Ahhhhh, but this is my point. Government should not be in the marriage business and should not bestow privileges and benefits, or responsibilities to its citizens based on some arbitrary definition of their relationships with others. I am the only person that should be able to bestow privileges and benefits to those I am in a relationship with. I should be able to enter a relationship where we agree on what the responsibilities are. With the exception of children, who don’t have a choice in the matter, the government should not be able to force responsibilities on me.
The government should treat all its citizens equally, whether they are in a relationship or no. This is just my opinion.
And I am not homophobic and that is the purpose of this thread.
Well, for starters it will never happen. So, it’s a fantasy.
But there are about 2,000 legal benefits granted to married couples, and this has been built up over hundreds of years. Just canceling them without understanding the consequences is facile, at best.
And then there is the backlash that would ensue of people who legitimately had a claim that gays wanted to destroy the institution of marriage.
What do you suppose would be the result of a poll asking Americans what they thought about eliminating the legal concept of marriage? If you think more than a tiny percent would say “who cares?” then you are simply out of touch with what the vast majority of Americans think.
No. I am offended that the majority of people in this thread that think that my belief that people should be able to define their relationships without government interference either believe that I am homophobic or idiotic (or a hardcore libertarian, which is almost as bad!).
My point is that government should not be regulating or defining personal relationships, whether it is with a member of the opposite sex, a group of like minded individuals, or taken to the ridiculous extreme, with my pet Rover. Me deciding I want to “marry” my dog, while ridiculous, is a victim-less crime. It harms no one. What societal good is the government protecting by denying my ridiculous desire?
This whole thread has kind’ve spiraled out of the core point. I think that getting the government out of marriage is a good idea and am willing to argue it. I am not homophobic, and I don’t think the idea that government should not be able to regulate the definition of personal relationships stupid. In fact I find the converse, that government should be able to tell me who I can marry and what the definition of marriage is, distrurbing and offensive.
HFB, I think your version of this argument is indeed stupid, because it suggests making the government far less competent at meeting folks’ needs for no discernible reason. Getting rid of the packaged mutual rights and responsibilities called “marriage” with no easy replacement except ad hoc contracts is a massive inconvenience to the literally millions of people who want those packaged rights.
The only two arguments in favor of the proposal that makes sense to me are:
Removing the mandatory hint of social approval from people’s relationships; and
Making these package of rights slightly more accessible than they currently are, by extending them to partnerships that don’t qualify as “marriage” (such as the elderly siblings mentioned earlier).
I agree with Skald that there’s no realistic chance of this proposal moving forward, however, and it’d be insane to continue pushing for it when SSM is so clearly on the verge of TOTAL VICTORY (in the US, anyway). I only mention it when people talk about how dumb the proposal is; I still have a soft spot in my heart for it.
I believe that the government should be able to regulate what kind of legally binding agreements you enter into and with whom because what makes a legally binding agreement legally binding is that the government is agreeing to act as arbitrator if the parties to the agreement disagree. If you want to have a marriage-like relationship with a dozen people, that’s fine, but it is not unreasonable for the government to say they’d be out of their league if you all came to them seeking a fair resolution of an issue. They have a hard enough time with marriages between just two consenting adults, how much harder is it going to be to oversee a divorce between a dozen people, some of whom want to stay together, some of whom want to stay with others as long as the spouses they don’t like are gone and some who want to leave?
I agree that it will never happen, but that does not make the reasoning stupid. Eliminating social security will never happen either, but there are arguments for ending it that are perfectly valid.
I agree with you. That does not change the fact that I think it would be better if we did not have the government granting legal benefits based on person relationships or defining what relationships we can enter into. People should be able to marry whoever they want without the governments say so. The government should not be involved with marriage in my humble opinion. And I am not homophobic (to get this back to the OP).
Yes, so what. I am replying to the OP. I think the government should not be involved in defining or regulating marriage, and I am not homophobic.
I agree that getting government out of marriage definitions would be difficult (actually impossible), and would most very probably fail. But that still does not make the principle behind my beliefs stupid: Governments should not , without an overriding interest in protecting demonstrable societal good, be able to regulate or define what types of relationships mature and sane people enter into. Is this really stupid?
This is a contract between you and a trustee governed by the law with your dog as a beneficiary. It’s not a contract between you and your dog.
You can have whatever relationship you want with your dog but the government isn’t going to enforce supposed contracts between you and your gig because your dog is incapable of understanding a contract, giving consent, or fulfilling his duties under a contract.
The government does not regulate what relationships you enter into. It merely offers you the opportunity to benefit from X standard arrangement.
No but my spouse and I should be able to enter into a contract that gives me this right before they are incapacitated and it should still hold after they are incapacitated. Isn’t this one of the rights that the contract of marriage gives you?
Yes, it would be difficult and the lawsuits would be legendary. Imagine if you had mulitple children, only some sharing your DNA, all involved in trying to claim the estate! That still should not stop me from entering into this relationship and it should not relieve the aforementioned children of their right to litigate.
Exactly. You can make any agreements you want, but if you want the government to enforce your agreements, they have to be agreements the government has agreed to enforce.
Just saying the government should enforce any agreements leads to horrible outcomes. So, societally, we choose which agreements should be enforced and which should not.
The fight for SSM is to make gay marriages no longer an unenforceable private agreement, but an agreement that the government has agreed to enforce.
To HFB: If you don’t want the government enforcing agreements you make, don’t sign contracts or get married or do other enforceable agreements. Because the “enforceable” part means that some third party is being brought in to determine what to do in the event of a conflict between the parties. Raging against the government for agreeing to be this arbiter is really goofy, since it is a huge benefit to have them in that role. But if you don’t want them in that role, don’t put them in that role. No one is forcing anyone to marry, so raging against the responsibilities that come with marriage is also really goofy.
You appear to know all of this, you just keep flailing around with goofy arguments, which are goofy.
Fuck the dog. I am sorry I even brought up the dog. The point is that the government limiting the benefits to “X” standard arrangements is wrong. If I want to engage in a marriage like arrangement with a like minded member of the opposite sex I should be able to. If I want to enter into a similar relationship with multiple like minded individuals with of any sex, we should be able to. Government should not be able to define the my relationships and try to force me into a “x standard relationship”.
And again, they aren’t forcing you to get married. I chose to get married because I wanted the suite of legal benefits and assumptions and protections that come with marriage. That means that I entered into an enforceable agreement, and if things go wrong, the government can step in and determine what happens. That’s what I’ve agreed to have happen by getting a legal marriage. No one forced me into an “x standard relationship.” If I didn’t want it, I could have had a different sort of relationship, with no legal enforcement.
OK, I am out. I have obviously completely failed at making a coherent argument (much to my dismay). But I have used the argument the OP raises and I am not homophobic.
My point is that if I want to enter a marriage relationship with a member of the same sex I should be able to. If I want to enter into a marriage relationship with two members of the same sex and they are agreeable, I should be able to. The government should not limit the definition, rights, and privileges of marriage to one standard relationship they define.
I am not a lawyer like you, so maybe I am being naive, but I feel like I should be able to enter into these societal/legal contracts as long as all parties are agreeable and the government does not have a compelling interest to prevent me.
Sorry, I said I was done, and I am really done… Next time I will try to be more coherent…
I agree that you should be able to marry someone of the same sex. The problem with marriage between more than two people is that in US law this is an undefined set of rules. The rules don’t exist, so they cannot be enforced. If they cannot be enforced, it isn’t something the government can agree to enforce. They can only enforce things that are defined. Why don’t these rules exist? Because US society hasn’t given any thought to it.
There are pretty extreme problems in adapting the suite of rights and responsibilities and benefits to a group rather than a couple. The default rules of a pair marriage cannot be used. It is not possible to have a marriage of three or more people be legally identical to a marriage of two people. So just saying that the government should both let you do whatever you want AND that the government should back you up is a problem.