Ashley Wagner making a statement against Russia's law | Page 18 | Golden Skate

Ashley Wagner making a statement against Russia's law

Bluebonnet

Record Breaker
Joined
Aug 18, 2010
BTW, in Russia, AFAIK, church actually will not marry you until you the government-issued marriage certificate.

I thought in America, people go to the government office to get a certificate, then have wedding ceremony, whether the ceremony is in a church or not.
 
Joined
Aug 16, 2009
Maybe Ptichka is talking about the license rather than the completed marriage certificate? In that case, it's like the U.S., as Blue describes, where the license must be issued first before any church (or civil) ceremony takes place. But maybe aspects of this Russian law exists from the days of the Soviet Union, which officially didn't recognize religion. Can someone straighten me out about this? (Probably Ptichka or Doris; thanks in advance!)
 

dorispulaski

Wicked Yankee Girl
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
Country
United-States
I thought in America, people go to the government office to get a certificate, then have wedding ceremony, whether the ceremony is in a church or not.

That's what people usually do, because getting married in a church does not get you the tax breaks and whole book of freebies and rights from the US government. Getting that certificate is what does it. If the church is, like a JP, okayed by the state to perform marriages, & to send data back to the state that the marriage has indeed been performed (for purposes of getting all the rights & freebies), then the church wants to check the certificate first.

However, you can get married in some churches without any government certificate. Unitarian churches, Episcopal churches, and all the United Church of Christ churches which are listed as "Open and Affirming" will marry you in states where the government will not issue you a certificate because you are gay. I believe there is a branch of the LDS (i.e. "Mormon") church which will marry you if you are a second wife, in which case, the government also will not issue you any certificate.
 

Ptichka

Forum translator
Record Breaker
Joined
Jul 28, 2003
I thought in America, people go to the government office to get a certificate, then have wedding ceremony, whether the ceremony is in a church or not.
The difference is that if you do not care about your legal married status, church will marry you without any certificate.

Also, you can get married by a priest/rabbi/imam/shaman/whatever who may not be certified as justice of the peace; then, you need to get married with a justice of the peace separately, typically in the city hall.
 
Joined
Aug 16, 2009
I had a friend who was a different religion from her husband-to-be, and this was long enough ago that they couldn't find any pastor to officiate. So they were married by the mayor of their small city. We tend to forget these days that there are all kinds of marriages that people deem to be mixed marriages. If marriage were the exclusive domain of houses of worship, some of these people might not be able to form a family so easily. That's another reason that the government, as a disinterested secular body, is a good entity to have the final say in marriages.
 
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