In Maryland, battle over same-sex marriage begins

[Scam of God]

Nearly all government regulation of marriage is in violation of the First Amendment.  Marriage is an inherently religious institution and as such it should be left to those individual institutions who is married and who is not.  The government should not be allowed to pick and choose which religions get their marriages legally recognized and which religions don't.

But here you need to make a distinction between the social construct of marriage and the legal civil contract of marriage.  The social construct (the ceremony) is protected by the 1st amendment.  The civil contract (in my opinion) is not.

False dichotomy. Marriage falls directly under the aegis of contract law; and, as always, the State has no business interfering in business, especially not to defend collectivistic bigotry.

[Scam of God]

Nearly all government regulation of marriage is in violation of the First Amendment.  Marriage is an inherently religious institution and as such it should be left to those individual institutions who is married and who is not.  The government should not be allowed to pick and choose which religions get their marriages legally recognized and which religions don't.

But here you need to make a distinction between the social construct of marriage and the legal civil contract of marriage.  The social construct (the ceremony) is protected by the 1st amendment.  The civil contract (in my opinion) is not.

False dichotomy.

Uh, no, that's not a false dichotomy. A dichotomy is a distinction between two things that are contradictory - it's only a false dichotomy if they are not actually contradictory.

Inks is separating ceremonial marriage from contractual marriage. While you can do both at the same time, they are not inextricably linked. For example if you get a legal divorce, it might undo the marriage contract, but one's religion might not recognize that as valid and therefore the ceremonial marriage would still stand to the religious organization even though it wouldn't have any legal bearing.

I'm well aware of what Inks was getting at. I'm also aware that, as always, it is a false dichotomy - if marriage is "purely" a religious institution (as most of our resident homophobes argue), then there is, quite simply, no civil component to it. Therefore the only reasonable course of action is that the State immediately ceases its involvement in the affair and turns marriages over to the religious institutions from which they supposedly spring -- including institutions, like the Quakers, which are more than happy to perform gay marriages.

[Scam of God]

The civil and social aspects of marriage are not mutually exclusive; however, you can have one without the other, or you can have both combined.

Or you can perform a marriage without either element. So long as marriage remains a contract, then a mere binding agreement between two parties, without the inclusion of any external authority, ought to be sufficient to conclude it, just as it is, in most cases, with any other form of contract.

[Scam of God]

The civil and social aspects of marriage are not mutually exclusive; however, you can have one without the other, or you can have both combined.

Or you can perform a marriage without either element. So long as marriage remains a contract, then a mere binding agreement between two parties, without the inclusion of any external authority, ought to be sufficient to conclude it, just as it is, in most cases, with any other form of contract.

No - it cannot be without either element.  Either it is a civil/legal construct or it is a social construct (or both).  Even if 2 people go off and 'get married' on their own and nobody else knows about it or interacts with them, that is still part of the social construct of marriage.

Society is a 'spook', and the only 'social construct' is society itself, constructed out of the imaginations and fears and hopes and inferiorities of the people who inhabit it. Recognizing that, and recognizing how fluid 'society' is, any individual can assume for himself the authority to dictate what role he plays in it, or if he wishes to play any role in it at all. I tend to dislike Margaret Thatcher, but her comment about the ineffability of society is as applicable here as anywhere else.

Man is not determined by the collective, but instead determines his relationship to the collective.

[Scam of God]

The civil and social aspects of marriage are not mutually exclusive; however, you can have one without the other, or you can have both combined.

Or you can perform a marriage without either element. So long as marriage remains a contract, then a mere binding agreement between two parties, without the inclusion of any external authority, ought to be sufficient to conclude it, just as it is, in most cases, with any other form of contract.

No - it cannot be without either element.  Either it is a civil/legal construct or it is a social construct (or both).  Even if 2 people go off and 'get married' on their own and nobody else knows about it or interacts with them, that is still part of the social construct of marriage.

Society is a 'spook', and the only 'social construct' is society itself, constructed out of the imaginations and fears and hopes and inferiorities of the people who inhabit it. Recognizing that, and recognizing how fluid 'society' is, any individual can assume for himself the authority to dictate what role he plays in it, or if he wishes to play any role in it at all. I tend to dislike Margaret Thatcher, but her comment about the ineffability of society is as applicable here as anywhere else.

Man is not determined by the collective, but instead determines his relationship to the collective.

So are you saying that there is no society?

And I'm not the only one:

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Thatcher was, of course, too much of a weakling to take this statement - so true on its face - to its utmost and logical conclusion. I myself do not suffer that debilitation. So, yes, that is precisely what I'm saying; or that, rather, what 'society' exists is entirely voluntary, and subject to remaining voluntary.

[Scam of God]

Well then clearly my statement cannot be a false dichotomy, if one of my options doesn't even exist.

Your opinion exists. The "truth" upon which you ground it, however - social norms enforced via means of mechanized religion hooked into the State apparatus - is utterly false and belies the philosophical emptiness of modern "conservatism". It is entirely without grounding.