Privilege, what privilege?

Diane Brewster queries how our marriages differ from others

I read Sylvia Hilken’s article (Same-sex marriage,12 February) suggesting Friends give up any marriage privilege that we are allowed with both interest and some initial sympathy for her position. I do feel the need to comment on her view of non-Quaker marriages, however, as I have often found myself bemused and amused by the apparent belief among Friends that our marriage practice is actually that much different from everyone else’s. I got married twenty-four years ago in the Roman Catholic Church. Contrary to what many Friends seem to believe I did not have to have a civil ceremony before the religious one (nor was I ‘given away’ or wearing a wedding dress!). All that was required during the actual ceremony was that the building was registered for marriages, the legal form of declaratory words was used, along with the legal form of the contracting words, and had to be said in the presence of a registrar (while we could, and did, change many of the words of the RC ceremony, the state legal bits couldn’t be messed with). In our case the registrar was the parish priest (who was not the priest carrying out the ceremony but was in the congregation and then oversaw the signing of the registry book). These very short legal bits were fully integrated into the ceremony, and they really are very short!

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