Rob Perkins wrote:
>> "Andrew Swallow" 
wrote in message
>> news:9YadnQy7e4PNZnfYRVnytAA{at}bt.com...
> 
>  
>> I was perhaps in error about English Common Law but it's a natural mistake
>> considering both the US and England have had to legalize gay marriage.
> 

You have the attributes wrong on this one.  Those are not my words.

Andrew Swallow

> I dunno. English Common Law has its roots in a standardization effort
> imposed by Henry II on his circuit judges, many centuries ago. That effort
> forms all the basis of British and American law even today. It's where the
> idea of precedent originated.
> 
> Under that system, the law considered a couple married if it behaved a
> certain way, but it's just as certain that there were no historically
> significant populations of homosexual unions calling for the definition of
> marriage to include them; the religious and political milieu of the time
> would not have made such a thing possible.
> 
> Carrying that forward to the present day would explain why Massachusetts,
> and to a lesser extent, Vermont, California, New Jersey, and the other
> domestic partnership states have had to carve out new definitions for
> marriage other than "common-law", in order to permit the
partnerships legal
> status.
> 
> Rob, incorporating the appropriate wikipedia references by inference
> 
>
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