Marrriage Myths

Was at a very good consultation last night run by the Equality Network on proposed changes to marriage law in Scotland.

I was very struck by how little people understand about marriage law already. It makes it quite difficult sometimes to have much of a coherent discussion about proposed change when everyone has muddled ideas about what the law is already.

Here’s a few marriage myths that were floating about last night.

  • You can be considered to be married by living together – so-called marriage by habit and repute or “common-law marriage”. Not true any more and in any case always much more limited than people think – the courts won’t recognise any such marriage unless it can be shown to have begun before 4 May 2006. There’s no provision now for recognising such irregular marriages if they began after that date. (And it would be a bit of a legal bother to try to get one recognised from before that). There never was anything called common-law marriage in Scotland.
  • You have to get married before a Registrar as well as getting married in church by a priest/minister/rabbi.  Not so. Couples have to register their intent to marry with a Registrar before getting married whether or not they get married in a church or registry office. The Registrar then prepares the paperwork. In the case of a religious marriage the Marriage Schedule is issued to the couple who present it to the person conducting the wedding who completes it and it is subsequently returned to the Registrar.
  • You can get married by a priest without having to deal with the Registrar. Not true – see above.
  • If gay people could get married then Bed and Breakfast owners would have to give them a double bed. Irrelevant – discrimination with regards to goods and services is already outlawed and has nothing to do with marital status. (Though note that there is currently an appeal going on in England over this).
  • Before you get married in church you need to get the priest to read your banns. Not true in Scotland. The concept of reading banns has no place and no legal function. Not even for couples where one party comes from Scotland who are getting married in England where their vicar has told them to get their banns read in their own parish in Scotland. You can’t do it, the vicar is wrong.
  • Marriage is all about the woman becoming the property of the man.  Actually marriage law in Scotland is quite egalitarian. It is the marriage of equals.
  • The woman has to be given away at a marriage in church. Not so, the Scottish Episcopal Church’s service does not include this historical anachronism. (It is inserted only for couples who demand it and by priests who will let them).
  • There’s no difference between marriage and civil partnership, it’s just semantics, it’s all in the name. No, they are different institutions with different laws governing them though they give very similar rights. Couples wanting to register a Civil Partnership can do so almost anywhere except in church.
  • You can have a secular marriage in church.  Not legally you can’t, no matter what form of words is used by the officiant.
  • You can chose whatever readings you like in a marriage in a Registry Office. No, you can’t have any religious readings or religious music. (Try asking for Robbie Williams’s Angels and see what happens). You can have non-religious readings in church and non-religious music, provided the officiant agrees. Legally you have more freedom of choice over your readings and music in a religious ceremony than a civil ceremony.

Comments

  1. While this debate has been carried on with a highly pleasing degree of civility I must object to ‘evangementalists’ and ‘mentally deficient.’ Perhaps, having spent the past year on a battery of anxiolytics and anti-depressants and attending psychiatric outpatients, I am hyper-sensitive. Or there again, perhaps some of your correspondents ought to wake up to the fact that the gay community is not alone in being the target of deeply unpleasant stigmatisation…..

    • Uncle Al,

      I’m not exactly a stranger to psychological problems myself, and am entirely on board with the destigmatisation campaigns of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Re-Think and others. That’s why “Deficient” was deliberately chosen instead of “Mentally Ill”. Apologies, however, for any offence caused.

      Similarly, “evangementalism” is a useful pormanteau used to denote a particular ideological strain : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_fundamentalism
      – not an ad hom slur.

      • I don’t accept this use of ‘deficient’ as a more acceptable form than ‘ill’. It is still a pejorative usage. And I would have hoped that your own experience of the business might have taught you some sensitivity and awareness to say nothing of consideration for fellow-sufferers.

    • And I ,of course, agree that comparing certain types of evangelical Christians to the mentally ill is a grave slur (on the latter)
      😉

  2. Well, having got that out of the way, and before we start a debate about gay people being allowed to call other people faggots, black people being allowed to use otherwise unpleasant epithets and disabled people having ownership of the word cripple, I think we will say that our debates might be more considerably more elegant and stylish if we refrained from “evangementalist”.

    As I’ve said before, exposing silly thinking is considerably more annoying to people than calling them names.

  3. Surely one can do both? 😉

    Duly noted, won’t happen again. Soz.

    • william says

      Isn’t it sad that within the Church of Jesus Christ we need to have such rules of civility spelt out. Our love and care for one another’s wellbeing not only for this life but the next ought to mould our relations with one another,surely.
      How will an unbelieving world learn the character of our God, if his children do not share and exhibit the family likeness?
      By the way Ryan, who was arguing for proof texting?

      • No William, it isn’t sad, it is a consequence of our creativity and simply a partof sharing space together. There are enough real things to get sad about without making mountains out of molehills.

      • Engaging in proof-texting, suggesting as it does that the method hasn’t been examined, is worse, not better than, actually offering an argument “for proof texting”, William.

  4. Rosemary Hannah says

    And while we are in confessional mode, if I thought there was the SLIGHTEST chance of anybody listening I would happily preach for 45 mins, and I am reasonably far up the candle … it is a temperament thing.

  5. Just one final point before I softly and suddenly vanish away from this website. Recently, as a result of my ongoing psychological troubles, I have been exploring a return to some sort of religious belief, advised on the one extreme by an old friend from my days as a Piskie ordinand, and on the other being prayed for by another old friend who is now a member of the Third Order of the Carmelites. I can’t say some of what I’ve seen here, from all stances, has helped the process. By their fruits, eh? I imagine that I’ll stay agnostic and listen to lots of Tallis….in Latin.

    • Rosemary Hannah says

      Yeees – but actually the ‘fruit’ is that although we argue and sometimes we hurl insults, in the end, we get it together and keep on talking to each other. Not that we do not quarrel, but that, by and large, we make it up again.

  6. Al,
    My own experiences cover more than a decade, The Priory, and more pills and disorders than I care to name. On balance, most fellow-travellers I’ve met , although of course challenging tabloid myths on dangerousness etc, would very much not go along with the idea that all references to the mind outwith the purely diagnostic ought to be struck from our collective vocabularies. Mentally ”fragile” , for example, does not mean mentally ill.
    However, I did of course apologise, and take Kelvin’s point that this is not the place for off-piste debates on language

  7. rosemary –
    I myself wish I was Bono at least as much as any evangelical (and have done since I was 12!) so, although that doesn’t make the stagefillng impulse any nobler, am quite as of need of the confessional too! 🙂

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