Marriage has always been a government institution. Religion co-opted it for themselves at a later time. This "leave marriage to the churches where they belong" cry is disingenuous. Marriage is about a contract between individuals. It provides government granted privileges in regards to taxes, healthcare, inheritance, court testimony and child custody. It has nothing to do with religion. If you want to have a religious ceremony to celebrate and "sanctify" your government granted marriage, so be it. But don't pretend this is a religious tradition meddled with by government. It is a government institution that has been meddled with by religion since before religion and government were separate.
There was almost no difference between government and religion when marriage originated, so it makes little sense to argue who invented it. Was Moses a political or religious leader? Were pharaohs political rulers or gods? Etc. What is very clear is that, in our society, civil and religious marriage are two different things that share a common name, and that one should have no influence over the other.
It doesn't matter who invented it. It matters what it is. And marriage is fundamentally a government institution. It concerns laws and legally granted privileges. If there's a sacred component, let the churches keep that part, but that's not what the SCOTUS ruled on, and it's not what millions across the country have been demanding for decades.
Not legally you won't. Your "marriage" will be equivalent to "monogamous relationship", that's about it. No visitation rights. No tax breaks. No inheritance rights. No pension rights.
Currently marriage involves third parties treating couples differently because they're married. That requires a standardized status and seems tricky to do with contract.
For example: different taxation, different financial aid, etc.
You could get rid of all these, but that is a big change.
That might be very clear to you and I but I'm hearing a lot today about religious liberty being trampled. So I suspect it isn't as clear to a lot of people.
> Marriage has always been a government institution. Religion co-opted it for themselves at a later time.
I don't think that's the full story. I suspect that religious marriage existed long before nation states and most of the current legal distinctions associated with marriage.
>I don't think that's the full story. I suspect that religious marriage existed long before nation states and most of the current legal distinctions associated with marriage.
I suspect that marriage - a man/wife pairing (or 1-to-N grouping) recognized by the tribe/village with respect to all those legal distinctions related to property, children, etc... - existed long before the religion.
Are we supposing religious monkeys now? It wouldn't surprise me if earlier hominids were religious as well, but to call any other possibility "quite ridiculous" is really overstepping.
You don't think that there were humans that existed before any form of codified spirituality? I'd be willing to believe that explicit ritual bonding (marriage) didn't predate religion, but find it hard to believe that the first words we uttered went along with some sort of priestly social class or referenceable rules for living.
> I suspect that religious marriage existed long before nation states
Do you have any actual evidence? Because here in reality-land, the evidence shows that the English legal tradition considered marriage a civil institution long before the churches tried to claim it.
Englang went from pre-history into history in 42 A.D. when the Romans came there. It didn't even have written history before that [check Wikipedia if you don't believe this].
Hardly the place to look for the origin of ancient traditions...
Well, nation states have only existed for 500 years or so, and marriage is mentioned in the Bible and plenty of Ancient Greek writings. I'm not sure if that counts as evidence here in reality-land.
With so narrow a definition of "nation state", I am left wondering what relevance "religious marriage existed long before nation states" has to the broader discussion.
States have existed far longer. "Nation state" refers specifically to a state which coincides with a cultural or ethnic group. If you had to choose a starting point for the idea of the nation state, the Treaty of Westphalia is one of the more reasonable.
Again, it depends on your definition of "state." If you're using the term interchangeably with the much broader term "government," which can include even the smallest and most primitive family or tribe power structures, then you can probably consider the state to be older than marriage (I actually think there's still room for debate even then, depending also on the definition of "marriage").
I'm fully aware of that, but it's irrelevant to the claim that the poster suspects "that religious marriage existed long before nation states" being disputed with "the evidence shows that the English legal tradition considered marriage a civil institution long before the churches tried to claim it".
The simple fact is marriage easily predates all the English (pre or not) legal traditions. English (pre or not) traditions at best drew on the earlier concepts and practice of marriage.
Crack a world history book open sometime. Or just use google.
Humanity has definitely been around long before the current crop of judeo christian religions that our country's concept of religion is based upon. "Religion" is not a single entity, and not all religion defines marriage the same way conservative Christian sects do.
Marriage as a practical matter exists in all societies everywhere, in the absense of any institutions of organized religion or the political state. Read any ethnography of any stone-age people from the past several hundred years and you'll find social pair-bonding without any religious or state sanction. There is frequently family sanction, but that is clearly not what you are talking about.
And historically in the West, marriage as a sacrement didn't get off the ground until the late Middle Ages: the Council of Verona in 1184 if memory serves. And even long after that it was still mostly a practical matter for most people.
"Marriage is about a contract between individuals"
Interestingly, I view it as the exact opposite. My wife and I knew of our bond together. I got married only because it was a public recognition of that bond. It was to share that bond with friends and family. It did not change our relationship or commitment at all.
As to the legal situation many have mentioned, that could have easily been covered by a will for us. It may vary by country, but a will and defacto status offer the same protection in some parts of the world. I sought legal advice when I considered my options of marriage because marriage means little to me. I think its significance to a couple's commitment is highly over rated.
