[riffraff]

I think this is slightly incorrect: The Israel state does not regulate marriages, it leaves them to religious courts, which in turn make them impossible.

The end result is similar, but the state _will_ recognize a marriage performed abroad (i.e. go to Cyprus, get married, come back), same as same-sex unions.

(I am somewhat confused as to why a christian catholic court won't celebrate an interfaith marriage in Israel, since they are allowed by the church, and there are even specific protocols for jewish/catholic and muslim/catholic marriages, AFAIK)

[skissane]

> I think this is slightly incorrect: The Israel state does not regulate marriages, it leaves them to religious courts, which in turn make them impossible.

Israel still regulates marriages, because it picks and chooses which religious authorities to recognise for the purpose of marriage, and it does so based on non-objective and non-neutral criteria. It refuses to recognise marriages performed in Israel by non-Orthodox Rabbis, and it doesn't have any neutral/objective reason for doing so, which makes it a form of religious discrimination.

There are other countries who have government recognition of religious marriages on a non-discriminatory basis. For example, in my own country of Australia, the federal government has a list of recognised religious denominations, whose clergy are automatically recognised as legal marriage celebrants – https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/F2018L01607 – there are published objective criteria to be added to the list – https://www.ag.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-03/Informatio... – and they are all about making sure the religion is real and serious (that it has identifiable leadership and clergy and a significant number of members, that it isn't just some guy in his garage claiming to start his own religion, that it wasn't started yesterday, etc) – it is not about letting the government play favourites with religions or denominations. And I'm not aware of any evidence the government is non-objective or non-neutral in maintaining the list – controversial groups such as Scientology have managed to get themselves added to it. By contrast, if a community of non-Orthodox Jews in Israel want their Rabbi to be able to perform legally recognised marriages, the Israeli government is just going to point blank refuse the request.

[tomjen3]

>And I'm not aware of any evidence the government is non-objective or non-neutral in maintaining the list –

Well, apart from all the religions that have lay priests, such as the Methodists (who predate Australia as a country), Budishm (same), various indigious religions and so on.

You can get around that by not treating one religion special and just let everybody register with the state as they want to. Then it is up to the couple what, if any, religious rites they want (or they can have only the religious rights, and not register with the state).

[skissane]

> Well, apart from all the religions that have lay priests, such as the Methodists (who predate Australia as a country), Budishm (same), various indigious religions and so on.

The list of recognised denominations I shared – https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/F2018L01607 – includes four Methodist denominations (Chinese Methodist Church, Methodist Church of Samoa, Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Connexion, Wesleyan Methodist Church; and also the Uniting Church, which is the successor to Australia's historically largest Methodist church), two Buddhist associations (Federation of Australian Buddhist Councils, and International Buddhist Association of Australia), and a group based on indigenous spiritualities (Spirit of the Earth Medicine Society). Given that, I don't think your point is correct.

> You can get around that by not treating one religion special and just let everybody register with the state as they want to. Then it is up to the couple what, if any, religious rites they want (or they can have only the religious rights, and not register with the state).

Australia has civil marriage too – if couples do not want a religious ceremony, they can be married either by a government official or a professional civil celebrant. But, if they do want a religious ceremony, if they have a government-recognised religious ceremony, there is no separate civil marriage ceremony – the government recognises the religious ceremony as its own.

[nivertech]

The GP is either misinformed or ... (lets hope it's the former).

> (I am somewhat confused as to why a christian catholic court won't celebrate an interfaith marriage in Israel, since they are allowed by the church, and there are even specific protocols for jewish/catholic and muslim/catholic marriages, AFAIK)

The problem is that usually the audience for the mixed marriages are non-halachic Jews, not Christians or Muslims, nor they see themselves as half-Christians.

Another reason is that the Christian churches don't want to intervene into affair of the Jews, even non-halachic ones.

The situation in Israel is nothing comparing to what happens in Lebanon [1]. People there converting for various reasons: from divorce, inheritance to emigration to the Gulf countries!

In a phone interview with Archbishop George Saliba from the Syriac Orthdox Church, he said that they stopped converting other Christian sects into their own sect about 3 years ago, stating that “each person should solve his own problems in his own church”.

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[1] Converting One’s Religion in Lebanon

https://medium.com/@zubaidajamal/converting-ones-religion-in...