean that marriage can be polygamous?

Sure, if you've got a community that recognizes such.

Slippery slope you didn't mention: civil unions could be polygamous, too. It's just a contract, after all. In practice, this would give certain legal protections to folks who are already in such arrangements, and I don't see a problem with that.

slippery slope the other way: can you have a civil union with your sister (or brother, whatever)?

Seems ok to me. Civil unions aren't about sex; they're about power of attorney and taxes and intestate inheritance and stuff like that.

I don't think the Constitution is the place for this.

Yeah, good point. I think I made an unchecked jump from state constitutions, which I perceive to be more bulked up with statute-level stuff. What I really want is statutes enabling civil unions and the banishment of the word "marriage" from existing statutes (and constitutions, where it appears).