Actually, no it isn't. You can get married in a non-religious ceremony and it is still called a marriage. If you go to a judge/ship's captain/etc.. and get married, it is called a marriage. Soto say that it is a religious institutionis false. Marriage is a civil/social construct.
Now as far as the state is concerned and from their part in issuing marriage certificates...it has nothing to do with religion. They don't care if you are Christian, Muslim, atheist, Buddhist, Hindu, Wiccan, etc...they just issue the certificate assuming you meet the legal criteria of age, consent, you are not already married, etc...what a officiant does after that is of no concern of the state other than whether or not the officiant meets the legal criteria in that state. Some states have ordination requirements and they list the civil personnel that are authorized to perform marriages. Some states have less stringent requirements. For instance, as a minister, when I was in Louisiana, I had to be ordained by a recognized religious institution and then I had to register with the parish clerk of courts in the parish that I resided in (parishes are Louisiana's version of counties). Here in IL, the only requirement was that the couple recognize me as clergy. So obviously, if a non-religious person can perform a marriage ceremony, that excludes it from being a religious institution and any claim as suck is patently false. As far as what a church can do with gay marriage, they are not forced to perform gay marriages under any law that has been proposed. I don't even know of anyone that suggested that churches have to perform a gay marriage if they don't want to. If you are gay and your church will not perform you wedding...I would suggest that you are attending the wrong church... Eric -----Original Message----- From: Cameron Childress [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Friday, March 29, 2013 9:16 AM To: cf-community Subject: Re: In case your gal didn't get enough bacon... On Fri, Mar 29, 2013 at 10:02 AM, Casey Dougall - Uber Website Solutions < [email protected]> wrote: > civil union and domestic partnerships don't mean the same thing as > marriage. Take the government out of the picture and it would just be > that you are married or you live with someone you love. Marriage really is a religious institution, and from that perspective I continue to say that if a particular church doesn't want to marry gay people, they don't have to. That's fine by me. But marriage isn't "only" a religious institution. It's also a civil and governmentally recognized label with a very specific legal meaning. From that standpoint, there really should be equality. -Cameron ... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:362267 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
