"Brides" and "grooms" are no longer allowed to marry in the State of California.
That privilege is only extended to individuals who allow themselves to be called "Party A" and "Party B" on marriage licenses.
Pastor Doug Bird of Abundant Life Fellowship in Roseville, Calif., was alarmed to find the state now rejects the traditional terms after he officiated his first marriage ceremony last week following the California Supreme Court decision to overturn Proposition 22.
The couple had written the words "bride" and "groom" next to "Party A" and "Party B" because they wanted to be legally recognized as husband and wife.
However, the Placer County marriage license was denied.
"I received back the license and a letter from the Placer County Clerk/Recorder stating that the license 'does not comply with California State registration laws,'" Bird said in a statement from the Pacific Justice Institute.
I also predicted that Same Sex Marriage Affects Everyone precisely because one definition of marriage must drive out the other definition. Marriage used to be a child-centered, gendered institution. With same sex marriage in place, marriage is becoming an adult-centered, gender-neutral institution.
3 comments:
SSMers ought try to explain the value to society of treating all unions of husband and wife as if they lacked either husbands or wives.
They ought try to justify their hostility toward societal preference for the integration of fatherhood and motherhood, for the integration of the sexes, and for responsible procreation. When they talk of "marriage equality" they mean to abolish this preference. This would not be an expansion of marriage but it would subsume the social institution and negate the core of marriage and negate the societal significance of marital status.
As such the merger of marriage with nonmarriage (or more accurately, the outright substitution of marriage with recognition of some other thing) would serve no just societal purpose.
Sure, it would enshrine and promote and innoculate gay identity politics but pressing that into marriage recogniton would be corruptive of society and its culture for it diminishes marriage to bumper sticker.
The SSM-merger with marriage cannot be a benign imposition since its argumentation openly rejects, and is relentlessly hostile toward, the most pro-child social institution we have.
Why should nonmarriage swallow marriage? Why should the substitution retain the label, marriage, when it abolishes the core of marriage from marital status? What is so flawed about this social institution that it must be replaced with validation of gay identity politics?
No man can make another his husband. No woman can make another her wife.
Neither Party A nor Party B is a husband and neither is a wife. They are not married but 'partnered'.
There can be no 'partnered' presumption of paternity that would be based on whatever men might do together sexually for a man is not presumed to have impregnated another man; and not based on whatever women might do together sexually for the presumption is of paternity not maternity. If the marriage presumption does not apply to the all-male and not to the all-female arrangements, then, in the name of equality (i.e. read 'false equivalence') it cannot be part of the 'partnered' relationship status of a both-sexed arrangement.
The marriage presumption depends on there being both a husband and a wife, rather than a lack of the other sex. Hence the SSM merger is an outright substitution and not an expansion of marriage.
When a man marries, he consents to the marriage presumption of paternity. Likewise for a woman. But no all-male and no all-female scenario can provide such consent.
The one-sex-short arrangement can not integrate fatherhood and motherhood; cannot unite the sexes; and can not provide sex equality for it is sex segregative. How can such an arrangement provide for equality of man and woman when it expressly excludes one or the other sex? It cannot do so. It cannot integrate the sexes. It is like the old racist anti-miscegenation system that selectively segregated the sexes and undermined responsible procreation.
The language of 'Party A and Party B' is lauded as gender neutral and as such it informs society that marriage recognition would be neutered. What is so awful, so horrible, about sex integration that this neutering must be imposed on society?
If the 'gay relationship' is the new so-called gender-neuteral model of 'intimate partnership', and if whatever cannot fit that type of relationship is to be eliminated from marital status, then, the SSMers have conceded that the SSM merger would indeed effect each and every existing marriage and each and every future marriage.
They stand on quicksand if they can't recognize the harm done to society when sex integration is neutered, when fatherhood and motherhood are disunited, and when responsible procreation is no longer preferred. In fact, the SSMers think they are doing a great service by inviting all of society to join them, standing in the quicksand, and abandoning the foundational social institution of civil society.
-- Chairm Ohn.
"SSMers ought try to explain the value to society of treating all unions of husband and wife as if they lacked either husbands or wives."
There is no value to it, but at least now we are all being treated equally. I have to admit I feel the same, that Party A and Party B does no justice to the sanctity of marriage. The form should say Spouse A and Spouse B. Sex integration is not neutered, there is just an alternative. You like chocolate, I like Vanilla - does that give either of us the right to vote each others rights away?
Julie, you talk of a false equivalence, not true equality.
Equal treatment would mean that all couples who marry consent to marriage -- and that includes the marriage presumption of paternity. This integrates motherhood and fatherhood.
But it cannot apply to an arrangement that likes one or the other sex. Such a sex-segregative arrangement is not marital.
Using the word, spouse, instead of party, does not fix what would be broken with a merger of SSM (i.e. nonmarriage) with marriage recognition.
Your chocolate is nonmarital. You may like it fine. Good for you. But claiming it is the equivalent of sex integration is to make assert a falsehood rather than to defend equality.
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