I’m pretty conservative, and I, for one, has always found it creepy that my wife and I had to go down to the local state building to register with, and get permission from, the government to get married. This is an issue that should stay solely in the church. Whoever a particular church or religion decides to marry is their prerogative. With that it stays as private or as public as the couple chooses. And, there shouldn’t be any benefits either way based on whether a particular person is married or not.
Therefore, I am for the suggestion to eliminate any mention or binding of the word “marriage” in or from the government. This would dispell as much bureacracy as it would create, but I feel that it would be better in the long run. The bureacracy that it would create is that now the married couple would have to draw up wills, and sign power of attorneys, and other stuff that they didn’t before. But, so be it.
I mentioned this in another thread that was along the same thought process. I am no historian of how government came to regulate marriage, but I have always felt that over time marriage was used as the default answer to plug up problems as they arose. Power of Attorney? Just let marriage handle it. Property? Give it to marriage. Wills? Eh, let marriage take care of it. The end result is that today we have this huge ball of string of a mess of contradictions and regulations that could choke a horse.
To answer the rhetorical question on why now there is talk to throw marriage out of government altogether now that gay marriage is a possibility, it is not to cut off the nose to spite the face at all. It’s for the exact reason that I mentioned in the previous paragraph. With so many contradictions and regulations being added for every single situation, and loopholes springing up everywhere, this kind of a demise for government regulated marriage was inevitable. It is a can of worms that just has gotten out of control.
I don’t think you necessarily meant to exclude atheists or non-Christians in general from getting married–secular humanists are certainly capable of coming up with ceremonies to solemnize marriage–but I do want to point out that marriage was not invented by Christians; some form of marriage is apparently universal among human cultures. Obviously the Jews had marriage; so did the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans. Marriage is practiced in Hindu India and Shinto Japan. People still got married even in Stalinist Russia. It’s not a Christian thing, Christians didn’t invent it, and it doesn’t belong to Christians. It’s not your ball, and you can’t just take it home and make everyone else stop playing.
I thought I had made my point clear earlier - marriage in old societies very definitely was akin to slavery (for the woman, that is)! In Hebrew, to this day, saying, “my husband” is exactly the same as saying “my owner” - the word for “owner” is used for “husband” as well! You’re right about modern marriage vs. slavery - but that’s a comparison I never made.
As to “wage slavery” - I dare say that South-East sweat-shop workers are treated no better, if not worse, than many slaves were treated 200 years ago. So I don’t understand why you find the comparisons offensive.
I am sure it has been sai more eloquently, but it is my opinion that marriage is a twofold issue. The first is Religious, in which I do not think any who are not members or leaders of a specific religion have any say. However the second issue is one of civil contract. It is a contract between two persons to share their assets and responsibilities. Given the divorce rate in this country and all others it is hardly fair to argue some special sanctity in a contract of marriage. Or given certain celebrities proclivity of entering into a marriage contract then annuling said contract, for publicity purposes.
I fail to see how enforceing a contract between two persons of the same sex can have any effect on my marriage to my wife. It is my understanding that there is a seperation between Church and State. Therefore all arguments to Religion or morality are in my opinion moot. If your religion will not perform such marriage, so be it, that is no reason for the State to refuse declaring a valid contract between two persons.
That’s called throwing the baby out with the bath water. The regulations you abhor arose in response to specific problems that needed to be cured. Private contracts between the couples won’t solve the problems because of the inherent disparity in bargaining power in a couple where for instance one spouse earns all of the money and the other stays at home and cares for the children. Marriage and divorce laws protect the stay at home spouse from having the working spouse take all the money - or spend it all on his mistress - and leave the stay at home/caregiver spouse with nothing. It’s fine to say that the parties should negotiated this beforehand, and quite another to have a mother with infant children thrown out in the street because she couldn’t afford a good lawyer at the time the parties entered into the contract.
I can only speak for myself. Getting equal rights for everyone is a big freakin’ deal; getting the government’s nose out of my love life is a little bitty annoyance. I’m not going to agitate for ending government marriage based solely on a “none of your damn business!” argument, but since it dovetails nicely with getting rights for gay people, I’m happy to agitate for it.
Standard disclaimer: while I’d prefer getting rid of government marriage entirely and getting civil unions for everyone, I’ll be perfectly happy with allowing gay people to marry, instead. It doesn’t solve all the problems, but it solves a big one.
Lemme give you a scenario, though, to show why allowing SSM doesn’t solve all the problems that allowing civil unions solves:
Frank and Sarah grow up together, brother and sister. They go off and get married; have happy lives. Then Frank’s wife dies of cancer; then Sarah’s husband dies of a heart attack.
Sarah begins to go downhill herself, suffering from Parkinson’s disease. At the age of 80, she moves in with her younger brother, Frank, her only surviving family, and he cares for her full-time.
So we end up with two people living together who love each other and who will live together for the rest of their lives. Should we grant these two people all the government benefits we grant to married couples? Should they get tax breaks, visitation rights, etc?
I believe they should. SSM won’t let them, however: advocates of SSM repeatedly deny that SSM would open the door for allowing incestuous marriage, and I think that’s correct.
But I don’t think the government ought to be making value judgments on the types of living arrangements and relationships that people want. Sarah and Frank deserve every bit of help from the state that a traditionally married couple would get.
And that’s the major advantage of getting rid of state-sanctioned marriage: if we do that, substituting instead civil unions (Thea, I think your contract law idea is unnecessarily unwieldy, unfortunately), then they can be issued to any two people who want to live together long-term and grant a bundle of rights to each other.
I think that those advocating ‘getting the state out of marriage’ are underestimating the support for the ‘default’ position that a marriage contract occupies. Why should I have to go out and hire a lawyer to negotiate and draw up a contract that will offer pretty much everything I want in a marriage anyway? I think that most people are pretty happy with the protections that marriage affords (gay and straight), and I doubt that it would be easier (or cheaper) to enter a binding contract that spells out the same thing. For those that want to add or subtract to the marriage default,well, that’s what a pre-nup is for, and you are free to bear the burden of that cost.
But as long as there are any social services to be offered by the state, then there must be an easy way to track who is married to whom.
This reminds me of the Libertarian argument- that we should do away with most if not all government servies, and allow people to negotiate their own way for them. Well, guess what- even with a a minor problem here and there, I am happy to have a ‘default’ system whereby I know that not every interaction is a transaction to be negotiated. That’s time and energy better spent elsewhere.
I agree, but I still think civil unions are the best solution, for the reasons given in the post above. Allow private contracts for group marriages, but civil unions would cover both OSM, SSM, and a wide variety of platonic living arrangements that would benefit from the same efficiencies that are currently available only as marriage.
The notion that most people could create their own marriage contract and then still have it hold up in a legal sense is pretty absurd. The advantage with the current system is that everyone starts out with certain rights when entering a marriage, so you don’t need a lawyer or you don’t need to pay $49.95 to buy some software that has a template to complete a contract between the couple to be married.
Ah, but since the marriage contract would carry with it the same rights and responsibilities as the current arrangement, we wouldn’t have these problems to any greater extent than we do already. In fact, it would probably be lessened, because if the couple had mutually agreed that one of the partners (usually the woman) would stay home with the kids, the husband would be legally obligated by the marriage contract to financially support her. The only legal way he would have out of this would be to file a lawsuit and provide evidence in a court of law that she wasn’t holding up her end of the deal- either adultery or by failing to perform the domestic duties customarily assigned to a stay-at-home wife and mother, or, if the couple mutually agreed to dissolve the marriage, by negotiating a new contract which would supercede the marriage contract. In either case, since the marriage contract would still carry with it the same rights and obligations as the current arrangement, at least in a community property state, all assets acquired by the couple would have to be split down the middle.
theR- in the private contract arrangement, everyone would still start out with the same rights (and obligations). The only difference would be that the couple would not be applying to the state for permission to enter into the contract.
Actually, another advantage I see to the contract arrangement is that all of those things a couple presumably discusses before the nuptials take place, details such as, when kids come along will both parents continue to work outside the home or will one of them stay home with the kids, and if so, which one, are we going to raise the kids Zoroastrian or Greek Orthodox (if a religiously mixed marriage), would be put into writing, so no fair Mom just up and deciding she doesn’t want to work anymore after she has the baby, or Dad caving in to pressure from the in-laws to dedicate his children to Ahura Mazda and did I even spell that right?
Anyhoo, I don’t see why a computer program template would have to be used. The couple could just as easily hash it out on pen and paper-
OK, we agree not to have sex with other people, that’s a gimme.
We agree to equally share all our financial assets, 'nother gimme
Um, so, how many kids are we going to have? Three? Nah, I want eight. OK, let’s come back to that one.
Which one of us is going to quit work and raise them? OK, Bob, you’re generally more patient, so you can do that.
What about the religion thing? That’s a toughie. OK, let’s take the anklebiters to the mosque on Friday nights and the Apostolic church on Sunday. Yes, I think we should also both go to both services. It wouldn’t be right to have the kids think they’re choosing between the parents when they get old enough to pick which religion they want to be.
Once all of these details have been hashed out, they can just type it up on a word processor, print and sign.
And really, I don’t see what is absurd about the notion of a couple being able to draw up their own contract and have it hold up in a legal sense. Both parties participated in drawing it up, agreed to the terms, signed it, had witnesses read and sign it, and filed a certificate at the registrar’s office. Why would it not hold up legally?
I think the idea is that if two people try to draw up a contract at the kitchen table, unless both of them are attorneys, there are likely to be huge loopholes in the language that’ll make enforcing the contract very, very thorny. Legal language is so dense for a reason: it’s trying to be as unambiguous as possible.
