The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #154160   Message #3616089
Posted By: Richard Bridge
06-Apr-14 - 11:32 AM
Thread Name: BS: Black Belt Obstreperous Prick Club
Subject: RE: BS: Black Belt Obstreperous Prick Club
I think I might point out that the term "marriage" (as distinct from ""narriage"") is a word that refers to a legal status. Laws are either part of the common law, or of statute. In either case they are man-made. They are made in the first case by commonality of usage and judicial determination and in the second by the statutory method of the jurisdiction in question. Few jurisdictions recognise theistic decision as to what is and what is not a statute, and none that recognise the concept of "the rule of law".

The doctrine of parliamentary supremacy requires that statute controls the common law. In principle the courts determine, not make, law. In the US the Supreme Court may strike down statute, but that is because of the existence of a formalised constitution which is a sort of superstatute (although, alas, the SCOTUS has become a curious body that in part is a legal body truly determining the meaning of that formal constitution and in part a party political campaigning body, not a court at all except in the sense of a kangaroo court and certainly not a court of justice).

It follows that the word marriage means, as a matter of law, what the courts say it does and that is what Parliament says. To suggest that it my mean something else is quite simply ignorant. But we knew that about Akenhateon anyway.