One of my friends was fearing of being forced to leave his partner behind in Japan and having to go back to his home country when he had trouble securing a new job, even if his partner’s salary could more than cover for his expenses. To get permanent residence he needs to live 10 years in Japan while working and paying taxes.
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.
> 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.
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).
Seems like they could move this law to parental benefits with very little change in intent and effect. It would not change for the friend in the parent comment, but it would separate the law from the cultural concept of marriage. It would also eliminate the concept of sham marriage when used as a tool for immigration (I have no idea if that is common or not).
> Seems like they could move this law to parental benefits with very little change in intent and effect.
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..
If we assume that the Japanese government's official view married women in japan without children as a dependent family members, then it is possible that immigration of foreign husband of those are an intended feature. It might also be that husband supporting such dependent family member is assumed to fall within the skilled labor category of immigrants.
> If we assume that the Japanese government's official view married women in japan without children as a dependent family members, then it is possible that immigration of foreign husband of those are an intended feature.
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.
Yes. It's such a weird quirk, where the japanese denomination is for having a "dependent(配偶者) of Japanese national" while the english wording is just "spouse".
I think they're just stuck with the old japanese name and won't bother renaming it to something closer to reality.
Note that the issues you're talking about are, in substance, really about immigration and the legalisms therein. They're not about marriage in itself. The fact that marriage comes with other immigration and residency privileges means that it enters the conversation often when immigration is the topic.
I'm not sure that it makes sense to alter marriage to solve immigration issues.
Yeah, countries could create extra mechanism to try to minimize discrimination in immigration, taxes, decisions in hospitals, renting/buying a place to live, inheritance, and many other issues that could not come to mind.
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.
The issue they're talking about here is fairness, with immigration as
a concrete example. Simple and clean. How you think that fairness should be administered is up to you. If you want to advocate for removing immigration rules for naturalizing foreign spouses in Japan, just say 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?
How about rights of care when your partner of 20 years can’t make medical decisions because your relationship is not recognised?
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?
^ Yep, it's not a coincidence that the push for same-sex marriage in the US came right after the height of the AIDS crisis.
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.
Can't you sign power of attorney papers, explicitly list people in a will, and name guardians for children? It sounds like it's just not implicit or automatic (which is obviously desirable). Is that correct or am I off base?
> Can't you sign power of attorney papers, explicitly list people in a will, and name guardians for children? It sounds like it's just not implicit or automatic. Is that correct or am I off base?
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.
If we really stuck to the definition, "marriage" as a legal status would make no sense and should have no impact on how the gov. is treating you (fundamentally, why should the gov. care about who your heart belongs to?)
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.
For some context I find interesting, Taiwan was the first country in Asia to legalize same sex marriage using a similar method of courts declaring that it was illegal for same sex marriage to not be legal.
Well, I, for one, am Taiwanese and happy to see it happen. We also did legalize gay marriage (albeit unfortunately through a special law instead of fixing the civil laws).
I know nothing about the legal system in Japan, so I am asking: why several courts rule independently on the same matter? Is there a supreme court that decides or not? What are the next steps?
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?
Legal marriage in Japan is purely civil, administered by the municipality. Religious marriage ceremonies have purely religious effects (which is surely what you'd expect; legal processes are run by the legal system, religious processes are run by the religious system, render unto Cesar and all that).
In my country legal and religious marriage are strongly related: you cannot get married in the church until you get married in front of the mayor. So it is not that obvious as you suggest it is.
You wrote, "then the states stole the term" as though religions own the idea. Religions shouldn't dictate law, and where they don't, whether you can get married in a church means nothing.
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.
I don't care about religion, but if the church invented the notion of marriage a thousand year ago why not let them use it and for state affairs use a distinct term? I would not consider the religion to be any sort of law in the land, just have a copyright on the "marriage" as a wine maker can have (ex: DOC). People who believe in a religion can have their marriage, people that don't practice a religion can have something called differently because it is differently. Religious marriage in my country has zero legal implications, it is just a ceremony in the church.
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.
> if the church invented the notion of marriage a thousand year ago
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?
Nah, we have very few writing from the Celts, but they did practice marriage and divorce (the woman took back her parents' bride price, and could divorce if her husband talked about their sex life. The husband could divorce if his wife insulted his beard). The also had concubinage contracts, probably with at least one-to-many, maybe many-to-many.
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.
It's worth noting that it's still a religious thing as well. It's just that if you want to claim the governmental benefits that accrue to people the state considers married, well, you'll need the state to say you're married.
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)
The Christian idea of marriage is a further evolution of ancient Roman laws and customs. Roman marriage was fundamentally a civil contract between families. Like any contract, it could be severed. Either by the people in question or by the heads of their families. Early Christians took the Roman idea of monogamy and added a new idea that marriage is sacred and unbreakable.
It's maybe oddly phrased, but in much of Europe, the state did assume power over marriage from the church at some point. Sometimes very dramatically, such as during the French Revolution, when priests were banned from marrying people in the traditional manner and people were compelled to register their marriages with the government. I can see why one might describe that as stealing marriage from the church; or if not stealing, then perhaps expropriation.
Until 100 years ago there was no civil marriage in my country and no civil laws regarding marriage, it was just some penal law punishing polygamy. Then the state took ownership of the notion of marriage by regulating it by law and forbidding churches to perform marriage ceremonies unless you get married by the state, so the religious marriage is just a ceremony with no legal implications these days.
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.
Yes, there was a time then marriage exist before religion, but it was not regulated by the state. The evolution would be unregulated->church->state. I think the unregulated and church ones are very close in term of legal implications (almost none), while the state is severely intervening and basically destroyed it in recent years.
That your cultural bubble. At least two of the Roman Emperors were in same-sex unions and far more were openly in homosexual relationships. Sodomy was just part of the culture. But cultures change, Same-sex marriage was outlawed on December 16, 342 AD by the Christian emperors Constantius II and Constans. Of note there’s a significantly longer gap between emperor Nero and 342 AD than between the founding of the US and today.
I personally have some doubts about Elagabalus, the accounts sound like a hatchet job, it’s much closer in time to the actual ban. But, sometimes people are just nuts so we should expect some historical leaders to do some really strange things. The Nero account is both more neutral and the described wedding a public spectacle so it seems unlikely for someone to just make it up whole cloth. Though it’s also been debated extensively, we simply don’t have concrete proof either way.
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.
There’s written records of the relationships of Nero and Elagabalus as having a same sex marriage ceremony/relationship.
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.
Please don't cross into personal attack on HN, regardless of how bad another comment is or you feel it is. You not only did that here, you did it upthread too ("your cultural bubble"). I appreciate that you've been making substantive points but we need you to make them without breaking the site guidelines.
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.
> How come you people always respond the exact same way?
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.
Governments have been including same-sex couples in marriage laws because same-sex couples wish to get married and have politically agitated for that right.
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.
The short answer is we don't know but the current best guess is thousands of years ago in the middle-east.
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.
The major religions have had traditions around marriage since antiquity. Arguably it exists today in the form that it does because of religion. Outside of religion, marriage has no real meaning, and to the extent that it is promoted by government, it is a fragment of how everyone had a religion up until the 20th century.
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.
Attachment and partnership between human individuals presdates everything, it's a biological imperative. Many animals mate for life or long term. It has nothing to do with religion.
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.
> It has no right to dictate to society what is allowable, only government has that right, given to it by the people themselves.
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.
> Outside of religion, marriage has no real meaning, and to the extent that it is promoted by government, it is a fragment of how everyone had a religion up until the 20th century.
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.
Changing language causes changes in culture, which may have catastrophic consequences at the civilization level. Personally, I think this is were the wisdom of thousands of previous generations have converged on religious practices and beliefs, which we are dismantling at our own risk. We are already seeing reports of population replacement problems across the developed world, which are also increasingly secular.
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.
ChatGPT is wrong a lot. I love AI, but it still in its early stages. Also, I think we're going back even before the time of all of the current major religions. During those times religion was different, and the line between religion, culture and government were much blurrier. Romans would definitely have religious beliefs, but probably didn't see it as a separate institution. So I would be surprised if the marriage rituals of the Romans were completely empty of any religious symbolism or traditions. Same with Greeks and Babylon. Religion was much more embedded in the identity of every individual, as being secular is a relatively new "option" in society.
According to Peter Berresford Ellis, for Celts, marriages were a legal agreement before being even an economic one, and wasn't supervised by any gods. Multiple marriage type existed, depending on who brought most to the house, whose house was used for the union... Marriage weren't all monogamous, it us unclear what kind of relationship it brought, but it's very clear that it wasn't a religious affair,but a legal one.
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.
I would question the line between government, society, and religion back in that time. I don't think people were secular, with myths and superstitions being an integral part of how people lived (no source here, but I'm pretty sure secular societies are fairly new). It wouldn't be much different than how people today might not be going to church every Sunday but they still get married in a church with a priest. Maybe there weren't priests but people might had certain beliefs and myths associated with marriage that drove their incentive to carry out the ritual. Without these shared beliefs, it's hard to for me to imagine people just got married because they were consciously trying to increase the population.
Bear it mind that Celt marriage wasn't necessarily about increasing the population, they weren't monogamous. It was about sharing and dividing ownership. They were merchants (mostly), women could be richer and earn more than the man they married, and one type of marriage handled that case (because the divorce was handled differently depending on who owned/earned the most). Marriage might have been about reproduction in civilization with huge gender gap, but for Celts it do seems it wasn't.
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).
Sure, interesting. I guess it may come down to what the majority of civilizations did in regards to marriage, and maybe it's a toss up. If we limit it to the West, then its more clear that current traditions originate with monotheistic practices.
Only because Celtic tradition were eradicated. Early witch hunts probably ended the last remnants of our Celt heritage, and those happened after marriage was taken over by priests in the early middle age, at least in France.
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 would argue that nobody does. Which is why people can have different definitions of what marriage means.
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.
... 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.
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.
An additional reason for some people is equality. Apply the laws equally.
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.
> 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?
My friend, I fear you are a long way from the battlefront.
> 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.
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.
>... why do we need to hijack the traditional concept of marriage?
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?
There's no need for marriage to have any special treatment in the law.
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
Why don't Christians want to enter "christian unions" and cede control over the word "marriage" to the state as a legal construct?
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."
> Why don't Christians want to enter "christian unions" and cede control over the word "marriage" to the state as a legal construct
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.
I have no idea where you get that acceptance of same sex marriage arises from Christian ideas. Because in my personal experience it really doesn't. I live in Italy and a lot of discrimination against gay people (me included), and a big part of the reason why we don't get actual marriage, is catholic rhetoric. Most of the homophobia I've experienced in my life, anecdotally, has been from devout christians: the more devout, the worse the discriminantion. So although I have no data on hand, I have a very strong suspicion that Christianity has nothing to do with it. If anything, it seems like at least in Europe, the more secular countries tend to get better rights for queer people and they get them faster (I think the first European country to get gay marriage was the Netherlands, back in 2001. And they're one of the least religious countries in Europe)
It’s hard to see if you limit your view to Europe, because Christian morality is just “in the water” there. I’m from Asia, where same-sex marriage is not accepted anywhere except Taiwan. It’s not accepted in Buddhist Thailand, Hindu India, Muslim Pakistan, atheist China, or Shinto/Buddhist Japan. It’s hard not to notice that the places where same-sex marriage is accepted have something in common: they were Christian for more than a thousand years.
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.
Christian is a broad term, so I definitely have to concede the point that christian is a superset of fundamentalist christian, who are the real problem.
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.
> 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.
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?
> Why don't Christians want to enter "christian unions" and cede control over the word "marriage" to the state as a legal construct?
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!
> 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.
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.
> 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
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.
> 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.
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 mean with enough propaganda and time you can have civil union be "marriage, but better" and marriage become "that obselete thing that only hicks do". Term conflict is also part of language evolution after all and can still go either way
Ignoring the symbolic aspects, most governments have adopted marriage as a bureaucratic detail that determines access to a variety of rights, priveleges, protections, and services.
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.
Why should homosexuals have less rights that other people? That's just bigotry.
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.
Obviously this depends on jurisdiction but there's certain extra rights that come with marriage, things like being able to decide what happens to your partner when they're in a coma, tax benefits, etc.
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.
Being married usually bring very important rights.
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.
Because there's no thing as "separate but equal". It hasn't worked, it never works. If something is legally identical, then it's the same thing - as your post notes!
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].
I have an even more controversial question/thought... in many countries, after you live together for a long enough time, you gain all rights and problems associated with that, as if you were married. Same if you have kids.
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.
At the point where you and your partner have assets that you care about after the death of one or both of you.
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.
In my country, you can prove the relationship after the fact, usually by a combination of living together and other elements (witnesses proving a loving relationship, photos, etc., kids make it automatic). After that, you're treated as civil union, without registration.
I doubt it happens much in practice, but that seems open to abuse. I'd hate to be in a position where someone demanded my assets and I had to prove that I wasn't involved with them. Especially as it becomes ever easier to manufacture evidence like photos and video. Having both parties sign documentation ahead of time seems a little more secure and hopefully helps to keep things consensual.
.. and this is clear cut in the case where millionaires have children with multiple partners?
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.
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.