In the US where I live, a civil ceremony is a legal marriage, and that’s what we did, right at the courthouse. Previously we were in a domestic partnership, which required no ceremony just signing the papers, and gave us many of the legal rights of marriage. I’m not a Christian, nor a member of any major religion, so I would not avail myself of that type of religious ceremony anyway.
I fully agree with you, don’t need anyone else defining my relationship. Neither government nor religion. 38 years ago she first asked me to marry her and I said no, I will never marry. We went back and forth on that issue over the decades, but as we enter old age, it just seemed wise.
One clear legal benefit came up recently for me and my wife. She was in the hospital for several days. As her legal wife I was given certain medical information that would only go to next of kin. Before we got married we were not legal next of kin, and in fact that’s the reason we got married.
The value would be, that church considers you married in the eyes of God, irrelevant of what human laws say. Not that I believe in any such god, but I remember gay people who got married in their Quaker church, and within their spiritual circle they were treated as married like any other married couple. Of course it didn’t count for anything in the secular world.
Furthermore, it has always been possible to get a religious wedding (certain churches only), even before it could be a legal marriage.
If this isn’t the definition of “too little too late”, I don’t know what is.
This is such an obscene infringement on a woman’s bodily autonomy. It’s one thing to impose some modicum of “modesty” in public, but it’s completely vile how and to the extent done here.
Political news is different from discussions where people take political sides and fall into sparring (at best) or political spin.
Federation as an ethical concept is completely foreign to Meta. Most of their users LIKE what they have: a huge monolithic social media company. If they want to use something federated, they will make the effort to switch. Might be worthwhile to educate some of those users…maybe. But not to take on Meta wholesale. I agree that eventually the whole concept of this federation would become defunct or at best an anomaly.
Congratulations. Well done and very inspiring!
Removed by mod