Alabama Senate Passes Bill to Effectively Nullify All Sides on Marriage

10th Amendment Center ^ | May 23, 2015 | Shane Trejo

[tje]

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (May 23, 2015) – This week, the Alabama state Senate passed a bill that would end the practice of licensing marriages in the state, effectively nullifying both major sides of the contentious national debate over government-sanctioned marriage.

Introduced by Sen. Greg Albritton (R-Bay Minette), Senate Bill 377 (SB377) would end state issued marriage licenses, while providing marriage contracts as an alternative. It passed through the Alabama state Senate by a 22-3 margin on May 19.

“When you invite the state into those matters of personal or religious import, it creates difficulties,” Sen. Albritton said about his bill in April. “Go back long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away. Early twentieth century, if you go back and look and try to find marriage licenses for your grandparents or great grandparents, you won’t find it. What you will find instead is where people have come in and recorded when a marriage has occurred.”

The bill would replace all references to marriages “licenses” in state law with “contracts.” The legislation would not invalidate any marriage licenses issued prior to the bill being passed.

[TribalPrincess2U]

obama will just find a way to make them do what he wants.

[ansel12]

I think if you dig you will find that all states except Louisiana recognize common law marriage.

All states and the federal government recognize common law marriages, but only about 9 states allow it.

[ROCKLOBSTER]

The Marxist commie propaganda is so well produced and disseminated, you even have Freepers falling for some of it.

Propaganda schmopaganda...they had American Marxists back in Jefferson's day?

There's this thing we have called DNA. It either proves or disproves it.

Show me the money and I'll shut up.

[ansel12]

Thanks tje. Licensing marriage was begun to combat the spread of VD (as STIs used to be called, back before they were called STDs) and incest;

Huh? That is total nonsense, and why do you not let people know which post you are responding to?

[AppyPappy]

The reason your license is accepted in all other states is that if is effectively federalized.

During a Jim Crow, a mixed race couple could be married on one state but another state didn’t have to recognize it.

[ansel12]

“In reality, the 1998 DNA tests alleged to prove this did not involve genetic material from Thomas Jefferson. All they established was that one of more than two dozen Jefferson males probably fathered Sally Hemings’s youngest son, Eston. And there is good reason to believe that at least seven Jefferson men (including the president) were at Monticello when Eston was conceived in the summer of 1807.

Allegations that the “oral history” of Sally’s descendants identified the president as the father of all of Sally’s children are also incorrect. Eston’s descendants repeatedly acknowledged—before and after the DNA tests—that as children they were told they were not descendants of Thomas Jefferson but rather of an “uncle.”

A more plausible candidate is Thomas Jefferson’s younger brother, known at Monticello as “Uncle Randolph.” An 1847 oral history titled “Memoirs of a Monticello Slave” noted that when Randolph visited Monticello, he would “come out among black people, play the fiddle and dance half the night.” Surviving letters establish that Randolph was invited to visit Monticello less than two weeks before the start of Eston’s likely conception window. Randolph had five sons in their teens and 20s who also carried Jefferson DNA.”

[SgtHooper]

LOL!! Hafta agree. :-)

[djf]

You are quite correct, licensing has zero to do with STD’s.

Here is a definition:

License: permission from the government or other powers to do THAT WHICH WOULD BE ILLEGAL if done without it.

So by the unfettered act of getting a license, you are actually saying what you are doing is illegal.

This is not some “patriot myth”.

It is Black’s Law, 6th edition.

[ansel12]

Marriage licenses predate Black’s Law dictionary, by centuries.

Even in the Americas, Massachusetts has required a marriage license since 1639.

[SunkenCiv]

No, it’s factual, but it’s fallen out of practice in a lot of places. Oh, and in case you missed it, you don’t set the rules of how I post.

http://usmarriagelaws.com/search/united_states/blood_test_requirements/

> Only a few states require a blood test or a blood test and physical examination before marriage to show whether one party is infected with a venereal disease. In some statutes, for example, the clerk is forbidden to issue a marriage license until the parties present the results of the blood test.

[ansel12]

THOMAS JEFFERSON
Bond for Marriage License [23 December 1771]
Know all men by these presents that we Thomas Jefferson and Francis Eppes are held and firmly bound to our sovereign lord the king his heirs and successors in the sum of fifty pounds current money of Virginia, to the paiment of which, well and truly to be made we bind ourselves jointly and severally, our joint and several heirs executors and administrators in witness whereof we have hereto set our hands and seals this twenty third day of December in the year of our lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy one.
The condition of the above obligation is such that if there be no lawful cause to obstruct a marriage intended to be had and solemnized between the abovebound Thomas Jefferson and Martha Skelton of the county of Charles city, Widow,1 for which a license is desired, then this obligation is to be null and void; otherwise to remain in full force.
th: jefferson
francis eppes

GEORGE WASHINGTON

[djf]

Do you have supporting doc? I’d be interested in seeing the terms and conditions...

In fact it is probably to intermarry.

[ansel12]

Licensing marriage was begun to combat the spread of VD

If you are so cowardly that you want to hide what you are responding to on freerepublic, that is your cowardly, dishonest character flaw.

Your saying that all these centuries of marriage licenses, and the many centuries of marriage banns predating the license, were about lab testing of blood samples, is silly though.

[ansel12]

So you make things up, and I am supposed to research them for you.

Massachusetts insisted that marriage was a civil contract, and required that marriage be done by a magistrate, not a minister.

[djf]

Well, this is all very interesting.

Because if you look at Anderson’s Dictionary of Law circa 1906 you will see how he defines “marriage”.

It is totally common law and has nothing to do with statutes at all.

Some of his requirements:

Taking each others name
cohabiting as man and wife
purchasing property in both names
announcement of intent or actual ceremony

and there are a few others.

I am not disagreeing with you, in fact this points out what the supreme court is trying to avoid - by making it the same for all jurisdictions.

But in ALL cases, it is one man and one woman...

[djf]

I didn’t make anything up at all.

I will quote it if you like.

[ansel12]

I would like to see the quote about Massachusetts making licenses mandatory in 1639, because of “intermarriage”.

[ansel12]

What does that have to do with anything?

[norwaypinesavage]

"Clergy are free now to accept or decline couples"

Now? The whole issue is the supreme court ruling making that not true.

[ansel12]

From THE COLONIAL FAMILY IN AMERICA
“While we think of the early New England settlers as very religious, they actually viewed marriage as a civil contract, not a religious contract. Consequently, marriage was a function of the magistrates more than the clergy.”

From LEGISLATIVE GUIDE TO MARRIAGE LAW Iowa.gov
“They (Puritans founders of Massachusetts) believed that marriage was not a religious ceremony but a civil contract. They required that this covenant must be “agreed” or “executed” (not “performed” or “solemnized”) before a magistrate, and not a minister. They also insisted that if the terms of the marriage covenant were broken, then the union could be ended by divorce. These attitudes became the basis of regional marriage customs throughout New England.”