What gay marriage looks like.

Can you get a civil partnership if you're *not* same sex? That's always something that's bugged me about the US system - it's so deeply mired in the religious aspect that there's no separation between the civil and religious. And even people who don't have any interest in the religious side are still "married", when it doesn't have any of the religious connotations for them.

Additionally, I like to point out to people that there are any number of churches that I (as a heterosexual) could walk into that wouldn't marry me, either (for being the wrong religion, living in sin, any number of things). Why is it a big deal to add something else to the list of legal marriages that they don't perform?

In the UK, to the best of my understanding, the same legal wossname is called civil partnership for same sex couples and marriage for different sex ones.

Getting married in church is a different matter. Maybe it would be better if the legal requirements of marriage\civil partnership were completely divorced from the church? People could then make a religious commitment, should they wish it, in any church which agrees that they should be allowed to do so. My personal experience includes more than one friend married in church, and not remaining married very long, and more than one non-church marriage, including ours, lasting long, and to this day.

I don't think that the grandiosity of the ceremony correlates positively or negatively with the sincerity of the commitment. But then, I'm just a simple hobbit who can't live at the heights for too long!

I was just curious. I'd prefer the "divorced from the church" option, but I live in the US in the heart of the deep south, so any of this is rather academic for me unless something happens nationally. I'm sure we'll be fighting it out to be the LAST state to implement anything, much less full equality. Hell, we had the Olympics when I was a kid and the torch WENT AROUND MY COUNTY because of the [then] recent anti-gay legislation (one piece saying that we didn't like them and another killing arts funding after a play that had some kind of homosexuality/references in it)...

And even people who don't have any interest in the religious side are still "married", when it doesn't have any of the religious connotations for them.

I don't understand this. Are you saying that marriage is an inherently religious concept? I know non-religious Americans who got civil marriages; they're married, and there's nothing religious about it.

Too many pronouns, I think - what I was trying to mean with that is that one of the things that I keep hearing again and again is that it IS a religious deal, and that's why we can't let gays get married (in addition to the list of completely made up stuff about pedophilia, child rearing, natural/unnatural, etc). 'Cause it's a religious thing that's got to be preserved in its historic form. If I were to get hitched, I'd want something called something other than marriage, just on principle at this point, because I don't want the religious connotation that's become stuck to it now.

All of that said, the line there has to be drawn by government vs church lines, not by straight vs gay lines. The first actually makes sense. The second not so much, since there are plenty of marriages between same-sex couples in churches that have a lot of religion involved.

I also think it would be an interesting statement if straight people started asking for civil partnerships because they didn't want "marriages". But that's more just a side-thought.

Personally, I don't care about the religious connotation - I care about giving everybody the chance to have the other connotation that marriage carries.

A civil union is a contract - dull, dry, boring - it doesn't have any heart.

A marriage carries the connotation of commitment. Forever, or at least as long as both shall live. I think that everybody should have that possibility.

(I'm perfectly open to the possibility of "as long as you all shall live," for that matter. I'm not sure I could manage that, but some people do.)

The religious right claims that marriage is a religious thing because for them, it is, and they want their religion to control all of human society. In other words, they're lying because they want to control your life.

If civil partnerships start becoming a big thing, the religious right will either try to get them outlawed, or make sure that marriage continues to have important legal rights that are missing from civil partnerships. Or they'll start claiming that civil partnerships are religious, too, and demand control over them.

Well, they're going to be crazy regardless. But their crazy doesn't make it any less reasonable to decouple the religious part and the civil part. Then it's entirely up to a given church whether or not they consider someone "married", and it doesn't matter to anyone else what one group thinks. That's more what I was getting at, not having two separate legal categories; "separate but equal" isn't equal. But given how religiously charged this debate has become, I don't know if there's going to be a way, in the long run, to eliminate that religious connotation from the word, so it's better just to get the government out of it altogether.

The UK is currently considering whether or not they should have gay marriage instead of civil partnerships. It is complicated by the fact that we don't have separation of church and state.

Currently:

A legal marriage can be performed in churches/synagogues/mosques/non-religious licensed venues.

A legal civil partnership can be performed in non-religious licensed venues, or approved religious licensed venues. This does not currently include my own denomination, the Church of England (we'll get there. It'll take a bloody long time, but we're working on it) but if you're in a legally-approved Unitarian church or Quaker meeting house or Reform synagogue you can get civilly partnered there with your same-sex partner of choice.

Marriage in the UK is a bit of an incoherent legal mess, due to the aforementioned intertwining of church and state.

I think the easiest option would be to have two distinct kinds of marriage:

1. Civil marriage. Which takes place between consenting adults in a civil venue.
2. Religious marriage. Which takes place between whoever your particular religion says it can, as long as they're also consenting adults, in wherever it is your religion does weddings.

Which is what they do in France, IIRC. You have a civil marriage, so you get all the legal protections, and then, if you choose, you can have a religious (or not) ceremony in a church or a synagogue or mosque or hilltop or your back garden, or take all your clothes off and dance around in a field, but the latter part is irrelevant to the legality of your marriage. (Unless you get busted for public indecency, I guess. You're still legally married, but now you're also in jail.)

And I don't know about anyone else, but in my circle if you get a civil partnership we tend to call you 'married' and 'spouses' and 'husbands' and 'wives' regardless.