Wednesday, April 12, 2006

the benefits of marriage

Gina Trapani at scribbling.net has written a post headed "1,049 federal rights depend on marital status". She wrote the post back on October 13, 2004, which will become clear when you read the comments and there are references to the upcoming US election.

The thing is, Adam and Brian have just done the civil ceremony thing in London, but they didn't get to sign the marriage book. So the question remains as they're "not married" will there be any difference in their rights as a couple, compared to a "married" heterosexual couple.

Where does this supremacy of marriage derive from? Do the people getting married, as opposed to those going through a civil ceremony, have any further responsibilities? Are the ceremonies different? What's the story here?

* * *
Further to the above - I'm now looking at The General Register Office website. I'm trying to find the words that people say at Marriages and Civil Partnerships. Under the heading Can we include a ceremony in our civil partnership registration? it says this:
You will have the opportunity to say a set form of words before you sign the schedule.
But it doesn't say what the set form of words is, maybe you can write something out and bring it along, you're just not allowed to launch into extemporary speech. Who knows?

There's nothing about words in the section on civil marriage ceremonies, just this:
Although you cannot incorporate any religious content into a civil marriage ceremony, you may be able to arrange to have individual touches such as non-religious music and/or readings, and for the wedding to be videoed.
Oh, yes the married couple must sign the marriage register rather than 'the schedule'.

Thursday, April 06, 2006

minding the gap

www.gapminder.org has a series of amazing animations of graphs showing economic and statistical trends.

Somewhat remarkably I found out about this at work - one of our directors apparently talked about the software behind the graphs in a recent presentation. (As the presentation was in Canberra, and I was on the phone in any case, I didn't attend.)