I assume that you mean the Christian realm. But even if it’s controlled by multiple faiths, how would people get married if they were of mixed faiths or if they simply had no belief, or at least not enought to make a comittment to God?
I’d say that if you aren’t religious that you don’t need to get married. Chances are, if you’re not religious then you aren’t seeking to marry for the reasons any Christian religion (other than the extremely heterodox ones) would support. So atheists wouldn’t marry, given that marriage would be solely a religious custom, like baptism. There is no baptism for atheists, no Eucharist for non-Catholics, so no marriage for two non-Christians. The state would have no role.
As for the mixed-faith marriage, I’m sure most Jews will agree on the criteria for valid marriage that the Catholic Church holds. Certain religions don’t allow mixed-faith marriages.
Of course, all this simply reduced the institution of marriage to a nullity. But that has been happening since the French Revolution, when the state took marriage away from the Church.
Indeed. So I say the best way to fix things is to reverse the trend. Get the state out of religion – put marriage back in the realm of the Church.
However, if it became purely a religious matter, then how would I, as an atheist, be able to get married?
You wouldn’t, just like you can’t get baptised if you remain an atheist and refuse to profess an honest, sincere belief in Christ and you can’t take the Eucharist.
Notwithstanding that I would personally have a problem with it on principle.
But since marriage would revert to being a religious custom, you’d have no reasons to want or be eligible for one. In fact, since it’s already a religious custom that’s been co-opted by the state, why would an atheist who’s truly faithful (sorry, it was just too good to pass up) in his lack of belief want to sully himself by participating in our unscientific mediaeval superstitious rituals?
And all the women in that marriage were of the same sex. 700 of them in Solomon’s case. How does that not count as same sex marriage?
Clearly you don’t know anything about how polygamous marriages worked. That or you’re being intellectually dishonest as a form of sophistry. The wives were not married to each other, but to their husband. There was no sexual contact among the wives. We’re not talking about stag film fantasies. (Indeed, they’d probably be stoned if they ever “cheated” on their shared husband.) Regardless, Jews no longer allow those kinds of arrangements, no do any other civilised cultures.
There are other examples of same-sex marriage I could have given apart from California: Massachusetts, Holland etc.
Yeah, I don’t think contemporary examples from the past 10 years really establish any historical or cultural precedent, no matter how many countries/municipalities/geographic political groupings etc. you give.
Marriage has always been an institution in which biological children can be raised. You may not like it, you may think it should change, but you cannot deny an historical fact.
