can't get 100% of everything they want, then everybody gets NOTHING!!!

churches, temple's, mosques and their priests, preachers, imam's or rabbis the ability to legally marry anyone.

Let the religious places do what they want to their members who freely choose to attend and leave the rest of US the F alone with their mythology.

Just stop requiring licenses to marry. Make a civil marriage just a form that one can download on-line, sign, notarize and file with the clerk. The form would serve as notice to the public that these folks now consider themselves married. Any couple who are not closely related and are both 18+ should be able to file one for the $10 or $20 recording fee regardless of gender orientation.

If the people or their churches want to have a ceremony or throw a party over it, let them do as they please.

the state, aka Government, has a vested interest in those who are legally married.

Churches do not pay taxes nor do they have ANY interest in serving anyone but their members.

Government exists for all, churches exist for the few and they can exclude whom they want for any reason they want.

Some churches are ok with adults marrying children, the solution proposed in your post would lead to legalized pedophilia.

People use and hide behind religion to cover up crimes or to commit illegal activity giving the churches more power will only make things worse.

just a little help with reading...

The license does not secure the tax benefit. I have never been asked to show my license or otherwise prove I was married to file "married filing jointly" on the 1040.

The "married" status could just as easily be conveyed by recording a marriage form in the public record. Every benefit of marriage could be conveyed this way.

Government has no business approving or disapproving marriages. It does have business settling property and custody disputes when one dissolves. The issuance of a license does not help here either.

As far as Churches are concerned, the ceremony they conduct is not relevant to the settlement of property and/or custody when a marriage dissolves. Catholic marriages are dissolved just the same as those performed by a civil court clerk.

If people want to go to a Church, they can, if they don't, they could just sign the form and pay the recording fee, or for that matter celebrate in any manner that suits them whenever they like.

Churches do not pay taxes, but ours does serve many who are not members regularly.

First off, the county clerks cannot refuse to issue marriages licenses. They can refuse to perform a ceremony, even though the guideline booklet issued for notaries public states:

When my husband and I made it legal, we just had a notary public fill out his part of our license and carried it back to the county clerk's office. No ceremony, he just asked us if we were sure about getting married.

But that brochure says:


My attitude is - whoever wrote that should go jump in a lake - preferably one with lots of hungry alligators. Our "civil union" with no ceremony at all has lasted almost 38 years , a lot longer than many of the fancy weddings I've seen people blow lots of money and energy on. I didn't want a ceremony or any fuss. We'd already made our commitment to each other and just needed to make it legal for various reasons. In fact if you count how long we've been together, legal or not, it will be 39 years next month.

The brochure lists the people in Florida who are authorized to "solemnize" a marriage - a simple notary public can do it if they are willing. There are lots of options other than through a church or the county clerks that are being dicks.

I don't have a problem if people want religious falderol when they make their commitments to each other legal. I do object when they try to force that stuff on everyone else. I had an aunt and uncle who stopped talking to me because I was not married "in the church" - Southern Baptists, of course. But then they did not really want to recognize my parents' marriage because it was by a Presbyterian minister and not a Baptist!

This is perhaps an expanded understanding of getting government out of the marriage business. Other than the necessary entanglement in the legal issues related to contested dissolution, government has no role. Regardless of how it becomes "solemnized" they all dissolve the same, meaning nothing about one affects the other.

People can do fairly well what they want now, except for same gender couples, until tomorrow.

Friends (Quakers) here will be as happy to "solemnize" same gender weddings as we are to "solemnize" mixed gender weddings. It has been part of our "Faith and Practice" to do so for quite some time now.