[ansel12]

My wife and I are religiously married (Jewish). The state has no business regarding my marital status.

What if you are a 35 year Green Beret who is Muslim and has 4 women that you want to marry, does the government need to decide if those marriages are valid for housing and rations and as dependents when you are stationed and housed in obscure places on the planet, or do they just depend on the Mosque to define it?

[Talisker]

What if you are a 35 year Green Beret who is Muslim and has 4 women that you want to marry, does the government need to decide if those marriages are valid for housing and rations and as dependents when you are stationed and housed in obscure places on the planet, or do they just depend on the Mosque to define it?

Apples and oranges. MARRIAGE is defined by the religious or spiritual tradition, given that such a religious or spiritual tradition is acknowledged AS a religious or spiritual tradition under the 1st Amendment. Government entitlement identifications are a COMPLETELY SEPARATE ISSUE. Should you be responsible for shortening your name or coloring your hair if the government computers don't have enough spaces or color choices in its database?

But as usual, ansel12, you confuse things with a twist. Because in addition to your basic marriage confusion cited above, you then added (1)a marriage of an active duty combat armed forces person to a member of enemy forces (2) in a time of war (3) while personally fighting in that war (4) involving polygamy (5) in group that claims to be a religion while requiring the murder of anyone who rejects it and thus more clearly defining itself as a terrorist organization than a religion (6) and thereby implying that said active duty combat armed forces person has doubtful loyalties to his country.

Quite a score, even for you. I hope you're paid well to write your disruptive, cognitive dissonance crap, because you sure put a lot of effort into it.

[deltabean]

That is a good question. BTW, if the state is involve, I believe marriage should be defined as between a man and a women who have both reached their majority.

I guess I’m a libertarian whose default position is to not involve the state in my business whenever possible. It’s never the perfect solution, and you may very well be correct in this case. As I stated in my first post while we have raised a child together, we did not plan on having children of our own. If we did I most likely would have obtained a marriage license.

Anyway, thanks for the response.