Re: : :: Celibacy: Everyday Presentations

Douglass Drozdow-St.Christian (stchri@MCMAIL.CIS.MCMASTER.CA)
Wed, 20 Dec 1995 08:36:57 -0500

On Tue, 19 Dec 1995, Lief M. Hendrickson wrote:

> On Dec 19, Parm Grewal wrote:
>
> > Could
> >you please clarify what the term spouse has to do with ceremonies,
> >weddings, filing for licenses?
>
> They generally preceed it.
>


or not, as the case may be...

in english usage, are common law partners not spouses???? i know that
politicall in canada it took 30 years of hard activism to have common law
hetersoexual couples recognized as spouses and granted the same rights
and privileges [ not all of them...there remain a few tax and other
issues which apply solely to those who are formally married]

in samoa, where de facto marriages absent of any rites and licences save
living together and claiming sexual exclusivity are the rule, few if any
samoans would, by liefs definition, be considered spouses...

bob g.'s definition at least has the facility to accomodate some, if not
all, non traditional couplings and avoids the ethnocentric overburdening
of the term spouse with formalities honoured as much in the breach as in
the observance and so on...



talofa,

dougl st.c.


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