Should there be a Definition of Marriage Act?

[Bryan_Ekers]

@Two_Many_Cats

But we can expect more agitating on legalizing polygamy now.
That’s for certain.

@Miller

So what?

Indeed - so what? There are likely hundreds of issues in the U.S. that various people are now agitating to make legal, as in any functional democracy with a right to protest/petition.

[John_Mace]

We could legalize polygamy and call the law: The No Woman Left Behind Act.

[AHunter3]

[QUOTE=AHunter3]

I like this one better:

“Marriage is not a matter of interest to the government of the United States or the states within it; no law shall recognize marital status or accord different treatment to people on the basis of their marital status”.
[/quote]

@LSLGuy

Interesting.

It completely overturns centuries of legal and social precedent. Including obvious things like probate in the absence of a will. And minor things like who may inherit an IRA.

Certainly in a modern interrelated world with taxes, insurance, big corporations, organized mass market investing, and all the rest, simply deciding that marriage is a legal irrelevancy much like hair color will have a vast array of immediate, far reaching, and utterly unintended side effects.

Or do you propose we create omnibus legislation to address all of these other side issues by other means?

@Trinopus

Bad idea: it would eliminate the good things – child custody, tax status, visitation rights of a spouse in hospital, inheritance, community property, many others – that marriage was (in part) instituted to govern. You’re throwing out a lot of babies with that bathwater.

I would want the existing array of laws about property and rights that currently attach to the state of marriage to be modified to attach to civil arrangements set up by people who wish those protections. Those arrangements should not be directly linked to the absence or presence of romantic or erotic behaviors or relationships, and certainly not to the absence or presence of a theologically blessed union (or a civil celebration of that same ilk).

Incidentally, I’m polyamorous and I haven’t the slightest faintest interest in marrying my partners. I just don’t care for the institution. To me, if you rip out the sexual possessiveness and the explicit monogamy, it’s nothing but a bunch of economic arrangements set up in a “one size fits all” array; yeah you could do prenuptial agreements and other legal contracts to modify or subvert the default set, but to me it makes more sense to enter into each of those explicitly and one’s own preferred arrangements, and to do so out from under the rose-colored lights of believing that what one is doing is declaring/celebrating one’s love.

[Trinopus]

@AHunter3

I would want the existing array of laws about property and rights that currently attach to the state of marriage to be modified to attach to civil arrangements set up by people who wish those protections. . . .

Since many of those protections are legal ones, this would require a change in the law. Civil contracts don’t cut the mustard. You and me signing a civil contract won’t get us joint filing status with the IRS.

ETA: maybe that’s what you are saying, but it wasn’t clear.

ETA a second time: Kinda so what? We can change the laws. We may end up doing so, one way or the other, regarding plural marriages. Maybe instead of “two persons” we can have a new law saying “many persons.” Why not?

[Riemann]

@AHunter3

…“Marriage is not a matter of interest to the government of the United States or the states within it; no law shall recognize marital status or accord different treatment to people on the basis of their marital status”.

@AHunter3

…I would want the existing array of laws about property and rights that currently attach to the state of marriage to be modified to attach to civil arrangements set up by people who wish those protections. Those arrangements should not be directly linked to the absence or presence of romantic or erotic behaviors or relationships, and certainly not to the absence or presence of a theologically blessed union (or a civil celebration of that same ilk)…

Yes, I completely agree that the government should get out of the marriage business altogether.

Unless X is the child of Y, there should be no laws or regs that benefits or penalties can accrue to person X by virtue of their relationship to person Y only if the relationship follows some arbitrary government-defined formula of “valid” relationships. If each person has (say) the right that their health insurance or life insurance or some form of preferential tax treatment can legally accrue to one other person (other than a dependent child), then each person should be free to nominate that one person without any government-defined burden to satisfy arbitrary conditions about what constitutes a “valid” relationship. That is simply not the government’s business.

If the price of this happening were that a patent on the word “marriage” is granted to a bunch of bigots and only applies to a religious ceremony, that would be fine with me.

[Riemann]

ETA: To clarify, my last sentence is not the preferred outcome, because obviously the word “marriage” has an important social meaning and history of which religion is but a small part. But I’d accept giving up the vocabulary if the realpolitik made it necessary. It’s the rights that are the bigger issue.