Since the two are legally identical, it cannot be a question of “good enough”, and no punishment is involved.
Complaining about what to call it even after you know it is identical seems rather petty to me, but whatever.
Regards,
Shodan
And yet you see no pettiness in the law itself? Amazing.
Then why not call it the same thing?
What’s petty is insisting it needs a different name.
That’s how it works in South Africa.
In this hypothetical law, what reason is given for not allowing it to be called “marriage”?
Which isn’t dissimilar to how it works in most states here in the US.
What?
Exactly. This is where the supposed “equality” goes right out the window-The people that would force this law through would feel lessened if those that weren’t like them were allowed to be married.
That’s true in the US, but the OP isn’t set in the US, it’s set in some hypothetical other nation that, apparently, has a sufficiently different history of how it treats it’s citizens that the compromise offered in the OP is universally acceptable. “Just make everything civil unions” might be a workable proposal in that society.
Alternatively, marriages are only for straight people, while civil unions are open to everyone, and offer significantly better benefits. Marriage as a legal institution withers on the vine. Marriage as a social institution thrives, and the fact that the thing everyone calls marriage is referred to in the law as “civil unions” becomes one of those “weird old law” bits of trivia, like how it’s allegedly legal to shoot a whale from a moving car in California.
Admittedly, what I’m trying to do here is get what I want (“everyone uses the same institution”) within the bounds of the OP (“gays can’t have marriage”). Obviously, the ideal (to say nothing of most rational) solution is to get rid of civil unions, and open up marriage to everyone.
What’s to stop a later law from saying “notwithstanding [that law], this one only applies to marriages and not to civil unions,” (or vice versa) and thereby creating an inequality? Later laws take precedence over earlier ones.
It only works for us because of the equality clause in the bill of rights.
A translator might give marriage as the closest translation but I really can’t say what sort of cultural implications are attached to each of these words that can colour the exact meaning. It could very well be that in Exlacostan the word meur means specifically a government sanctioned union between two people which would, in the US, be translated as marriage as that is the existing relationship that most closely matches the meaning but that civil union would in fact be a closer translation. Like I said before, even using the word marriage is not a barrier to the relationship not being recognized internationally.
So when France demands that California sparkling wine cannot be called champagne, do you take the side of France?
After all, California sparkling wine is basically identical to champagne in all but two respects, where it is from and what it is named. Marriage and civil unions would similarly be identical in all but two respects, who can engage in them and what they are called. So I take it you have concluded a matter of principle that people cannot be allowed to call nearly identical things by the same names?
Keep in mind that in my ideal world, marriage would still exist. It just wouldn’t involve the government any more than birthday parties or bar mitzvahs involve the government. It’d be something people do on their own time, and the government would express no opinion on the subject. I’ve got reasons for thinking this is mildly preferable to opening marriage to same-sex couples, but at this point I’m delighted that SSM has essentially won the debate (as a really bad analogy, I love salty caramel ice cream even more than I love lemon ice cream, but if I get lemon ice cream I’m still a happy lad).
As such, practically speaking my proposal would have the best effects. Everyone would legally have the same rights, and anyone, straight or gay, who wanted to claim they were married would be doing so outside of any sort of government approval. I’m totally fine with those results.
Meh. I don’t really give much of a crap about the bad logic of bigots. If they’re not willing to let gay folks get married under the law, I see no advantage to letting them get married under the law. Let them suffer the same fate as their victims, I say, and if that gives them a martyr complex, I’ll buy 'em a cross.
Definitely a fair point. I stopped arguing in favor of my “civil unions for everyone” proposal many years ago, once it became clear that SSM was the way to go; again, it’s a much more practical way to achieve equality, which is far and away the greatest good that can be achieved here. But if we’re proposing that equality can’t be achieved via state-sanctioned marriage for all, let’s fall back on the state-sanctioned marriage for none, with state-sanctioned civil unions for all.
Was this a response to my post? I just wrote it to not fight the hypothetical. I personally don’t think magellan’s fantasy world would be realistic, based on the reasons already listed. But that law would be the first thing I’d pass if we had to live there
Nothing really. Just trying to answer the OP
Yes, it would. Because no matter what you call it, the set of default rights and assumptions that accompany what we currently call “marriage” would be in place (or would return to place). Marriage exists as a legal structure because it is a set of default legal rules. Default legal rules are easier, do not require individual crafting, and allow the accretion of many rights and assumptions that we, as a society, want.
I definitely want those rules in place. I’d like them to be in place as well for situations in which folks have no romantic interest in one another–say, an adult child caring for an elderly parent, or two long-term roommates, or two elderly siblings, or whatever. I think they’re fine rules, and anyone who wants to call them “marriage” should be able to do so, but I’ve a very slight preference than the gummint not call them “marriage.”
IOW, the word marriage wouldn’t involve the gummint.
Ah, got it. Thanks for explaining.
I don’t think societally we want the same rules to apply to these other situations because they do not fit within the set of assumptions. The worst thing for people who want to marry would be to have to craft their own rules, because once you have to do that, there is no default for the rest of the world to turn to. Whatever you call it, marriage is not an institution that can tolerate all that much legal individuality. Personal individuality, sure. But legal individuality, no.
You don’t want to have to whip out your marriage contract when you go to the emergency room.
And if you have carve outs for marriage that involve spending less money, i.e. lower taxes or fees, then you can’t just open that up to every possible combination of people without destroying it. Unmarried people pay more so that married people pay less. If everyone is married, no one pays less.
I may have missed something when I’ve thought about this before, but when it comes to the set of assumptions that go with marriage that don’t go with those other examples, I’m having trouble thinking of any assumptions I’m comfortable with the government making. What assumptions are you thinking of?
Hmm. I’m not sure I’m happy with the government privileging certain “family” structures over others (quote marks to avoid quibbling over semantics, which may be misguided of me). If there are two adults living together and pooling resources and forming a household together, and they plan to do it long-term, I don’t see much advantage in telling one group, “Have a tax break!” but denying it to the other group.
The assumption that a marriage is a private space and therefore spouses cannot be forced to testify against one another. The assumption that a child born to a woman during a marriage is the child of her husband. The assumption that your spouse is your next of kin, taking precedence over any other relationship. The assumption in community property states that money you earn is half yours and half the other spouse’s. The assumption in other states that your incomes form a household’s income and that taxes should be taken out based on the household. The assumption that you can only have one spouse at a time. Assumptions about inheritance, obligation, support, debt, binding contracts, privacy, etc.
We already have terms for most of the other family structures you mention, and they already have their own default rules. Siblings have their own inheritance rules, their own next-of-kin rules, etc., as do parent-child relationships. Roommates can already get married if OS in any jurisdiction, if SS in some jurisdictions.
As for the government privileging family structures, that’s exactly what any marriage or civil union does. It says that there are particular family structures that are not covered under other family default rules, and not only are they allowed, but we’re going to make assumptions regarding what people want them to look like. Each of the special rules regarding marriage came into being because we, as a society, decided to privilege the marital relationship, to make shortcuts and special rights in order to capture what we wanted to be bundled up in marriage.
And we want a single set of rules for marriage so that we do not have to bust out the marital contract any time we want to rent a car or have surgery or write a will or have a baby or get a credit card. We want the statement “I am married” to carry with it a set of assumptions so that we do not have to explain or prove each fact or desire independently.
When we talk about marriage, there’s a package of rights that are assumed to go with it - medical decisions, power of attorney, shared assets, etc. These aren’t necessarily all things that people might want applied to the situations you describe. I might want to have a close friend and long-term roommate to have the ability to make medical decisions for me, but not have half my stuff when I move out. I might want my brother to have power of attorney for me if I get sick, but not control over my assets if I die.
You could have some sort of a la cart arrangement, where the couple in question picks off a specific list of which benefits they want applied to their relationship, but that goes some ways to lessening the utility of having all those right bundled together in the first place.