What capitulation? Marriage isn’t mentioned in the U.S. Constitution.
Tell me again why it is capitulation to reduce the size and scope of government.
Marriage is a religious rite.
Israel has adopted this practice. There is no civil marriage and the effect of marriage is very limited legally.
This has prevented governmental interference with our free exercise of religion.
“I wonder what the Founders would say to that capitulation if they were standing in front of you today?!”
What capitulation? Marriage licenses are relatively new in the grand scheme of things: they came about in the middle ages. It’s a construct of caesar, not of God. And there is nothing in the Constitution about them.
Very-much-agree bump.
No surrender, no capitulation. Put them back in their cages. They're what, 2% of the population, and they're going to roll us?
What are you talking about? Back in their day, marriage was a function of churches and common law in most states. In most cases, it didn't receive state recognition until later. And it's only with income taxes and social security that the legal status between two consenting adults even mattered to the federal government.
The registering of marriages in the United States is a quasi-religious, quasi-legal social function that has been influenced by religious belief, custom, and English law since the earliest colonial settlements.
Marriage records in the United States have been, and in some cases still are, kept by churches, ministers, justices of the peace, state boards of health, colonial governors, military personnel, and local (county and town) governments.
Churches were among the earliest keepers of marriage records. By 1640, Virginia and Massachusetts had passed laws requiring ministers to provide records of the marriages they performed to civil officials in the county or parish. Records of marriages in areas that did not require periodic reporting remained with the minister or the church.
Many churches, especially in the frontier areas, did not keep extensive records, and many records have been lost or destroyed. New England churches, Quaker Monthly Meetings, and the German churches kept and have preserved the most complete records.
http://www.ancestry.com/wiki/index.php?title=Marriage_Records
link to info on my previous reply. Read the whole thing. Marriages were only registered (in some States)with the gov’t after the fact, mostly for inheritance and property settlement purposes.