Now "marriage" has lost its meaning, should we find another word to express the Sacrament?

Quote:

"from a manuscript preserved in the VATICAN [my emphasis] and dating from the year 1147, were for a bride and bridegroom, no one would find them startling:

"Send down, most kind Lord, the grace of Thy Holy Spirit upon these Thy servants, whom Thou hast found worthy to be united not by nature but by faith and a holy spirit. Grant unto them Thy grace to love each other in joy without injury or hatred all the days of their lives."

"That prayer, however, is part of a ritual joining two men in some kind of a solemn, personal, affectionate relationship, a ritual that, according to John Boswell, the A. Whitney Griswold Professor of History at Yale, "functioned in the past as a 'gay marriage ceremony.' "

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/11/us/beliefs-study...

Quote:

"devotional relationships between men were common in Europe at the time [medieval], at least among the literate, and many of these affairs must have included sex at some point. Knights, aristocrats, and especially clerics left expansive evidence of their intense passions for male lovers, relationships that often ended in side-by-side burials. A letter from a respected monk–scholar in Charlemagne’s court named Alcuin (circa 735–804) to a beloved bishop shows how thick those relations sometimes became:"

" In the period up to roughly the thirteenth century, male bonding ceremonies were performed in churches all over the Mediterranean. These unions were sanctified by priests with many of the same prayers and rituals used to join men and women in marriage. The ceremonies stressed love and personal commitment over procreation, but surely not everyone was fooled. Couples who joined themselves in such rituals most likely had sex as much (or as little) as their heterosexual counterparts. In any event, the close association of male bonding ceremonies with forbidden sex eventually became too much to overlook as ever more severe sodomy laws were put into place."

http://www.theawl.com/2012/05/sex-and-punishment

So the fear was sodomy. It had nothing to do with "the children's protection", as is now stated.

Quote:

"Western family structures have been much more varied than many people today seem to realize," Tulchin writes in the September issue of the Journal of Modern History. "And Western legal systems have in the past made provisions for a variety of household structures.”

"For example, he found legal contracts from late medieval France that referred to the term "affrèrement," roughly translated as brotherment. Similar contracts existed elsewhere in Mediterranean Europe..." NBC News http://www.nbcnews.com/id/20464004/ns/technology_a...

Modern society is in effect Marxist materialist. The dissolution of marriage is a symptom of our age.As a non Marxist all the revised language and up side down standards set by the politically correct mean nothing to me. I trust my eyes more than my ears.

Statistics show that homosexual relationships do not often last. For this reason alone I think the whole issue is a joke. Lets watch and enjoy the gay couples making an exhibition of themselves.Its what they like to do 'darling'.

The politicians win by fragmenting traditional society just that little bit more and at the same time exciting debate about the frivolous. This is to distract from the obvious and current failure of their alternative model.It has nothing to do with Gay rights. Gays have the same rights as any one else under the law. This is just a silly word game that serves the political class.

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Marriage, like life, is a cycle of ups and downs. It's easy to say your marriage is in good health when the world around you is prospering, but when your fortunes turn and your world is in hardship, how you interact within your marriage can often paint an altogether different picture.

The word we use is irrelevant...

A Piece of Paper or A Ceremony does not keep a Marriage together

It's ones Choice to Pledge their Devotion,

The Commitment to and Ones Promise to Love and Cherish another,

It comes down to Ones Integrity and The Worth of their Word...

My BF and I "Married" Ourselves in the backyard...

We Committed to One another

I believe that what you say is true in that one of the more recent social definitions of marriage describes it as a "temporary expression“ but the official definition remains the same. the Webster's dictionary defines it as this:

(1) : the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law (2) : the state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage <same-sex marriage>

this definition still applies so I do not believe that the word itself had lost its meaning. I do however think that the concept of marriage had changed. divorce has become quite commonplace in our society so it is easy to see why many see it as temporary. Unfortunately for many it has become less of a sacrament and more of a legal contract.

more and more people every day are choosing not to get married ( myself being one of them ) and that is their choice. as a divorced man I do not plan on being married again but I do not think it's right to remove the process completely. quite to the contrary I'm a licensed wedding officiator in the state of Hawaii. there are still a massive number of people who wish to experience it in the way in which it was intended to be and, though it is not my personal ideal lifestyle, they may truly love it and therefore deserve the right to the experience.

that's my opinion anyway :-)

The only sacrament i see is the "spiritual" (for the lack of a better word) bond between two people. Marriage is a charade. Love has nothing to with a ring, a church full of onlookers or 5 star honeymoon suite. Its all surface bs. Most people dont know what love is and just do what they are told. Thats why the relationship falls apart. People are fixated with "me me me". What am "I" getting out of the deal of "love".. that is fear friends. Nothing more.

marriage never had anything to do with love ..... only in the medieval Romance of Victorian times did it have anything to do with love.

people love who they love regardless of gender race, disability or personality

marriage was never about love, not should it be.

are you saying it should go back to being purely for business ?

I was able to save my marriage thanks to my family and friends. I also read a lot about marital issues and tips on how to save your relationship. The ebook on this site helped me a lot http://savemarriage.toptips.org/

Check it out it's worth it.

Boo hoo, polygamy and child sex slavery are no longer legal. I guess you'll have to make up another word for that warped arraignment.

If you feel so strong a need to designate a difference just make it 'church-marriage'.

Are you going to specify religion and denomination-sect next?