(October 28, 2012 at 7:03 pm)Kirbmarc Wrote: The government shouldn't decide who can marry who.^^^this!
Because governments & religious institutions have, historically, controlled marriage as a means of engineering societies, those societies have been successfully indoctrinated to assume that the government has some sort of right or obligation to do so.
This is bollocks.
I've never heard a rational argument in favour of government/religious institutions getting involved in personal relationships; the 'pro-marriage' arguments are always supernatural or totalitarian and where they seem to be based on the human need for emotional celebration, they're simply co-opting them with no line of reasoning. Consequently I conclude that governments/religious institutions should be legislated away from relationships.
Further, I take personal insult at the accusation (inherent in the marriage ceremony) that my commitment to my partner/s is somehow not 'trustworthy' or 'valid' until ratified by a external agency who not only can not know anything about the details of the relationship but can have no access to any information which might actually qualify them to pass judgement on it.
Sum ergo sum
