More about marriage.

A cousin posted on my FB page his comments about my remarks regarding the Maine vote to strip the law permitting same sex marriage. To him gay couples should have the same rights, but not marriage, because marriage is from God given to Adam and Eve.

What I find interesting in this logic is you have to assume that every atheist couple can not get married, because they do not believe in god. This would also hold true of wicans, pagans, Buddhists, and Hindus.

The word Marriage only means the joining of two parts, that could be as simple as pipe, the space shuttle and the the space station, a nut and bolt, a power plug and socket. So I do not see how Marriage is somehow only between a man and a woman, of human type, and only a religious purview. When did the secular government of America abdicate the power to marry a couple to only religions?

In my FB response, I asked him if civil weddings of straight couples are marriages? What if they are atheist? What if they never have children?


Denmark has an official religion and tax money is given to the church to help pay a share of the cost for the buildings and clergy. However, couples must be married by the civil process before the religious, as they do not recognize the religious ceremony as official government marriage. A couple will obtain the marriage license and have the brief ceremony performed right then by the appointed government judge. Some of the very religious do not cohabit until the religious ceremony is performed, then they move in together and consummate the union. Individual couples might not use the civil marriage date as their official anniversary date, they might use the religious. Therefore, in American it is quite nice that government will recognize the religious ceremony as both the civil and religious official date of marriage as a courtesy so the couple need not perform a ceremony twice. Of course they can only be performed by appropriate clergy, as authorized by the state.

Can any of my religious family and friends explain this logic?