Marriage re-visited.

Marriage is a religious exercise - like baptism, faith-healing, confirmation, exorcism, transferring one's sins to a chicken, anointing, divination, wearing church-designed underwear, extreme unction, symbolic human sacrifice and last rites. Marriage was designed for religious couples to make a church-community announcement that they intended to commit to each other and, possibly, raise babies.

Not too long ago, however, it burgeoned mightily: 1. gaining acceptance among non-religious people as a social exercise and 2. invading our civil law at several places, mainly in taxes, finances, inheritance, and land law.

What we now need is a way to honor the relationship of non-religious people who commit themselves to each other and think of, possibly having children.

Let us not be unmindful of the unquestionable reality that the religious/"marriage" people have not done their thing successfully in a lot of recent years. Their failures suggest that they actually ought to be ignored when they claim the power to define how people doing the commitment/family thing are required to do it.

The Doser suggests a first step: let's figure out an honoring way to describe that process or event or state where non-religious people decide to step out into the future as a committed pair of people.