President of Gambia plans to kill off every single homosexual

[HappySqurriel]

The Ghost of RubangB said:

HappySqurriel said:

Just to play devils advocate on the Church vs. State nature of marriage ...

Until King Henry the 8th renounced Catholicism and created the Anglican Church in order to divorce his wife marriage was the exclusive domain of the church; you could say that from the very begining the state took control of the institution of marriage in order to destroy it.

Now, an important question to ask is "why does the state have any right to say who can or can not be married?" Seriously, how does it benefit you to have the state say that you are or are not married? The legal implications of marriage are already covered by common-law unions in many states and countries, and could even be covered by joint property contracts and other contracts that would not attempt to force you into any particular definition of marriage; in this way people who choose to live in any form of alternative lifestyle can still share all of the rights of marriage without having to fight to have the definition changed.

It's simply not equal rights.  Straight people just get married.  Gay people now need all kinds of joint property contracts and wills and blah blah blah, all kinds of legal hoops to jump through, just for being born different.  Now if religions want to be bigoted as all hell and give certain people more hoops, that's fine.  The law isn't supposed to do that.

I was asking why anyone should be married by the government ... how is that not inherantly equal?