DOMA and Prop 8. Both History.

[kandrathe]

Well i think it is good to have a special set of laws and rights for two people who get married.

Which begs, what is marriage?

What would you do else when problems arise regarding children or inheritance questions.

Children are frequently produced by unmarried couples, so I don't understand what the issues are here really. The biological parents are responsible, until they relinquish by way of adoption, or have those rights removed by the state for being neglectful or abusive. Inheritance, also frequently results in probate, so a will is always the helpful document in these cases. It is just handy to assume the spouse gets 100% of estates. Without a spouse, you'd need to spell it out in a will. This is not really too big an issue.

The fact is just that the only legal form of marriage is the one you do in city hall.

... said the statist.

If you are religious and want to do one in church as well ( because you feel this is the only real one) you go ahead.

The very religious people I know say this is the only real marriage, the one which consecrates the two people as one flesh in the eyes of God. They feel the license is a formality to get official state recognition.

When I was 19, in college and living with my then girlfriend, now wife, we both worked for the headquarters of the American Lutheran Church in Minneapolis. The leadership there considered us married, except we had not made it official in a church, or by getting the license. They saw we had a committed relationship based upon canonical law; "The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament."