Should atheists be allowed to get married?
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- Should atheists be allowed to get married?65 votes
- yes89.23%
- no3.08%
- other (elaborate, please)7.69%
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So yes, I think atheists should be allowed to get married.
Civil Partnership or the equivilent of marriges with religion removed should be made more common. I know a compere who makes good money hosting civil partnership celebrations pretty much run in the same manner as a marriage but without a priest to celebrate a couples unions. He does it for gay couples and the few couples the simply dont want a religious marriage. After seeing my sister get married I must admit the religious connotations felt a bit strange as we are not paticularly religious at all and as such the priests blessing their union and all felt hollow as they were not our beliefs.
Thats my opinion. We shouldnt hijack marriage as that is a religious belief. We should make our own union celebration and celebrate that. People who want to simply call it marriage but remove the religion are simply too hung up on the name and the hollywood marketed features of marriage rather than actually celebrating whats important and thats finding someone worth giving your all to.
I'll just post here to say yes, they should if they want to be.
@spacejaws , in the US, "Marriage" is the term used for both the religious and the secular/legal portions of the institution. I know in most European countries, the two aspects are more separated, and personally, I think that's a better way to do it.
So far as the legal aspect goes, the law-of-the-land, which is the important part where inheritance or divorce is concerned in western countries, just go to a registry office and sign all the paperwork for marriage, the registrar will witness the union and help recite the vows. This is completely irrelevant of religion and belief, or disbelief, in any specific god or pantheon. It's the same process for civil partnerships in many countries. The only thing you don't get is the pomp and ceremony. It's up to the individuals if they want some sort of ceremony before or after.
To answer a question with a question: why would there be any objection?
The religious side is a different question. "Should atheists be allowed to get married in a place of worship?"
If atheists are forthright and expressive of their atheism, speaking from experience, I suppose a single provision would be that they most probably couldn't get married in a church/mosque/synagogue/etc. There would also be little point in being 'blessed by god' with a priest/vicar/qazi/madhun/rabbi/cantor/etc. present acting as witness and registrar if one or both does not believe in a god.
So yes. If they want to, they should be allowed to get married.
In Poland there is something called "one-sided wedding" and it is held between Christian and person from other religion or atheist. And priests are pretty much obliged to give you this type wedding (providing you agreed to not making any troubles with raising your child as a Christian). It has it's additional complications, but that's a given.
So yeah, atheist should have right to marry.
The other thing is marrying has some perks in the law, such as in cases of succession of your other half's wealth, had she/he happens to unfortunately die. If you prevent atheists from being married, you are going to make some formal things more complicated for them. For no reason, really.
Marriage is a commitment to another person that should not be made lightly. If you find someone and can make that commitment both ways then God bless as it were.
You should be allowed to marry regardless of your religious beliefs. That's akin to asking "If someone stops believing in their chosen deity/belief system, should they be required to divorce their spouse?"
If marriage is a civic ceremony, then religion has nothing to do with it, and atheists should be able to marry if they so desire.
Why is this even a question, really?
Marriage is considered a Sacrament to Catholics (I was raised one), and very important to other Christian beliefs. Simply, it is considered a stepping stone of divine fulfillment.
When we are talking about the benefits from marriage from a states perspective (civil marriage), tax benefits for example, every individual of that state should have access to it regardless of religious or other differences that oppose the Sacramental meaning of marriage.
Being married in God's eyes and being married in the states mind should be two completely different things and getting people who cherish marriage as a religious symbol should attempt to understand that.
The term civil unions, IMO, is a suitable compromise when dealing with this issue. Allow the term "marriage" and "holy matrimony" be exclusive to the religious beliefs, and use civil unions, which encompasses religious marriages, be the term used when dealing with an individual state.
Will there be mashedtaters served at the wedding?
Mmmh I don't know about other countries in Europe, but in Belgium, "marriage" is the word used for both too
Actually it's a little more complicated
The "real" marriage, the only one with legal value here, is civil. No priest, no church, just the "State employee" and you. It even says it should precede any form of ceremony, religious or not (there was a famous "case" with one of our kings who did the religious thing before the civil thing, but it's another scandal from another time)
You can do whatever you want in your church/temple/... but it won't have any kind of official importance. You will never be considered married by the State if your marriage hasn't been "celebrated" by the state (ok I hope I'm clear, I really don't know the words in English to say, but it's actually the mayor (sort of) of your town who celebrates marriages)
Yet, Belgium stays a (too) deeply religious country, because we have a king, and that king is catholic, and official ceremonies involving the king happen in churches. That's a little ironic, but yeah, when the prince or king marry his bride, they first have to go to the Town Hall, for the real thing, but then on tv or media in general, the only thing you hear or read about will be the church ceremony
We also have another form of contract between two people sharing a home, close to a "civil union"
It's basically a marriage, same rights, same obligations, but some "technicalities" are different though, like, it's easier to break since there's no divorce procedure, and it doesn't have to be a "couple thing", you can share a house with your sister, and do that "civil union" thing, mostly to protect you or her about that house and other assets "in common" in case one of you dies and there are other heirs, for example.
That civil union is called "déclaration de cohabitation légale" here, so the idea behind it is really about "living together"
Also, marriage or "cohabitation légale" in Belgium isn't a man-woman-only thing since more than a decade now.
People should be free to do as they please and everyone has the right to marry regardless of belief, race, sexality or even if they're a fan of Star Trek Insurrection it's their right as a human being.
Religion used to be the glue that held communities together, which is why so many things, like marriage and birth and death, are tied to religion.
Society is different now.
Except people are biased because instead of saying "marriage and birth and death are tied to the most important social structure of its time" (and the most important social structure of its time, the glue holding communities together as you say, may of course be or have been religion), they just say "it's tied to religion"
Agriculture has been that glue at some point, yet I hear nobody claiming marriage is tied to the very concept of agriculture and should stay that way for the sake of tradition.
I apologize for the confusion. I wasn't trying to say that anything should stay the way it is simply for the sake of tradition. In fact, I believe the opposite. I was simply trying to explain why marriage is tied to religion, not offer an argument one way or the other.
As far as agriculture, which is interesting you bring up, that is what made stable communities possible in the first place. When communities started, religion sort of took its place as a guide (bad or good, you pick).
I digress, though. We are only a few generations ahead of a time when religion was in every person's life. It would be normal to have these kind of issues come up, then.
I say, let's all eat mashedtaters and be merry.