Hard to say government wasn't involved in marriage when religious Priest ran the government and made the laws and inflicted punishments. If Priest and Popes decide the law and punishments, that's theocratic governing......something haplo seems to endorse.

Enforced religious law is theocracy, a form of government, been around since man, simply government in one form or the other has always been involved in marriage, cept where government didn't exist you could just jump over a broom and say " I'm married."

Honestly though Armistead, his efforts are getting so lame you could almost feel sorry for him.
I mean seriously antioch in the first century??????? that was part of the roman empire whose government had created a huge pile of marriage laws in the preceeding couple of hundred years, and the romans were only developing further on from marriage laws that the greek states had been using in their governments.

Even then though, it would still usually involve the head of some sort, top dog will always want his say and his cut.(which is probably why Iggy wanted his boys to get in on the action too)

I agree why should it realy matter any way....people:nope:

So, who was running the marriage game before that?

And so would many Americans, including our Founding Fathers themselves. "pursuit of happiness" is only mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. In the Constitution English Law is followed in the injunction "No man shall be deprived of Life, Liberty or Property without due process of law."

While I disagree with your take on social causes behind marriage your arguments are good ones and deserving of consideration.

Because basic design of cultural patterns runs by the rule, and not by the exception from the rule, also because administration needs to focus on the basic idea and tends to fizzle up things if a thoisuand special conditions and exceptions get recognised in law-making - just look at tax systems, they are a mess. Also, couples forming up and getting divorced again quickly and not planning families, is a relatively new phenomenon that people of just a couple of decades ago would hardly comprehend. Being married until high age and having a diamoin wedding ceremony, today makes it into the newspaper. For the generation of my grandparents, it was the unspectacular norm.

Comfort and luxury wreak havoc on Western mentality in many different ways.



Agreed, but these must not be of concern for the society around. They are private interests, so - keep them private. No matter whether you are homo or hetero.

Marriage is a communal and cultural recognition of a potential function of hetero couples forming up, a function that is of vital interest for the community. Why singles like me and homo couples should hjave the same benefit although we do not fulfill that function, remains a mystery to me. And if homo couples now are given these additonal benefits - and let'S face it, many of them are about money! - then I demand the same for singles like myself, since I do not see anything in homo couples that justifies to rate them as more valuable for communal interest, than singles like me.

Needless to say that this relativisation of families' specially marked status (at least by intention and on paper) gets reduced. A great help in our overaging societies with people putting careers before raising familie already now. :yeah:

There is a lot of social dysfunctionality in our rotten culture, and pour problöems certainly do not come just from nowhere: their evolving and unfoldinmg can be explained. Whether people want to hear these explanations, since they are anything but compliments for our intelligence, is something that can be doubted. Making homo marriages equal to hetero marriages is just another nail in the cultural coffin.

In some country - don'T ask, I forgot which one it was - in Southern Africa some years ago a minority of Chinese went to court over being excluded from some native payment fonds becasue they were not recognised as native African blacks, which they obviously were not, since they were indeed Han, and the Han race is not black, one cannot help it. It ended with the constitution or at least some very basic law they had being changed, now saying that Chinese are blacks.

If such a distortion is possible in distorted cultures, than everything else should not come as a surprise.

I do agree with much of what Skybird says, due to government involvement in marriage and the many benefits it gives to married couples, homos and singles are denied many of the same benefits.
Married couples can leave property easier, pay less taxes, etc. Heck, if
I already paid taxes on what I own I should be able to leave it to who I want tax free.

Yeah right:doh:
Payments were made available to people who were discriminated under apartheid. They don't say that now "chinese are blacks" as a race they say that the previous regime classed most asians as coloureds and any asians that were classed as coloureds by the white supremacist government are eligible for the same payment scheme as any other person the previous regime classified that way.

That such a distortion of facts is possible from that person should not come as a surprise

I like the zoo. :DL