I'm really impressed!

[emmagrant01]

Check it out: http://www.afa.net/petitions/SummarizePoll.asp

When I first took this poll, the results were something like 98% against gay marriage. At the moment, the tally is 28.25% FOR. I've seen this poll listed on most of the lists I'm on, and it almost seems like it's been a grassroots campaign to make a point to the small-minded people at the AFA. Go us!

(Thank you, lauramcewan, if you were indeed the first person to post this!)

ETA: Apparently AFA suspected sometampering with their results yesterday and removed some duplicate votes. But they seem to have skewed back. I'm wondering what's going on? If nothing else, maybe they'll realize it was a bad idea in the first place. If you want to do a statistically valid survey of people's opinions, you sure as hell don't do it like that. *snort*

ETA again: Checked at 11:30 CST, and now it's 32% for and 62% against. WTF?

Comments

[jedirita.livejournal.com]

If you want to do a statistically valid survey of people's opinions, you sure as hell don't do it like that. *snort*

Very much true. I was rather shocked when they said they were going to give the results to congresspeople. It's one thing to present a petition, which you know as self-selecting, but given how much confidence our society places in polls, to offer such a completely invalid poll as this one is particularly unethical.

History of marriage and the church. Priests were allowed to marry up until around the 11th cen. In Eastern Orthodox churches, they are still allowed to marry. In the RCC it was outlawed because priests were basically founding church dynasties. (A practice which continued even after the celibacy thing. It's alarming to learn how many powerful bishops and cardinals were the illegitmate sons of popes, appointed to their position by their fathers.)

Marriage was a completely secular event up until around the same time-period, and were not performed in churches. As you said, property and inheritance issues fueled the need for public records of marriages, and since often the priest was the only person in the community who could write, the priest often recorded those marriages. But the marriage itself still took place outside the church, and then the couple would go to the priest to have the marriage registered. It was a couple more centuries before marriage became a church-centered event and a sacrament in the Catholic Church.

My problem as a minister is that I don't like doing the government's business. Government does have some stake in recognizing marriage as a legal contract, so I can't really see gov't getting out of the marriage business entirely. But I think the church's role and the govt's role should be separated. All people, whether gay or straight, should be required to register their marriage in a civil ceremony, as they do in many European countries. Then if they want a religious ceremony, it's completely separate. I don't think people should just be able to go to the church and have the minister fill out the marriage certificate.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Thanks for updating the history! All of that was coming from my memory of having an undergraduate class that discussed these issues about ten *gulp* years ago.

On the topic of civil vs. religious ceremonies, in many countries (Mexico and Argentina are two that come to mind) there are actually two distinct marriage ceremonies. The civil ceremony is presided over by a representative of the government and the marriage license is signed. This cermony seems to take place the day before the religious ceremony does. (This first baffled and then intrigued me when I went to a wedding in Mexico!) In the US, these are usually combined, as you know.

I suppose that our ceremony was a civil one, since we're not religious. We wrote it ourselves, and there wasn't any religion involved. The hard part was finding a person who could legally preside. We went to a wonderful wedding last fall in which two lawyers got married. One of their friends, a judge, married them. Their dog was "best animal". The judge carried a copy of a Dr. Suess book in her arms, as a minister would a Bible. It was great!

Have you ever perfoemed a commitment ceremony for a couple who couldn't make it "legal"?

[jedirita.livejournal.com]

Oh, hell yeah. I've done lots of weddings for lesbian couples, but have yet to do a wedding between two men.

I performed the ceremony for both my sisters: one as a state-recognized traditional Christian ceremony, and the other as a non-state-recognized non-traditional, non-Christian ceremony.

Laws vary from state to state, but in Texas, all that is required for a (straight) couple to be married is that they both agree on the person to witness it. It doesn't even have to be a minister, actually. So two people could agree to have their next door neighbor perform the ceremony, and that's legal according to Texas. At least, that's how I understand it. In Illinois it had to be a minister and two witnesses.