Huh? Nothing. People who like it this way will keep uttering promises that they won’t hold in front of their deity of choice, others will keep having sex or living together or raising children or doing whatever else they do on their spare time.
Kids will learn in history books that people felt the need to have an official girlfriend with a state stamp of approval and underwent long legal processes when they broke up and that was corresponding to about the time when religion was governing our lives, when women were essentially the property of men, when consensual sex was often considered a criminal matter and forced sex sometimes very acceptable, when there was only one kind of lifestyle that was socially acceptable (hence the need for state approval, to tell apart people who lived the right way and people who lived the wrong way and determine who should be honoured and who should be jailed for their nasty habbits), but that fortunately the whole thing went the way of the dodo, and that we’re much better off nowadays without all this moralizing crap. And they will scoff thinking of how stupid and irrational their ancestors were.
What you’re describing is a mere fraction of the legal implications of marriage, mingled in with a lot of questionably-accurate history, none of which matters.
Let’s put it this way- ten years ago, it would NOT have been seen as homophobic for a libertarian to say, "“Let’s get government out of the marriage business entirely. Let churches carry out whatever rituals they want and let people make whatever family contracts they want- straight, gay, polygamous, whatever.” At the time, that might even have been seen as a fair compromise.
Today, now that it’s clear the forces supporting gay marriage are winning, nobody on the Left sees any need for compromise. So, NOW such a proposal seems homophobic to them.
That would only work if one was deeply ignorant of contract law. How would the libertarian have gotten a third party to recognize that a home-made marriage contract exists, or care that it does?
See here’s the thing - everyone always talks about the priviliges of marriages and no one touches on the responsibilities. Now, some or all of the following may not apply in France, but they do apply in at least some parts of the USA ( and the differences in the US are mostly in the details, not the concept)
I don’t have a responsibility to support my paramour or retired sibling , while I do have a responsibility to support my husband. This doesn’t mean my husband is going to sue me if I expect him to get a job. This means if my husband loses his job and his unemployment benefits run out, his eligibility for means-based assistance will be based on my income. My income will not affect my paramour or retired siblings or 30 year old waste- of-life- son’s eligibility for such benefits. I can be a multi-millionaire and they will still be eligible for benefits even if they live in my household. In fact, some people do not get married specifically for this reason.
Similarly, if my husband needs nursing home care my assets and income will be looked at to determine his eligibility - for example if our combined assets are $100K when he enters a nursing home , he won’t be eligible for Medicaid until until we “spend down” so that he has $2000 left and I have $50K left. It’s not that I get to keep half of our assets-it’s that I get to keep half up to a maximum of about $115K so that if we have $500K , I get to keep about $115K, he gets to keep $2K and the other $383K goes to the nursing home before Medicaid kicks in . It doesn’t matter who’s name is on the assets and it wouldn’t make a difference if all $500K is in my name .Again, my assets and income don’t affect eligibility for my paramour, sibling, WOL son even if they live with me and again , this is a reason some people specifically avoid marriage.
The reason for some of the privileges and also some of the responsibilities is that we treat a married couple as a single economic unit. If you stop doing that,treat each person as their own economic unit and eliminate the privileges, you have to eliminate the responibilities , too. And to be honest, it’s changing this part of the equation that is likely to be harder. Few people in the US are going to be in favor of married people’s eligibilty for means tested benefits regardless of the spouse’s income and assets. And even fewer are going to be in favor of changing in the other direction and being financially responsible for their retired siblings and adult children.
Think it through yourself. Which privileges and responsibilities can’t be attached via contract law? Why does the government have to specify those privileges and responsibilities?
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that any one of them can’t be attached by contract law. However, it seems to methat requiring those privileges and responsibilities to be attached in the context of contract law places an undue burden upon people who wish to establish a family but do not have the financial resources to engage the services of an attorney.
How would you like it if you wanted to have an individual of your choice recognized as your next-of kin, only to find out that your parents were contesting your right to do so?
Why do they need an attorney? In a market like this there would be ready-to-use contracts. For example, most FOSS projects don’t write their own license; they use a well know license where all expectations are already known.
Download the official Catholic Church Matrimony Contract – or the contract of your choice – and have at it. Granted, at the beginning some of these will have to be tested in court, but in the long run, a well known contract won’t require an attorney.
In any case, how much does it cost to get married? How much does a will cost? They’re pretty much the same, barring certain special circumstances in your will (circumstances that mean you have money). Not a bar for poor people, certainly.
And the question I always come back to is why? Why should we do that when we’ve already got marriage laws on the book? I see absolutely no benefit to getting government out of marriage. Hell, even if you switch over to “private” contracts the government is going to be involved.
I have always been for gay marriage, but there was a time when my position was that IF the government is going to issue marriage licenses, THEN it should issue them to same sex couples, BUT that there were good arguments for “getting the government out of marriage.”
Since then I’ve come to see that, whatever the merits of the position may be, if it were actually taken up and enacted, it would be like telling gay couples that rather than let them play with my ball, I’m going to destroy the ball.
So now I just say gay couples should be allowed to get married, and leave it at that. If in the future for some unrelated reason we revisit the “government involvement in marriage question” I might still advocate for the government to get out of it, but it would be wrong for me to connect this to the gay marriage issue.
How about every single one that involves a third party? How is Terry’s private contract with Sean regarding medical decisions binding on a hospital employee?
I don’t think “get government out of the marriage” is necessarily homophobic, but…
I frequently only hear this argument made about the institution of marriage. Why aren’t people advocating getting government out of the conservatorships? Or corporations? Or estates? Or trusts? There are libertarians and anarchists who advocate getting government out of everything, but a lot of people, in my experience, don’t do this. And if someone is only focused on marriage, and only bringing that up in the context of SSM debates, then I have to wonder if their objection to marriage (and not anything else) is rooted in homophobia.
But there are also a lot of people who are just fairly ignorant about contract law, marriage law or the law in general, so they may be coming from that place. Maybe that’s not homophobia either, but it would be nice if people would educate themselves on the topic before they start rolling in with this argument, because we’re discussing the serious issue of rights and government-backed discrimination.
And, since we’re not going to get government out of the marriage business, this is little more than theoretical circle-jerking. And when people are discussing a serious issue about discrimination, I don’t really see the point of waltzing in with a theoretical argument. If people were having a theoretical argument about how to construct society from scratch, then this sort of argument makes sense. But when people are discussing real-world discrimination, theoretical arguments like this are pointless and crass. And again, I wonder if the person behaves this way with other serious issues, or do they just do this with gay marriage?
So, I can’t say the argument is necessarily homophobic, but the argument raises a flag of possibly homophobia, and depending on the other arguments the person is making, they could be homophobic.
Well, that’s kind of the point. There’s already a ready-to-use contract. And the benefits it confers upon the parties who enter into it are many and varied.
I’m hard-pressed to think of how a single DIY contract would able to duplicate those. And if you broke it down into several DIY contracts, that would entail several filing fees, at the very least. And would it be necessary to terminate them all at once, in the event of a “divorce,” or would they have to be done piecemeal?
Question about contract law: If two parties to a contract elect voluntarily to abolish the contract, does the abolishment have to be filed and registered?
It depends on the type of contract, but generally, in the US, most private contracts (or their amendments or dissolutions) do not have to be filed or registered with the government.
I guess this goes deeper than marriage per se, but the most compelling reason to get marriage laws off of the books is because there’s not a compelling government interest in having them. What governing principle is sustained by having marriage laws?
Yes, we need a government of some type to help us enforce property rights, including property rights conferred via a contract.
When people have the freedom to enter into private contracts, then they have the flexibility to agree to terms that make both parties better. Government marriage, though, is a take-it-or-leave it proposition. Sure, some states allow prenuptial agreements, but even those have limitations both parties might not agree to.
Government marriage limits our freedom. If I want a plural marriage, why am I not free to enter into an enforceable contract to do so, assuming a find a mix-and-match of two other consenting men or women?
What principle is sustained by having estates? Or trusts? Or conservatorships? Or corporations?
People get together and they mix property. Or they take out loans together. Or they want each other to make medical decisions for them in case one is incapacitated. Marriage provides a default set of rules that governs this. And this has been pointed out repeatedly in this thread, and you simply ignore it.
So, for some peculiar reason you think it’s okay to have the government regulate marriages through private contracts (and all private contracts are regulated in the US), but it’s not okay to have government regulate marriages through a legal institution. Most people don’t seem to agree, since most people don’t want to get rid of marriage. I guess that sucks for you, and good for the rest of us.
Oh-my-fucking-god, how many times do we have to do this? It has already been pointed out in this thread that (a) the legal institution of marriage does things which can’t be done through private contract AND (b) you are free to do a private contract if you want. Nobody is stopping you from doing a private contract. Go private contract to your hearts content.
What you actually want to do is reduce the number of options that people currently have available.
Blah, blah, blah. No it doesn’t. Yawn.
So, now you want government in the plural-marriage business?
I want to address something else about this particular bit of silliness.
Let’s say that tomorrow the government does get rid of the legal institution of marriage. You know what happens to your private contracts for plural marriages? Absolutely nothing. Your ability or inability to privately contract for plural marriage-like arrangements will not change one iota if the government abolishes the legal institution of marriage. You will still have to go and get the laws governing those types of contracts changed (or not changed if you are happy with the status quo).
But by all means, let’s abolish a legal institution which is convenient for a lot of people just so we can do absolutely not one thing about the legal status of plural marriages.
Filed and registered? There’s no such thing in contract law.
Remember, there’s no general rule that a contract has to be in writing. The statute of frauds does require some contracts to be written down, such as marriage contracts.