Happy 40th WEDDING anniversary to my ATHEIST parents.

OK, it's a few months premature. But worth celebrating for a long time. :) And I got sick of burying this point as a response on other threads.


I'm making this personal to illustrate how absurd and irrelevant the whole argument that "marriage" has a "religious" basis as a justification for denying the right (or selling it short) to gay and lesbian couples is to me. Marriage is religious? Say that to my dad. To his face. I dare you.

My parents had been dating for 3 months when they eloped for their INS shotgun wedding in 1968 (Mom was a foreign college exchange student). They were 19 and 24. They were married more or less alone in a courthouse. No minister gave a benediction. No priest signed the form. They've never believed in any supernatural being having anything to do with their fights, their sex life, their insurance claims, their retirement plans, the raising of their child (I was never christened, baptized, first communioned, bat mizvahed, etcetera), their movie rentals, their storage space issues, their hikes in the woods, their divergent musical tastes, or anything else that fills the years of a life together.

What makes a marriage? They wanted to make a commitment, and they did. They filled out the paperwork, they took some oaths in front of a judge, and from there on, the world accepted the two of them as a pair. They stayed together, so ownership of the house, custody of me, hospital visits and bank accounts, all of that, have never been an issue for them. Saying "my wife" and "my husband" eventually grew natural in their conversation. Guys still hit on my mom, and she just says "No thanks, I'm married." Natural and obvious. Taken for granted.

It helps, of course, that they're heterosexual, a man and a woman. If you ask me, that's a matter of luck. Random genetics or whatever it is that both of them happened to be wired straight. Lucky for them, because they had it easier than a lot of other pairs of people who have loved and do love each other just as much, but didn't have the relative ease of just signing a paper, saying a mutual "yup" in front of a judge, and from then on having the right to have the person you love and trust most in the world recognized as your legal next of kin.

Nobody should begrudge my parents this, cause it wasn't always easy for them, as it isn't always easy for most couples who try to make the lifelong commitment stick. But I can see NO good reason to make it MORE difficult for some couples than others just based on gender, out of arbitrary prejudice and superstition. Don't blame it on God and don't claim that "religion" is the source of pair-bonded mating. Religion didn't invent that, it just commemorated something that was already natural and widespread. People didn't start dying just because at some point our proto-human ancestors decided to start having rituals for the dead. And "religion" in no way dictates how real people really love.

Actually, since atheists have no moral foundation whatsoever, you're lucky they didn't eat you at birth.



(yes, :sarcasm: from a fellow hard-core atheist -- congrats to you and your folks :toast:)

Eat me? Naw, babies are fatty and greasy. I'm lucky they didn't trade me for reefer at a truck stop. :D

Funny thing is, I turned out Pagan. And pissed off that the government doesn't recognize all the marriages MY religion does. "Freedom of religion" my eclectic ass.

Dad and I rag each other about this all the time. He calls me a "fire-worshipper" and I call him "worm-food." All in great love. :D

See you all in Hell...

Aren't we all going to the reunion in Hell, AZ???

..using Republican logic.


As an atheist, I send them my best wishes.

But they'd have divorced in a second if Mom had been fertile enough to be a welfare queen! What's a husband when you can have a free Cadillac? /Republican.


Thanks on their behalf. (They'd go ballistic if they knew I'd posted this.)

one can imagine!

Marriage is about LOVE, and to a lesser extent, about shared property and health decisions and money and child-raising and who you want to grow old with and make the decision about pulling the plug if it comes to that.

Not about anyone's god's weird rules about genitals.

I totally agree with you, and I am a neo-pagan-christian...so there! ;)
40 years is a long time to stay together, regardless of beliefs...And I commend your folks for doing it. Obviously, they have good heads on their shoulders and a moral compass worth noting...reliion aside, they would have to have "something" special to make life's trials and tribulations and blessings something worth sharing for that long. OH, I guess love may have something to do with it eh? You also sound like a very level-headed person, so they did a good job with you - religion aside? I guess love may have something to do with that, too?

My point is that, while a couple may not have religion, they can still have LOVE. ANd finding that, in any form...hetero or not, it the real prize and treasure. Why shouldn't anyone in love be able to get hitched and make a lifetime of memories and joy?

I had two marriages and three kids, and still have yet to experience that kind of comittment!

I turned out Pagan myself, as it happens.

40 years is a long time, and some of those years were full of fighting and difficulties. There's just something in them both that decided their relationship was worth riding out even long times of unhappiness. And now they've both grown so eccentric in weirdly dovetailing ways I can't imagine either of them ever finding someone else who really understands them.

I think that any divinity worth its worship understands that LOVE is the most valuable thing humanity has, and love is the best use of our brains' capacity for ingenuity, endurance, and reverence. Genders of the lovers? Pish. About as relevant as their eye-color or right-or-left-handedness when it comes assessing the worth of relationships.

I'm not an atheist, but I could not agree more. I don't know if a lot of people realize this, but marriage wasn't even a Christian sacrament for hundreds of years after the church started. It was considered entirely a civil matter. Even the Bible gives very little support to the institution of marriage. The most Saint Paul could come up with was to say: "Better to marry than to burn."

When the Roman Empire dissolved, the church was the only institution left, and so it took on many functions that had been secular before, including marriage. But there is no reason it should still be in that "business."

While I see no reason why religious people shouldn't have their commitment celebrated in a church if they so desire, that has nothing to do with marriage as a legal entity or a social institution. Unfortunately, the word "marriage" now has such a religious connotation, that attempts to open it to gays and others are bound to meet fierce resistance from religious bigots. That is why I prefer the idea of civil unions. It avoids a whole can of worms that is better not opened, and gives people with no religious inclinations a way of legalizing committed relationships without all that baggage.

Congratulations to your parents. Marriages last due to the strength of the commitment and the value both partners place on it. It takes work, and I applaud anyone who can pull it off.

I was under the impression that even during the Middle Ages, religious marriage in a church with all the trappings was mostly a dog-and-pony show for the ruling class (because, after all, the progeny of royal marriages had to have that Divine Right of Kings blessing) and the peasantry didn't necessarily bother.

While I see no reason why religious people shouldn't have their commitment celebrated in a church if they so desire, that has nothing to do with marriage as a legal entity or a social institution.

Exactly - there's just no direct connection whatsoever. And I'd add that there are quite a few religions and denominations where same-sex couples CAN receive the full religious blessing of their faith; it's the government that doesn't fully recognize it. Which is wrong, wrong, wrong.

!!

I'm just glad to be along for the ride.

LUCKY YOU --- !!!

Happy Anniversary --- !!!

but how do you expect the snake oil salesmen to make money -weddings and funerals are very profitable.

custom casket or a wedding dress that costs more than houses used to. Vanity, pomp and circumstance aren't religious. So the wedding industry at least still has a hook in, regardless.

"OK, everybody grab a shovel, before he gets ripe."

End of ceremony.

Sigh. :shrug:

We agree that neither of us can imagine being married to a non-atheist.