after the Appointed Date. The new form of marriage whatever it is, will be entirely the creature of statute. The Sub-Committee is firmly of the opinion that certainty must be an overriding concern of the legislature in establishing this form of marriage, for in matters. of status uncertainty should be avoided at all costs; indeed, the search for a more certain legal basis for Chinese marriages is a primary factor in the deliberations which have given rise to the Report and its predecessors. It would appear that such certainty can only be had if the validity of marriages turns exclusively on the act of registration, so that proof of registration shall constitute conclusive proof of marriage, subject to those exceptions which would constitute a marriage under the existing Marriage Ordinance null and void. The Sub-Committee feels that there are compelling reasons for adopting this view, and they would urge that these necessary implications of the proposed legislation be made quite clear. The most important objective of any propaganda campaign. which may be conducted to publicise the new marriage law must in the last resort be to make it understood that it is registration alone which confers formal validity on a marriage.
30. The substance of New Recommendation No. 1 would thus amount to providing that all marriages celebrated in the Colony (other than in a place of worship licensed for the purpose) after the Appointed Date must be registered. According to the Recom- mendation as it now stands, two forms of registered marriage will thus be created, and it will be open to Chinese persons to choose whichever of the two forms they prefer. The new form of registered marriage will apparently simply involve the parties to the marriage, with two other persons, attending at a Registry and signing a certificate to the effect that at some time within the previous fourteen days the parties had, in the presence of the other two persons, gone through a "form of marriage". (Quotation-marks are used here to indicate that if the Sub-Committee's recommenda- tions are accepted the ceremony could only by definition be a marriage short of registration, and consequently must fall short of legal validity). It does not appear in the Recommendation whether the authors of the Report contemplated that such "forms of marriage" must of necessity conform to the definition of Chinese marriage
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