On Thu, 29 Jul 2004 14:52:35 GMT, "Vox Humana" wrote:

(snip)
I agree completely. I found it interesting that Gov. Romney suggested that
the government get out of the marriage business and simply issues civil
union certificates to everyone, leaving "marriage" to religious
institutions. This is probably the only time I will ever agree with him. I
do think that would be the very best solution. As you point out, religious
sects are not required to marry everyone who shows up with a license. Most
churches decide who they will marry and what those people have to do to
qualify for marriage in that church. Orthodox Jews don't recognize
marriages between Jews and gentiles, nor are priestly lines of orthodox Jews
able to marry converts. In doing some research on this subject, I found
that there is a movement in the fundamentalist Christian world that also
thinks the state should remove itself from the marriage business. They
reason that marriages are an institution of the church and the state has no
right requiring that people get a license before being able to receive a
holy sacrament.

Madalyn Murray O'Hair used to call those licenses "Sex Licenses", since that was
all they really allowed you to do that you couldn't do before. You could live
together without being married and it wasn't a problem, and you could eat
together, and you could pretty much do everything else together, as long as you
didn't have sex, so all you needed the license for was to have sex.