Civil Unions for All.

Great Debates
1

At the start of the debate when allowing same-sex marriages even began sounding conceivable, I was a staunch supporter. But over the course of the debate, I have been convinced, in large part by Bricker, that the terms of the arguement should be changed. Bricker and others argue that the government should stop licensing marriages all together. That we should leave the term to churches and the state only recognize Civil Unions, regardless of the participants are straight or gay.

I thought, and still do to some extent, that proposal, while perhaps sensible, hasn’t got a snowball’s chance in hell. I had serious doubts that any politician would even dare raise the issue.

But it seems someone has in Massachusetts.

The article quotes other state lawmakers, even some who oppose gay marriage, as being intrigued by the plan and willing to give it consideration. Is this the solution?

2

Hmm, no debate from me. I love the idea. I’m a straight atheist, and I personally never want to get married, since such a large percentage of Americans apparently think marriage belongs to religion. When the time comes, I want a civil union.

Great to see some politicians are talking about the idea…

3

Makes sense to me. As long as people are seen as equals in the eyes of the law, let the religious definition of marriage be its own thing.

4

I agree - however I don’t think the state needs to issue even civil unions. Why not just let the state recognize everyone as an individual regardless of thier attachment to another person? Other than for tax purposes I don’t see how this would make any difference. Speaking of equality it just isn’t fair treatment for either single people or married people to get any special treatment from the government in any way (reagrdless of sexual orientation). As for purposes of insurance, hospital visit rights, etc. these can be easily remedied by way of individual contract.

5

I agree with that as well… mostly. The civil union should be a stronger “power of attorney” plus “automatic beneficiary” plus whatever else I’m not thinking of rolled into one contract. It should only be easier than filing all of the forms you’d otherwise need; it shouldn’t be different.

6

You are right. And this “civil union” should be available to any adults who want it.

7

Wow, an elected official coming up with a sensible idea. In this day and age, this is unheard-of.

8

Tax purposes are pretty big, and it’s rational to recognize that the finances of people who share their living expenses are qualitatively different from the finances of folks who don’t.

As for the other rights, sure, you could handle them through individual contract. But this specific bundle of rights is so common, and it has so many relationships to the State (tax purposes, visitations at government hospitals, custodial rights over kids, etc.), that it’s simple efficiency to have one rights-package that people can get, rather than requiring everyone to reinvent the wheel and then requiring the government to re-examine every quirky contract that couples come up with.

A standardized civil union is a huge efficiency. Folks for whom the standard package doesn’t work can come up with their own package (e.g., group marriages).

Note that when we figure out what the standardized civil union should look like, our two criteria should be efficiency and fairness.

Daniel

9

Would these civil union licenses be issued for polygamous “unions”? What about incestuous ones? What about transspecies ones? There’s no reason to disallow these according to your arguments - do you support them?

10

There is a reason to disallow multiple people to enter civil unions - you would have to revise the entire structure of a civil union, lest they turn into giant tax breaks.

Incestuous, there is little reason, but knock yourself out, I guess.

Transspecies - well, if you can prove that a dog gives consent to enter into a civil union, you have more important things to worry about.

11

Polygamous: Not yet, but I can’t think of a good argument against them.

Incestuous: No, but I can’t think of a great argument against them if it’s really consenting adults. Hmm. Might have to come back to this, because I know there’s a good argument here. I hope this isn’t just my “ick factor” acting up, because I “know” incestuous relationships are wrong, I’m just not certain I have a valid reason. Weird.

Trans-species: If you can find a non-human that can sign documents or otherwise consent to a relationship, more power to you. Until then, quit pretending consenting adults are the same as an adult and his pet.

12

See, Zagadka, I told you we agree on things :slight_smile:

Good answer on the multiple-marriages. I still don’t have anything against the ideas, but legally it gets messy (what if your two wives disagree on your treatment?). If the legal mess can be worked out, I have no objections.

13

The big sticking point with state recognition of polygamous relationships is not a moral one, but the whole problem of division of responsibility, ownership, power of attorney etc - the three-body problem is much more difficult to solve than the two-body, although perhaps not impossible.

As far as I understand it, what we have here in the UK (ignoring for the moment the same-sex aspect) is in principle what is being proposed; civil unions are possible, religions can perform whatever ritual marriage they desire (within reason), it’s just that the religious bodies are also granted the administrative facility of setting up a civil union simultaneously to the bells and smells - saves the happy couple an extra trip to a different registry office, that’s all.
(someone will shoot me down in flames now, I just know it).

14

With respect to polygamy, I’d be ok with it as long as it wasn’t just a tax dodge. To prevent that, I’d make it onerous for people to get in and out of a polycivilunion. You cannot enter a civil union with someone who is already joined, therefore, to go from 2 to 3 people, the couple would have to dissolve their current union (to become single again), then apply for and recreate a union with 3. So too with reducing the number, you’d have to dissolve the current union, and set up a whole new one, with all of the legal issues that go along with it.

Anyway, how much of a tax dodge would it be to join a polygamous civil union in the first place? I can see health care issues, getting more spouses onto existing insurance plans, but that can easily be remedied by the insurance co’s applying rules to additional spouses/family members.

15

You have one and a half good questions here. I’ll take them in reverse order.

Transspecies unions? Gimme a break. Can your dog sign a rental agreement, or a business contract, or get a car title transferred into its name? If not, why on earth would you imagine it could enter into a civil union? (Before you ask the obvious next inflammatory question, the same answer applies to having minors enter into civil unions). This is a bad question.

Incestuous unions? Here’s your half-right question. Incest refers to sexual relationships, and civil unions don’t–or shouldn’t. That’s the bad part of the question. The good part is whether I’d allow close blood relatives to enter into civil unions with one another. Lemme give you an example, one I’ve used in previous threads:

*Bill and Amy are siblings. They grow up, move to different states. Bill gets married, and two years later, Amy gets married. Neither one has children in their marriages, for various reasons.

Fifty years pass, and Bill’s wife dies, and then Amy’s husband dies. Neither one has any family besides one another. Then Amy develops a painful, disabling disease. Bill, who loves Amy like a sister, invites her to come live with him so that he can provide her the care in her waning years that she needs. She does so, and they apply for a civil union, so that they can simplify their finances and their various rights.*

Why on earth should Bill and Amy be denied a civil union? I’d absolutely support issuing one to them.

Finally, your completely good question: should polygamous marriages get civil unions? I say no, but not for any moralistic reasons: I simply say no because it’s too complicated. The vast ajority of people end up in a relationship with one partner, and there’s a unique bundle of rights, as mentioned above, that would be issued toward that partner. Polygamous marriages are so different from one another that there’s no one-size-fits-all plan that’ll cover them, and certainly they won’t be covered by the civil union bundle that covers two people. Remember where I said efficiency was one of the two criteria to keep in mind when designing civil unions? Polygamous relationships are exactly why I put that criterion in.

Let’s turn it back to you: would YOU deny Bill and Amy a civil union? Why or why not?

Daniel

16

You say tomato and I say tomato. You say potato and I say potato. Tomato. Tomato. Potato. Potato. Let’s call the whole thing off.

The idea that changing the name would make it all better is just plain silly.

Marc

17

The same-sex marriage debate has shown us that “marriage” is a word with both secular and religious meaning. Religious institutions aren’t terribly likely to broaden their definitions, but government can do so without a problem. If “marriage” is such a religiously loaded word, we should get it out of government, and let individual churches decide what it means to them.

18

Is not!

Lemme know if you want to make an actual argument, as opposed to a simple assertion.

Daniel

19

Let’s hear it for good ole athelas, who can always be relied upon to raise the same questions regardless of how often they’ve been answered over and over in other threads :rolleyes:

Incestuous unions are recognized in some states. Quite a few, actually, if we’re talking cousins and such. A few recognize marriages between brother and sister if they’re sterile, I believe.

Polygamous… heck, I’d support that if someone would present a comprehensive document indicating how rights and responsibilities would be handled and make it expandable to certain reasonable upper limits. I don’t think one person must be married to 30 or 40 other people… there’s a point of unreasonableness IMO, where you cross the boundary between marriage and your own little nation, but on principle I couldn’t care less if four or five folks wanna get hitched.

A person and an animal can’t get hitched because, uhh, they don’t need to get hitched. There are absolutely no rights a horse needs to defend in its relationship with a man or a woman. They don’t exactly pay taxes. There are pretty good reasons why they can’t be in a hospital. They can’t make decisions for another person. They don’t have any pressing reason to worry about inheritance. In fact, I’m not sure what you’re smoking that I actually have to rebut such a patently stupid strawman.

20

Again there’s seems to be this underlying notion that “marriage” is somehow a uniquely Christian idea, or "Judeo-Christian, or at the very least uniquely “religious”. It isn’t. Marriage, in varying forms, is a universal human cultural institution. Social recognition of such bonds is also universal. Christians didn’t invent marriage, and neither did monotheists.

Of course marriages have always tended to be solemnized or sanctified with religious rituals. Human beings have a tendency to solemnize or sanctify everything with religious rituals. It’s only a relatively recent development that we’ve divided up the world into “secular” and “religious” spheres, which in turn has allowed us to develop such concepts as the separation of church and state, the notion that things in the “religious” sphere should be the province of individual conscience, and hence the ideal of freedom of religion.

Sure, we could rename all of the existing marriages “civil unions”, but why should we? The notion that “marriage” is the exclusive province of (Christian) churches is to anthropology what creationism is to biology.